Page 20 - Ming Porcelain Primer

THE COLOURS OF MING: GREEN

In the Chinese language there is no exact equivalent of ‘green’. The character qing could
be translated as either green, blue or bluish green, even black; it is also the colour of
nature and of landscape in Chinese landscape painting, and qing ci, ‘bluish green porce-
lain’, is the Chinese name for what in the West is called celadon.

There are several explanations for the term ‘celadon’. It could have originated in
seventeenth-century France, where in the pastoral play L’Astrée by Honoré d’Urfé (1567–
1625), first presented in 1627, a shepherd named Celadon wore a pale green jacket. A
quite different theory is based on celadon being a corruption of the name Saladin, from
Salah ad-Din (1138–1193), the first sultan of Egypt and Syria and founder of the Ayyubid
dynasty. Another theory connects the term with the Ottoman sultan Suleiman (1520–1566).
None of these charming, albeit not very scientific, theories can be confirmed.

It is the general use of the term ‘celadon’ as referring to a family of transparent iron-
oxide glazes that shall be used here.

Technique

Celadon glazes are transparent glazes containing iron oxide, fired in a reductive atmos-
phere. The desired colour is produced by chemical changes in the iron oxide when
deprived of free oxygen. The results are a variety of colours ranging from whitish grey
through pale green to a deep and intense green.

During firing many celadon glazes developed crazing, a glaze defect that happens
when the shrinking rates of the body and the glaze are different once the glaze has been
fired on the piece. As far back as the Song dynasty (960–1279) crazing or crackle on cela-
dons was being produced intentionally as it was regarded as desirable. It was associated
with the veins, the ‘patina’ and the beauty of ancient nephrite, jade, yu, recovered from
the tombs of antiquity. In a different cultural context, in Islamic Indonesia and the Middle
East, celadon cracks were appreciated as ‘magic’ and were thought to be able to neutral-
ise poison.

Most of the celadon glazed pieces were produced in the kilns of Longquan in the
southern China province of Zhejiang. The techniques used to decorate Longquan celadons
are varied and include incising, moulding, stamping and slip decoration. Most of the
designs are floral.

Further reading: Mino and Tsiang 1986; Wood 1999; Tsai 2009.

Vase (detail, no. 69).

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