History of Chinese porcelain In America and Europe
China is the hometown of porcelain, porcelain is an important creation of the Han working people. Porcelain is the predecessor of the original blue porcelain, it is from pottery to porcelain transition stage products. In English, “china” is the same word as China. It comes with its own powder-sucking properties, and Europeans do a lot of “crazy” things about it.
1
the king of portugal buys, buys, buys, even if he hands off
this has to start with the opening of a new route. as the first unified country on the continent, portugal had enough money and material resources to support ocean voyages, and king manuel i gave da gama a mission to bring back two things the west craved most: spices and porcelain.
in 1603, on the way back, portuguese merchant ships were intercepted by the dutch armed forces, and the dutch discovered the new world, a collection of porcelain from the ming and wan calendar years. the porcelain was later shipped to middleburg and amsterdam in the netherlands for auction, and as soon as the news was sent, it was empty. even henry iv, king of france, and king james i of england also joined the buying list.
the dutch knew very little about the porcelain, and naming it was simple and rough: clark porcelain. “clark” means “spanish warship” in dutch.
the auction was its first european tour, and there was not much language whitewashing, and the moment europeans saw it, the road turned pink. such delicate and delicate and exquisite, is not the gold on chinese soil?
clark porcelain
at that time, european life is commonly used pottery, but the disadvantage of pottery is high water seepage rate, food in a short period of time easy to deteriorate, we found that this “white gold” is not easy to seep water, better storage of food.
therefore, clearly can rely on the value of the face, partial to use the strength to speak of porcelain, become the darling of the nobles, deep-seated work and fame.
ming wan calendar green flowers hollow open light group phoenix “forever enjoy taiping spring” bowl
as shrewd as europeans, long-term imports, white flowers of silver flowed into the pockets of chinese, they want to “cultivate” their idols in europe, then put all kinds of romantic speculation into practice, a roaring campaign to make porcelain.
thus, venice’s antonio glass blue pottery, germany’s glazed pottery, france, britain, italy, “china-like” has come out, however, they are all “shanzhai”!
2
use two letters to “steal” chinese porcelain
failures have made europeans realize that real chinese porcelain cannot be burned without a secret recipe. it wasn’t until a man appeared that the european “porcelain powder” began to emerge from the bottleneck.
he is yin hongxu, a high-nosed, deep-eyed fake chinese known as “perry ontrekole”.
he arrived in china in 1698 on board the anfitrit with another missionary, bai jin, nominally to cultivate culture.
he perfectly integrated into the chinese society, brought wine from france to pay tribute to kangxi, kangxi drink people’s soft hands, he was placed in the government, with the formal establishment, but also free access to the porcelain room, during which he recorded the jingdezhen artist’s porcelain craft.
in 1712, his first letter, containing the secrets of chinese porcelain, along with samples of raw materials, drifted across the sea to the hands of the jesuit father o’day in europe.
“my father ah, recently i visited jingdezhen, these counter-production process, i can see clearly, the next content is the strong help of european porcelain, remember!”
but after reading the letter they felt it wasn’t enough, so yin hongxu hid silently in jingde town for ten years, sending a second letter to europe in 1922.
in the letter, yin hongxu confessed the raw materials of porcelain, ratio, porcelain making process even specific to clay how to knead how to roll. he even wrote down how to make the old new china.
it is precisely because of these two letters, the secret of chinese porcelain was so stolen, the european porcelain craft has made rapid progress, the europeans to achieve self-sufficiency, but also greatly reduced the export of chinese porcelain.
3
600 cavalry for chinese porcelain
another porcelain obsessive, to count the polish king augustus ii.
alchemist bertrand claimed to be a bit of a stone-and-gold skill, when europeans mistakenly thought that the ceramics known as “white gold” were made in a process similar to alchemy, so in 1708, augustus ii summoned bertrand to the castle to experiment with porcelain making over the years.
can you imagine a group of people dressed in gorgeous clothes, picking up tweezers, frowning, facing the rumor that porcelain is made of juice buried deep in the land of the east?
after five years of groping, bertger tried a variety of recipes and finally succeeded in burning europe’s first hard porcelain in 1710.
fearing that the porcelain craft would be heard by others, augustus ii imprisoned bertge in the castle, which was the first porcelain factory in europe and the present-day mason royal porcelain factory. augustus ii, with its porcelain skills, made a fortune in europe.
although the europeans achieved porcelain self-sufficiency, but compared with chinese porcelain, can only look back. augustus ii, who was a porcelain madman, took 600 heavily armed saxon dragon cavalrymen in 1717 in exchange for more than 100 pieces of chinese porcelain from the collection of king william i of prussia. this batch of green vases is also known as the “dragon knight bottle” because of its special origin.
who would have expected that the exchange of porcelain was an elite force that made napoleon sniff out. the old saying goes well: it’s hard to buy me, as long as it’s what i want, what’s wrong with losing a troop?
auction price of 230 million yuan of fine yuan qinghua ghost valley down the mountain big can
throughout history, chinese porcelain has fascinated the whole world. now the porcelain sales market is still hot, but some people will say why it looks like the same porcelain, some only sell dozens of yuan, some can sell tens of thousands or even higher, it is because you do not know enough about porcelain!
the operation is complex
don’t look at the value of porcelain from some surface phenomena; porcelain and other commodities are also different, porcelain is basically hand-made, technology is basically traditional technology, products can not meet the same standard, in the past there is a ballad “100 thousand pieces out of a treasure” is that a perfect porcelain is very difficult to make, porcelain finished products will appear hundreds of kinds of quality defects, will affect the final sales price to produce unexpected gaps. color, enamel, fineness, process difficulty and many other factors will make the price difference.
therefore, the quality of porcelain burned out of the same furnace is very different, the yield of the finished product is low. from the blank to the kiln needs to go through the drying blank, billet, repair blank, rehydration, glaze, painting, glaze, blanking, kiln, blowing ash, smelting, kiln and a series of processes, which mainly have a negligence will make the product scrapped.
the finished product rate is low
porcelain workmanship is more refined, clever, thin, fine, simulation requirements, the greater the possibility of quality problems, especially in jingdezhen other porcelain production areas of porcelain basically do not belong to hard porcelain (only jingdezhen porcelain is really after more than 1300 degrees kiln fire calcination), only product deformation caused by the quality defects than jingdezhen porcelain dozens of times lower, and these defects also have to be included in the cost.
painting in the cost of porcelain accounted for a large proportion, and painting work costs gap is very large, but also to teacups as an example to hire apprentices to draw simple patterns do not need to pay wages, ordinary artisans a few yuan and senior artisans need hundreds of yuan, if the drawing of complex pictures such as the qingming river map needs tens of thousands of yuan, is a small cost gap is unimaginable, low-grade decals, printing process a money only a few cents, and handwriting a more complete money to know a word will be 3-10 yuan range, if “simulation in place” a money will be hundreds of yuan, although into porcelain only a little difference but the cost gap is hundreds of times.
the root cause of the high cost of porcelain production is that the residual product rate is too high, the two major problems are hard porcelain can not be overcome difficulties, one is deformation, the other is iron point, high temperature burning tire glaze iron oxide will gather and precipitate the display on the glaze, the residual products more increased production costs especially for the quality of large investment, high process requirements can not increase production, once the quality problem is devastating, such as the production of 100 pieces of porcelain, there are 20 pieces of defective products, can be the cost of scraps into 80 pieces of porcelain cost growth is not much, if you are making two pieces with one piece as a scrap, you can imagine how much the cost of the other will increase.
understanding the production knowledge of some porcelain is necessary for porcelain collectors, in the purchase of porcelain can provide themselves with a reference to measure the price, you can reduce the chance of being deceived, will not miss some real collection.
collectors should also go to ceramic museums, ceramic exhibitions, art porcelain stores to visit more, more learning. each exquisite ceramic work of art contains the precious sweat and effort of the craftsmen. the process has rough fine difference, the cost has the high and low points, the price is naturally different. why is it so expensive? because it’s worth it.
How did Chinese porcelain get to Europe?
The Ming dynasty controlled much of the porcelain trade, which was expanded to Asia, Africa and Europe via the Silk Road. In 1517, Portuguese merchants began direct trade by sea with the Ming dynasty, and in 1598, Dutch merchants followed. Some porcelains were more highly valued than others in imperial China.