Page 6 - Chinese Porcelain The Altman Collection

Fig. 5. Three rung-chengwhitepieces inspiredby Sung Ting ware. Vasewith delicatelyinciseddragonchasing

theflaming pearl. Height 12 %inches. Pilgrim's bottle with incised dragons. Height 7 12 inches. Plate with

incisedfish, waves, andpeony. Diameter II inches

discovery of true porcelain, which was made by kiln. Thus the glaze is unlikely to crackle. Before
combining China clay (kaolin) and China stone the glazing technique was perfected, there must
(decomposed feldspathic rock) into a white clay. have been accidental crackled effects. In time
The pieces were shaped on the potter's wheel
or by means of molds, then dried to "leather" the potters began to create these intentionally.
or "cheese" hardness so that the lower parts, The large network one often sees is called in
where the vessels had been separated from the Chinese terms the "ice crackle," while the tiny
lump of clay on the wheel, could be trimmed to circular one is known as the "fish roe pattern."
the desired thinness. They were dried com-
pletely before the decoration and the glaze were During the Ming dynasty (I368-I644), Chi-
applied, then submitted in a kiln to a tempera- nese porcelains were widely known. Both blue and
ture between 1300? and I400? centigrade. Peo- white ware and celadons of this period have been
ple often ask, "What makes the Chinese glaze excavated at sites as far-flung as southeast Asia,
fit so well?" The answer is not complex, for Korea, Japan, Iran, Iraq, India, Arabia, and
Chinese potters work with the simplest ingredi- Egypt. In the seventeenth century, during the
ents: porcelain clay plus fluxing materials such late years of the Ming dynasty and the early
as powdered limestone and wood ash that melt ones of the Ch'ing (1644-1912), the European
into the glassy substance that forms the glaze. powers established direct trade routes with China.
Since glaze and body are so similar in composi- Thereafter the impact of Chinese porcelains may
tion, their coefficients of expansion and contrac- be seen in all the great porcelains of Europe:
tion are equally close during the cooling of the Dresden, Sevres, Meissen, and Limoges wares,
among others, were inspired by Chinese exports;
so was Delft pottery. Blue and white ware and

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