Chinese Blue-and-White Porcelain

青花（中国の染付） / 14th century– / Style / Ceramic Styles

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.

Chinese Blue-and-White Porcelain — Blue-and-white foliate-rim dish with rocks, flowering plants and melons, Yuan dynasty, 14th century — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 — Blue-and-white foliate-rim dish with rocks, flowering plants and melons, Yuan dynasty, 14th century — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 · CC0

Chinese Blue-and-White Porcelain — Blue-and-white jar with floral design, Yuan dynasty, 14th century — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 — Blue-and-white jar with floral design, Yuan dynasty, 14th century — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 · CC0

At a glance

Visual 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

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

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Dictionary entry

Type: Set any inscription in the same blue and the same brush weight as the painting, never in an even mechanical line.
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.
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.
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.
Further study: a Yuan piece and a Kangxi piece placed side by side, counting how many steps the thin washes divide into / comparing how much ground is left empty and how densely the pattern packs, on large dishes for the Middle East and on export porcelain for Europe / checking how the whiteness of the ground and the weight of the line differ between delftware and Iznik under the same single blue

Related entries

Delftware (デルフト焼)Same Ceramic Styles lineage.Compare Chinese Blue-and-White Porcelain and Delftware
Iznik Pottery (イズニク陶器)Same Ceramic Styles lineage.Compare Chinese Blue-and-White Porcelain and Iznik Pottery

Often confused with

Delftware (デルフト焼)compare

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