Blanc de Chine

ブラン・ド・シーヌ（徳化白磁） / Ming dynasty– / Style / Ceramic Styles

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.

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

Blanc de Chine — Dehua ware white porcelain standing Guanyin, second half of the 17th century — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 — Dehua ware white porcelain standing Guanyin, second half of the 17th century — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 ／ Dehua ware white porcelain brush pot with cranes and lotus, 17-18th century — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain ／ Dehua ware white porcelain teapot, c. 1690-1720 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0 UK

Blanc de Chine — Dehua ware white porcelain brush pot with cranes and lotus, 17-18th century — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain — Dehua ware white porcelain standing Guanyin, second half of the 17th century — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 ／ Dehua ware white porcelain brush pot with cranes and lotus, 17-18th century — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain ／ Dehua ware white porcelain teapot, c. 1690-1720 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0 UK

Dictionary entry

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
Type: Keep lettering off the surface, and put at most a small mark under the foot.
Composition: Frontal standing figures on one vertical axis from base to crown, with empty space left around them.
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.
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.
Further study: the difference in make between pieces excavated at the Dehua kilns and the white porcelain exported by sea / the collection of a thousand or so pieces Augustus the Strong gathered in Dresden / the early attempts at Meissen and Saint Cloud to copy white porcelain

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