Chinese Blue-and-White Porcelain vs Delftware
青花（中国の染付） / 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.
Chinese Blue-and-White Porcelain
Cobalt blue brushed onto a white porcelain body, sealed under a clear glaze and fired once. Potters at Jingdezhen in Jiangxi established it during the Yuan dynasty by adding kaolin to the clay and improving their firing technology. Because the palette is held to a single colour, every gradation has to come from thin and thick washes and from shapes reserved in white.
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.
| Chinese Blue-and-White Porcelain | Delftware | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 14th century– | 1600s– |
| Family | Ceramic Styles | Ceramic Styles |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | One blue on a white porcelain ground, with no second colour anywhere / A dark outline drawn first, then filled with paler washes that grade like ink painting / Motifs reserved in white against a densely painted blue ground / The painting sits under the glaze, so the surface stays smooth and no brushstroke stands proud | Painting in blue alone / White tin-glaze ground / Eastern motifs translated / From tiles to tableware |
| Best used for | Building tone in a one colour print by splitting the drawing into a dark outline pass and a pale wash pass · Making white read as figure rather than background by flooding the ground and reserving the letterforms | Pulling tableware and walls into one room through blue painting alone · Using Eastern motifs while admitting openly that they are translations |
| Type | Set any inscription in the same blue and the same brush weight as the painting, never in an even mechanical line. | Keep marks small on the underside and leave the face to painting |
| Composition | Divide the curved wall into bands at rim, body and foot, and vary density band by band. Leave a wide white margin around the main motif on the body. | Let each tile stand alone, with corner motifs linking them into a field |
| Material | A white body and cobalt oxide alone. Build two values, a dark drawn line and a pale wash, and lift motifs out of a flooded blue ground in reserve. All of it goes under a clear glaze and fires once. | Cobalt on white tin glaze, painted in one pass with no correction |
| Caution | Treating the blue as one flat tone and skipping the graded washes turns the drawing into a printed screen tint and erases the brush. | Aiming to pass as real porcelain turns the thick earthenware body and the speed of the brush from virtues into faults. |