Page 122 - China, 5000 years : innovation and transformation in the arts
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Southern Song Xiuneisi have yet to be confirmed, Cizhou), and kilns that made typical Cizhou ware
and among existing pieces there is no way to have been located at Guantai township andYezi
distinguish those made at the Northern Song Guan village in Ci county. In fact, a network of many
kilns from those made at the Southern Song kilns, from Henan westward into Shanxi and
Xiuneisi. Some scholars of Chinese ceramics have eastward into Shandong, were producing similar
recently questioned whether the Northern Song wares. Mostly they made white and black
and Xiuneisi Guan kilns in fact even existed. 7 In stonewares, but also polychrome- and green-glazed
1997 an ancient kiln site was discovered at pieces, and during the Jin dynasty they even created
Fenghuangshan in Hangzhou Municipality, underglaze painted porcelains. Most of their output
Zhejiang Province, but further scientific excavation was sold to the mass market. Cizhou ware was
is needed before it can be determined if this is decorated in a variety of ways, most often with
indeed the Xiuneisi kiln. underglaze black or brown designs painted on a
white slip-covered ground. More laboriously,
However exquisite and acclaimed, the "five great designs might be carved or incised through the
wares" of Ru, Guan, Ge, Ding, and Jun do not white slip to the buff-colored body fabric, then
encompass the total achievement of Chinese
ceramics during the Northern and Southern Song, —clear-glazed another way of creating two-tone
Liao, and Jin dynasties. Yaozhou wares of the north
and Longquan wares of the south, both green- decoration. Sometimes an allover pattern of small
glazed, were enormously significant both in the circles, called pearl-dotting or ring-matting, would
quantity produced for use by society and in the be stamped on the ground. Green-painted and
polychromed Cizhou pieces have also been found.
quality of individual pieces.
During the Ming and Qing dynasties Jingdezhen
Only in the past few decades has Yaozhou ware
achieved wide recognition. Prior to the 1950s little was the Chinese porcelain capital, supplying vast
was known about ancient green-glazed wares from orders to the imperial court, the domestic market,
and an avid foreign trade. (It should be
northern China, and except for Ru ware and Jun remembered that the technique of making
ware, all pieces produced during the Northern porcelain was unknown in the West until the
Song and Jin dynasties were called northern eighteenth century.) Long known for its many
Longquan or northern Chuzhou ware. Since 1984
large-scale scientific excavations of the Yaozhou superb wares, the most immediate and
kilns have fully revealed their nature. Although the consequential cause of its ascendancy was the
Yaozhou kilns of the Northern Song also produced development there in the mid-fourteenth century
white-glazed, black-glazed, and brown-glazed of underglaze blue and underglaze red porcelain.
porcelain, green-glazed porcelains were, of course, Blue-and-white, red-and-white, and all the
their principal output. These were decorated by polychrome variants descended from these, swept
carving, incising, molding, appliqueing, and the public taste, ousting monochrome green-glazed
modeling, and the powerfully carved pieces are ware from its millennia-long supremacy.
particularly noteworthy.
Porcelain manufacture in Jingdezhen entered its
Longquan wares of the Song were of two types
thick-bodied with thin glaze, and thin-bodied with peak period during theYongle and Xuande eras of
thick glaze. The first had a slightly yellow-hued the Ming dynasty in the first half of the fifteenth
green glaze, highly transparent, and sometimes
carved or incised designs; the other was the world- century.
famous powder-green or "plum'-green (meizi)
Longquan ware. The thick-bodied, thin-glazed During the preceding Yuan dynasty Jingdezhen was
Longquan with relatively rough carving or incising already producing blue-and-white porcelains and
was made mostly from the mid-to-late Northern selling them by the batch to other East Asian
Song until the early Southern Song, whereas the countries and in the Middle East, but they were
thin-bodied, thick-glazed powder-green celadon relatively insignificant in the domestic market. In
was popular during the late twelfth and early records from the late Yuan and early Ming, there is
thirteenth centuries. The peak period for powder- no endorsement of blue-and-white, nor did the
green and metei-green celadons was the thirteenth gentry consider blue-and-white to be aesthetically
century. The jar with everted mouth and molded important. Beginning in the Yongle era, however,
bowstring pattern in this exhibition is a classic blue-and-white began to make its way into the
example of powder-green Longquan ware (cat. 134). palaces and houses of the social elite. Relative to
the Yuan dynasty, there was major progress in the
Cizhou ware derives its name from what is now Ci production of both body and glaze. Potters in the
imperial kilns during theYongle and Xuande
county in Hebei Province (formerly a part of periods perfected blue-and-white wares beyond
anything seen during the Yuan dynasty, achieving a
finely textured and pure white body, bright and
lustrous glaze, and rich, well-controlled blue color.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHINESE CERAMICS
