This is about The Asian Cibilizations

The Asian Civilizations

My artwork of choice is Blue and White dish with floral scrolls from China(Ming Dyna).

Porcelain, 7.5 x 40cm

This large blue-and-white dish is decorated with floral scrolls at the centre and a frieze of eleven different flowers scrolling around the well. The rim has a band of swirling crested waves. It was painted with strong underglaze-blue pigments rich in iron oxide. Such large dishes were made for the domestic market but also exported to the Middle East, where it became a part of courtly collections.

Why do I choose this work of art? I think this work of art is very beautiful, and its patterns and colors have the charm of Oriental tradition.

About Chinese Porcelain

Porcelain is a material made from well-chosen porcelain clay or pottery stone through technological processes like proportioning, molding, drying and firing. Although porcelain developed from pottery, the two are different in raw material, glaze and firing temperature; compared with pottery, porcelain has tougher texture, more transparent body and finer luster. It excels pottery in both pragmatic and artistic terms. That's why it gradually replaced pottery in the ceramic history. It is called china in English because it was first made in China, which fully explains that the delicate porcelain can be the representative of China.

The earliest porcelain, commonly called "primitive porcelain", appeared during the Shang Dynasty, but the first porcelain in real sense was not produced until the Eastern Han Dynasty. The techniques for making porcelain matured in the Tang Dynasty. During the Song Dynasty, famous kilns emerged in multitude, including Jun Kiln, Ge Kiln, Guan Kiln, Ru Kiln and Ding Kiln which are known as the "Five Great Kilns". In the Yuan Dynasty, Jingdezhen, the Capital of Porcelain, produced blue and white porcelain which later became the representative of porcelain. Porcelain of the Ming Dynasty inherited and developed traditions of porcelain of the Song Dynasty. Doucai porcelain created in the Chenghua period and full color porcelain fired during the Jiajing period and the Wanli period are well-known treasures. Porcelain of the Qing Dynasty is classical, graceful, delicate and gorgeous. Plain tricolor porcelain and five color porcelain of the Kangxi period and powder doped color decorated porcelain and enamel porcelain of the Qianlong period are choicest goods renowned both at home and abroad.

Distinguished porcelain production areas in China include Jingdezhen in Jiangxi, Liling in Hunan, Dehua in Fujian, Shiwan in Guangdong, Tangshan in Hebei and Zibo in Shandong, etc.. Blue and white porcelain, blue and white rice pattern porcelain, powder doped color decorated porcelain and colored glaze porcelain are known as the "four great porcelains". Besides them, some others are also characteristic, such as statuary porcelain, eggshell porcelain and five-color porcelain.

Porcelain is the creative fruit of the working people of ancient China. Since the Han and Tang Dynasties, porcelain has been exported worldwide. It promotes economic and cultural exchange between China and the outside world, and profoundly influences the traditional culture and lifestyle of people from other countries.

The above statement references this link: https://zh.unesco.org/silkroad/content/zhongguociqi

The history of Chinese porcelain

During the Eastern Han Dynasty, the small fairy altar, dragon kiln, porcelain clay and glaze in Shangyu, Zhejiang province came together at the right time to produce the earliest known true porcelain, completing the perfect transformation from pottery to porcelain. With the continuous progress of firing technology, the texture of fetal bone is more and more delicate.

In the Sui and Tang dynasties, the breakthrough of northern white glazed porcelain represented by Xing, Gong and Ding kilns was another great leap forward in China's porcelain making technology, making China the earliest country with white glazed porcelain in the world. The appearance of five big imperial kilns and ten big civilian kilns in song Dynasty made the Chinese porcelain porcelain present a colorful situation of green glaze, kiln change and white glaze.

Jingdezhen kiln is a rising star, from the Yuan to the Ming and Qing Dynasties, gradually set the success of each kiln, blue and white, youligong, multicolor, bucket color, pastel and many other glaze color porcelain also appeared. In the early Qing Dynasty, Jingdezhen became the center of China's porcelain industry. People praised jingdezhen's porcelain as "white as jade, thin as paper, bright as a mirror, and sound like qing".

In jingdezhen porcelain, especially blue and white porcelain has long been famous. Blue and white porcelain, also known as white blue and white porcelain, often referred to as blue and white porcelain, is one of the mainstream varieties of Chinese porcelain, under glaze color porcelain. Blue and white porcelain is made of cobalt ore containing cobalt oxide as raw material. It is painted on the ceramic body and then covered with a layer of transparent glaze. It is fired by a high temperature reduction flame. Cobalt material is blue after firing, with strong coloring power, bright hair color, high firing rate, color stability.

Nowadays, porcelain not only appears in our life as tableware and daily articles, but also appears in a new form: clothing design, scientific and technological products, electricity, architecture, automobiles and other fields, all of which have gorgeous porcelain figures.

Today, Chinese porcelain is not only a piece of art, but also embodies Chinese traditional culture and history. It is the crystallization of the collision of wisdom and courage of people for thousands of years. Besides the four Great inventions of China, it has become another world-leading technology