Page 25 - Zhangzhou Or Swatow The Collection of Zhangzhou Ware at the Princessehof Museum, Leeuwarden, Netherlands

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Zhangzhou Ware with Decoration in Turquoise, Green, Red and
Black Enamels

Another distinctive group of Zhangzhou ware is painted in turquoise, green, iron red and black enamels.

Brilliant turquoise was created by using salpeter instead of lead to make the quartz sand and copper powder
melt into a turquoise-blue alkali glaze. Its earliest appearance seems to have been in the pottery of the Tang
dynasty (618-907). It is then found on northern Cizhou wares during the Song (960-1279) and on the shufu
wares of the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368), produced in Jingdezhen. Turquoise alkali glaze continued to be used in
combination with lead-based overglaze enamels from the early Ming period (1368-1644) up until today.

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Black enamel made its appearance during the 15 century.
Initially used for flat washes, it later became indispensable for providing thin black outlines for overglaze enamel
painting.

It was made from the same cobalt pigments used for underglaze decoration, but possibly from an impure and
low grade cobalt not suitable to be used as underglaze blue. A good grade cobalt could also be mixed with
some lead to give a solid black.

GRV 1929-338

On Zhangzhou ware, the decoration with turquoise, red, green and black was built up in two layers. At first the
thin, black outlines, which identify the silhouettes of the motifs as well as their details, were painted on the
glaze, later covered by turquoise and green. The turquoise layer is over the black outlines of birds, animals,
mythical beasts and humans; a green layer over leaves. Barbara Harrisson remarked, that the combination of

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