Longquan celadon
Longquan celadon (龍泉青瓷) is a type of green-glazed
Celadon production had a long history at
In traditional Western terms, most celadons are strictly counted as stoneware, since the fired clay body is usually neither white nor translucent.[5] In the traditional Chinese classification, which divides pottery into low-fired earthenware and high-fired porcelain, they count as porcelain. Compromise terms such as "porcellanous stoneware" may be used to describe the pieces,[6] and some Western writers consider the wares should be "regarded as porcelains".[7]
The Longquan celadons were among the finest of a range of celadon wares produced in China, and led stylistic and technical developments. The celadons were produced in a range of shades of colour, centred on olive-green, but extending to greenish blues (regarded as desirable, but less common) and browns. All these colours come from the glaze; the body beneath is sometimes left partly unglazed as part of the decoration, when it fires to a terracotta brown. The wares are hardly ever painted; decoration comes from the vessel shape and carved or incised designs in the body. Shapes were originally mostly simple, allowing the glaze colour to create the main effect of a piece, but in later periods raised decoration was common.
Technical aspects and decoration
The body of Longquan celadon, as seen in fragments under glaze, varies from "a heavy, compact grey stoneware to an almost white porcellaneous material", but where fired at the surface this turns to a typical terracotta reddish brown, seen at the unglazed foot of many pieces, and when relief decoration is left unglazed (see below and illustration). This distinguishes Longquan from Northern Celadons. However, this may not be the case in pieces made from the most whitish, porcellanous, material, where the fired body may also "be translucent if thin enough".[8] In Western sources, individual pieces are normally classified as stoneware, but some may be called porcelain;[9] material translated from the Chinese is likely to describe all as "porcelain".[10]
The body was normally thrown on the
The glaze colours vary across a wide spectrum of greyish to blueish greens, with some yellowish browns as well.[12] The colour comes from iron oxide fired in a reducing atmosphere, and the colour varies with the temperature and the strength and timing of the reduction. Longquan celadon was fired in long dragon kilns, brick tunnels rising up a slope, with a series of chambers, and the best results came from the pots in the uppermost stages, which heated up more slowly and evenly. Saggars were always used, and the longer kilns, with up to twelve chambers, might have been able to fire as many as 25,000 pieces at a time. The firing temperature was probably between 1,180 °C and 1,280 °C, with the range over 1,250 °C giving the best green or blue colours.[13] In some cases at least there appear to have been layers of glaze and also multiple firings to achieve a deeper glaze effect.[14]
The glaze is made opaque by the presence of plant ash and tiny bubbles of gas, which give a lustrous effect. With the whiter body clays pieces may be translucent.[15] The pronounced reddish colour of unglazed areas comes from the end of the firing, as the heated clay comes in contact with fresh air let into the kiln, and the iron present turns into ferrous oxide.[16] Many pieces have crazing or crackle in the glaze, but much less than in the closely related Guan ware. A technique sometimes found before about 1400 was to add spots or splashes of a mixture rich in iron oxide with an appearance of randomness; these fired a dark brown.[17]
Both Chinese and Japanese tradition have developed a range of terms to describe the glaze colours and qualities; some of the Japanese ones have the advantage of being anchored to specific pieces in Japan. The term kinuta (砧青瓷) meaning "mallet", probably after a particular mallet vase, represents the most admired blue-green colour from the Song period, and is often used in English, while tenryūji has a "a faint yellowish-green tone", and is from the Yuan and Ming. The shickikan type is from the middle Ming, after the glaze became more transparent.[18] As with other celadons, for the Chinese the similarity of the colour to jade, always the most prestigious material in Chinese art, was an important factor in their appeal, and something the potters attempted to increase.[19]
Most shapes are simple but very elegant. The size and decoration of larger fine pieces increases from the Yuan onwards, with some very large vases and lidded wine jars being made by the 14th century. The "mallet" vase was a special favourite at Longquan, often with handles formed as animals or dragons.[20] Funerary vases, made in pairs, also often feature charmingly stylized animals, usually tigers and dragons, curled around the shoulders of the vessel. These were used in southern Chinese burial custom to store provisions for the afterlife.[21] Another distinct Longquan style was a dish with two or more fishes in low relief swimming in the centre, either in biscuit or glazed; these sometimes have holes drilled for metal handles, as mentioned in a late 14th-century source.[22]
In general, Longquan decoration tends to project from the body, and the effects that Northern Celadon gets from glaze pooling over shallow carving into the body are less common. Earlier pieces are content with subtle glaze effects, often accentuated by the glaze thinning over small ridges or ribs,
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Vase with iron spot decoration, Yuan
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"Mallet" vase with stylized animal handles, Southern Song, 12th century
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Pair of funerary lidded vases with animals; left, tiger chasing a dog, right, dragon chasing a pearl, Southern Song
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dish with sprigged fish in biscuit, and effects from glaze collecting in the incised decoration, Yuan, 14th century
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Dish with a dragon in the center
Markets and later collecting
Unlike Northern Celadon, Longquan ware does not seem to have been used by the imperial court under the Song,
Japan was a large-scale and enthusiastic importer, and the beach at
There were also large quantities exported west to the Islamic world, and one of the most important collections today is the 1,300 pieces surviving from the collection of the
A very few pieces reached Europe by trade or diplomatic gifts from Islamic countries, and were sometimes given elaborate metalwork mounts, turning them into goblets.
History
In the Northern Song period the Dayao (大窯) kiln site near Longquan city alone produced wares at twenty-three separate kilns; with Jincun nearby, these appear to have been the largest kiln complexes, and produced the best wares.
A key event in the rise of Longquan celadon was the flight of the remaining Northern Song court to the south, after they lost control of the north in the disastrous
A story repeated in many sources from the Yuan onwards, with uncertain significance, tells of two brothers called Zhang, both Longquan potters, perhaps in the Southern Song, though this is unclear. The elder brother developed a very special type of ware; rightly or wrongly the later sources say this was distinguished by crackled glaze, and Ge ware (meaning "elder brother ware") is supposed to be this type. The younger brother also developed a fine style of pottery, which is often taken to be the best quality early Longquan ware.[40]
The Southern Song period saw the finest quality, and a great range of colours, as well as a great expansion of production. A count in 1988 by a Chinese archaeologist of the starts of new kilns gave 39 from the Northern Song, 61 from the Southern Song, and over 70 from the Yuan. The percentage figures for those still producing in the 20th century were 23%, <10% and <5%, indicating a bubble of over-production, which only the strongest kilns survived.[41]
Quality declined during the 14th century, although initially production and exports continued to grow. By the middle of the century
Longquan celadon enjoyed a final period of high achievement under the early
From the twentieth century native and foreign enthusiasts and scholars have visited the kiln sites and excavated there. Among modern Chinese scholars, the main kiln sites were first systematically investigated by Chen Wanli in 1928 and 1934, after the sites had been excavated by speculators and art-dealers since 1916.[47]
Notes
- ^ British Museum page
- ^ Krahl and Harrison-Hall, 13; Gompertz, 158 has "over 200 kiln sites" showing the pace of Chinese archaeology in recent decades, and perhaps counting groups rather than individual kilns; Medley, 147, on their locations
- ^ Medley, 146
- ^ Medley, 115-118; Gompertz, 159, 98-125; for some reason one is typically capitalized and the other not.
- ^ Medley, 147
- ^ Gompertz, 22 quoted; Medley, 146 describes them as "stoneware and porcellanous ware".
- ^ Vainker, 108 (quoted); Clunas, 284-285 refers to celadons as porcelain, but not consistently.
- ^ Medley, 147; Grove: "The body of Longquan celadon is a light grey stoneware, sometimes reaching the quality of a pure white porcelain".
- ^ Compare the text and captions at Clunas 284-285, fig. 250 is called "stoneware", fig. 251 (the Katzenelnbogen bowl) "porcelain". Both are Longquan celadon of 1400-50.
- ISBN 052118648X, 9780521186483, google books
- ^ Medley, 148-152
- ^ Valenstein, 101-102
- ^ Medley, 147-148
- ^ Valenstein, 99-100
- ^ Medley, 147-148
- ^ Gompertz, 164
- ^ Medley, 152
- ^ Gompertz, 149-150
- ^ Medley, 150
- ^ Gompertz, 156, 162; Grove
- ^ Gompertz, 156; The British Museum says of the pair illustrated below: "These funerary urns are decorated with two ‘animals of the four directions’, called 'siling 四靈' in Chinese. The White Tiger of the West is pursuing a dog and the Green Dragon of the East is chasing a flaming pearl. The birds on the covers may allude to the Red Bird of the South; but the symbol of the north, a tortoise with a snake, is not present. In China, artists decorated coffins and tombs with these creatures from the Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 220) onwards. These jars stored provisions for the afterlife such as grain and are part of local southern burial practice."
- ^ Medley, 148; Gompertz, 164-167
- ^ Gompertz, 164
- ^ Medley, 150-151
- ^ British Museum example, 1991,0304.3; Clunas, 212 has this shrine with gilded figures.
- ^ Vainker, 110-111, though see Valenstein, 99, and Clunas, 97, 100, 229, where court patronage is said to have ended with the reign of the Xuande Emperor (d. 1435); Krahl and Harrison-Hall, 44 say (of the Southern Song) "The Longquan kilns were non-official kilns whose workers nevertheless made ceramics for the imperial household ...", repeated by the British Museum
- ^ Gompertz, 173; Vainker, 110-111; Rawson, 250
- ^ Vainker, 110-112; Gompertz, 148, 171; Rawson, 250
- ^ Gompertz, 170-171
- ^ Gompertz, 26
- ^ Gompertz, 26
- ^ Gompertz, 147
- ^ Massing, 132; Gompertz, 26
- ^ Massing, 131-132
- ^ Massing, 132; Clunas, 285
- ^ Warham Bowl, Ashmolean; Gompertz, 26
- ^ Valenstein, 99; Vainker, 108-109
- ^ Rawson, 84; Vainker, 105; Grove; Gompertz, 156
- ^ Gompertz, 125
- ^ Gompertz, 155-158; Vainker, 108
- ^ Deng, 61-62
- ^ British Museum
- ^ Rawson, 274
- ^ Gompertz, 201; 어은영 (2007-04-14). 중국보물선에 실린 용천청자(用天靑瓷) (in Korean). Internet Daily NewsHankuk. Retrieved 2008-03-22.
- ^ Clunas and Harrison-Hall, 97, 100
- ^ Gompetz, 188-194
- ^ Gompertz, 157-158
References
- ISBN 9780714124841
- Deng, Gary, Maritime Sector, Institutions, and Sea Power of Premodern China, 1999, Greenwood Publishing Group, ISBN 0313307121, 9780313307126
- Gompertz, G.St.G.M., Chinese Celadon Wares, 1980 (2nd edn.), Faber & Faber, ISBN 0571180035
- "Grove": Oxford Art Online, "China, §VIII, 3: Ceramics: Historical development", various authors
- Krahl, Regina and Harrison-Hall, Jessica, Chinese Ceramics: Highlights of the Sir Percival David Collection, 2009, British Museum, ISBN 0714124540, 9780714124544
- Massing, Jean Michel, in Levinson, Jay A. (ed), Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration, 1991, Yale UP/National Gallery of Art, ISBN 0300051670, google books
- Medley, Margaret, The Chinese Potter: A Practical History of Chinese Ceramics, 3rd edition, 1989, Phaidon, ISBN 071482593X
- ISBN 9780714124469
- Vainker, S.J., Chinese Pottery and Porcelain, 1991, British Museum Press, 9780714114705
- Valenstein, S. (1998). A handbook of Chinese ceramics, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. ISBN 9780870995149(fully online)
Further reading
- Regina Krahl, et al., Chinese Ceramics in the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul, 3 vols, London, 1986