Famille Rose

粉彩（ファミーユ・ローズ） / 1720s– / Style / Ceramic Styles

An overglaze enamelled porcelain style that began in China and is built on an opaque enamel running from pink to purplish rose. The pigment is Purple of Cassius, made from colloidal gold, and it reached China with Jesuit missionaries around 1685. The style peaked under the Yongzheng reign of 1723 to 1735 and afterwards was produced largely for export to Europe.

An opaque enamel from pink to purplish rose carries the strongest colour on the piece / The enamel is opaque, so the white porcelain body does not show through the painted areas / Painted over the glaze, so decorated areas and the plain white reserve catch light differently / The same style turns up on French, German and English wares, where only the brushwork gives the origin away

Famille Rose — Famille rose bowl with lotus scroll, Qing dynasty, Qianlong era, 1736-1795 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 4.0 — Famille rose bowl with lotus scroll, Qing dynasty, Qianlong era, 1736-1795 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 4.0 ／ Famille rose covered jar, Qing dynasty, Qianlong era, 1736-1795 — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 ／ Export plate depicting William V, Prince of Orange, and his wife, c. 1770 — Wikimedia Commons / CC0

Famille Rose — Famille rose covered jar, Qing dynasty, Qianlong era, 1736-1795 — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 — Famille rose bowl with lotus scroll, Qing dynasty, Qianlong era, 1736-1795 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 4.0 ／ Famille rose covered jar, Qing dynasty, Qianlong era, 1736-1795 — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 ／ Export plate depicting William V, Prince of Orange, and his wife, c. 1770 — Wikimedia Commons / CC0

Dictionary entry

Best used for: Designing tableware or packaging decoration where opaque pink tones carry the whole motif on a white ground · Reproducing in print or on screen a motif that reads through the body of the paint rather than through transparent layering
Type: If text is needed, keep it to a small column of thin brushed strokes that never encroaches on the painted area.
Composition: Leave a wide white reserve and gather the painting onto one face. The border between motif and reserve is the edge of the paint, not a ruled line.
Material: Build on a white ground with an opaque pink to purplish rose at the centre. Raise value by adding white rather than by thinning, and grade tone by adjacent flat areas instead of transparent layers.
Caution: Painting thin as if layering transparent washes destroys the opacity that defines the style and leaves only a pale floral pattern.
Further study: how Purple of Cassius, made from colloidal gold, develops its colour / how the density of the painting changes between wares of 1723 to 1735 and the later export wares / what separates the earlier famille built on a transparent green from the opaque rose style

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