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Ru ware is the rarest of all Chinese ceramic wares, having
been made for only twenty some years for the Northern Song
court. Only sixty examples or so have survived, most of
which were preserved in the Qing imperial collection. Ru
ware is very evenly and thinly potted and most of the
pieces are fully glazed (including foot and base), because
in the kiln the vessels were placed on tiny supports called
spurs that left only minute "sesame-seed" marks on the
glaze. The ware is celebrated primarily for the beauty of
its bluish- or grayish-green glaze, which usually has a
fine crackle. This "veining," together with the color and
tactile beauty of the glaze, encouraged comparisons with
polished jade. The tripod shape of this vessel reflects a
Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) bronze prototype, a shape that
was revived during the Song in bronze and jade as well as
ceramic, for use as an incense burner. |
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The fairly coarse stonewares
of the Cizhou and related kilns of Hebei and Henan
provinces have in common a coating of white slip,
originally developed to increase their resemblance to wares
with more refined white bodies. Cizhou wares are noteworthy
for their great variety of decorative motifs. The potters
were less concerned with the refinement of their materials
than with producing bold patterns with painterly or
calligraphic qualities. Their emphasis on decoration
foreshadows the future direction of Chinese ceramics. All
types of Cizhou ware were for popular rather than court
consumption. Their robust decorations were created in
various ways: by painting, by incising through the slip to
the body or through a top layer of slip to a
contrasting-colored slip beneath, or by carving away part
of the slip and inlaying those areas with slip of a
different color. |
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Ceramic innovations of the Yuan dynasty marked a complete
departure from the Song tradition of simplicity and
restraint in both form and decoration. The flamboyant
style of this period did not find immediate favor with
native connoisseurs, and much porcelain of this period
was exported to the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
None of the individual motifs-cloud forms, lotuses and
stylized lotus petals, chrysanthemums, lion finial-are
new to Chinese ceramics, but the formats in which they
are presented here are entirely new and characteristic of
Yuan dynasty style. All of the motifs have auspicious
connotations.
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The production of very large
blue-and-white porcelains, which began in the Yuan dynasty,
continued into the early years of the Ming, but the
character of the decoration was transformed to accord with
Chinese taste. The more crowded designs typical of the
earlier period with their heterogeneous motifs were
replaced by sparer decoration, rendered more naturally,
such as in the jar that features peach tree branches and
bamboo. Such patterns were among the first blue-and-white
porcelains to appeal to elite Chinese taste. |
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