Blanc de Chine vs Delftware
ブラン・ド・シーヌ（徳化白磁） / デルフト焼
Both sit in Ceramic Styles, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Blanc de Chine
Blanc de Chine is the European name for the white porcelain fired at the Dehua kilns in Fujian. Nothing is painted on it, so the whole effect rests on a milky, faintly bluish glaze and on bodies pressed in piece moulds with details modelled separately and applied by hand. Guanyin figures and libation cups copied from carved rhinoceros horn became its signature pieces.
Delftware
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Longing for Chinese porcelain, Delft produced tin-glazed pottery of its own. Windmills, ships and Eastern scenes painted in blue alone fixed 'blue and white' as a Western language of table and room, chinoiserie put into practice.
| Blanc de Chine | Delftware | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | Ming dynasty– | 1600s– |
| Family | Ceramic Styles | Ceramic Styles |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | No painted decoration anywhere, so the surface stays a single white / A thick glaze that shifts from milky to faintly blue, translucent where it thins / Seams where separately modelled hands, fingers or drapery were pressed onto a moulded body / Libation cups with a wide mouth and narrow base, copying a section of carved horn | Painting in blue alone / White tin-glaze ground / Eastern motifs translated / From tiles to tableware |
| Best used for | Finishing porcelain tableware or lighting with glaze depth alone, no print and no colour · Producing ceramic figures in quantity by combining piece moulds with hand-modelled details | Pulling tableware and walls into one room through blue painting alone · Using Eastern motifs while admitting openly that they are translations |
| Type | Keep lettering off the surface, and put at most a small mark under the foot. | Keep marks small on the underside and leave the face to painting |
| Composition | Frontal standing figures on one vertical axis from base to crown, with empty space left around them. | Let each tile stand alone, with corner motifs linking them into a field |
| Material | Fine white porcelain clay under a thick clear glaze with no pigment, so light and shade come only from where the glaze pools and thins. | Cobalt on white tin glaze, painted in one pass with no correction |
| Caution | Softening every ridge in the belief that white alone reads as refined removes the places where glaze pools, and the object flattens into a blank white lump. | Aiming to pass as real porcelain turns the thick earthenware body and the speed of the brush from virtues into faults. |