Wucai, also known as "ancient color" and "hard color", was the low-temperature glaze color of Jingdezhen in the early Ming Dynasty. Jingdezhen kiln five-color porcelain is evolved from the Jin Dynasty red and green color porcelain, the pigments used in the five colors are metal colorants, mainly red, green, yellow, purple, blue and green and other five hues, during or with other color pigments used. The color "five" in the color is a general reference, two or three colors, seven or eight colors, can be called colorful, and the number of colors is not limited. The earliest colorful porcelain in Jingdezhen appeared in the Xuande era, and the most famous is the colorful mandarin duck lotus pond bowl of ** Sakya Temple.
After several dynasties of development, the five-color porcelain to Jiajing, Wanli has been quite mature, the color is bright, concise and bright, the quality and quantity are considerable, creating a new situation in the production of five-color porcelain, the first peak of the five-color porcelain appeared.
The development of colorful porcelain reached another peak in the Kangxi Dynasty. During this period, there were not only a wide variety of utensils, fine and elegant paintings, but also some improvements and enhancements in craftsmanship.
The biggest breakthrough of Kangxi Wucai is the invention of overglaze blue color, before the early Kangxi period, the blue color in the colorful porcelain is expressed in underglaze blue and white, the appearance of overglaze blue color in the Kangxi Dynasty, not only the intensity of blue color is better than that of blue and white, and the production process is more simple, no need to paint before glazing, painting can be completed on the glaze at one time, the picture is more smooth and coordinated, and the production cost is greatly reduced.
Before the Kangxi Dynasty, the colorful seasoning was the use of glue seasoning, which was easy to faint when it entered the painting, and the painting was not fine. The Kangxi Dynasty switched to frankincense oil seasoning, which was easier to grasp than when painting with glue seasoning, and could depict the object in detail, so Kangxi's colorful lines won with beauty. Due to the appearance of pastel, the number of five-color porcelain decreased sharply after the Kangxi Dynasty, and after Qianlong, the five-color porcelain was mixed with a lot of pastel factors, which cannot be called real five-color porcelain.
The difference between colorful and pastel, pastel porcelain appeared in the middle and late Kangxi period, also known as "soft color", before the color is painted, a layer of glass white is played, and then the color material is dyed on it to create a light and light tone, the effect is elegant and soft, and the visual is softer than the five colors. Pastel is deeply influenced by enamel color in the process, and the pastel material is used to paint on the burned plain tire, and the second person oven bakes the color after painting. Due to the thick color, the picture is convex and has a three-dimensional effect;Secondly, their firing temperature is different, the temperature of the multicolored furnace fire is above 800, and the pastel is generally above 700, because the pastel is lower than the baking temperature of the multicolor, after the porcelain is fired, its color is softer than the multicolor in feeling.