What are the characteristics of Yongzheng pastel porcelain?

  • In terms of the body:
  1. Fine texture: The body is pure white and exquisite, dense and solid with few impurities. It feels smooth to the touch and is known as "glutinous rice body", reflecting the superb porcelain-making craftsmanship of that time. For example, small items such as plates, bowls, and cups have thin bodies and feel light in the hand.
  2. Regular shape: Whether it is a small or large item, the overall shape is regular with smooth and graceful lines. The turning points are naturally rounded, showing extremely high production precision. For instance, common vases such as gallbladder vases, hexagonal vases, and lantern vases have gentle and beautiful shape changes.
  • In terms of the glaze:
  1. Moist and even: The glaze is smooth and delicate, as warm and moist as jade. It is evenly flat without flaws, bubbles or unevenness. Under the illumination of light, the glaze presents a soft luster, giving people a fresh and elegant feeling.
  2. Pure color: The glaze color is pure white, providing a good background for the pastel painting, making the pastel colors more vivid and the layering more distinct.
  • In terms of painted decoration:
  1. Rich and soft colors:The arsenic element was introduced into the lead-containing glassy substance to invent "glass white". After using it as the base, the pigment presents changes in depth, shade, and opalescence. The colors are rich and diverse, including red, yellow, green, blue, purple and many other colors, and each color has different tones and shades. For example, red has pink, deep red, etc., and green has light green, dark green, etc.The colors are soft and elegant, not as bright and intense as the Kangxi wucai. They have an elegant charm and give people a fresh and refined visual experience.
  2. Delicate and beautiful lines:The lines have the characteristics of lightness, thinness, uniformity, softness and charm. Lightness means that the pigment for pastel outlining is relatively light, divided into "two concentrated pigments" and "light pigments", used to outline different patterns; thinness means that thin lines are mostly used, and rarely the thick and strong lines commonly used in wucai; uniformity means that the lines are even. Formally, it is not as changeable as the lines of wucai in terms of starts and stops, but it does not appear dull; softness means that the lines are soft. Unlike the strong and powerful lines of wucai, they are soft yet firm; charm means that the lines are outlined with clever changes. The starts and stops, and pauses are more implicit and not exposed.
  3. Exquisite techniques: The painting techniques are superb. The boneless painting method and rendering method of traditional Chinese painting are used. The painted patterns are appropriately shaded and have clear layers, which can vividly express the charm and posture of various themes such as flowers and birds, figures, and landscapes, reaching the degree of "flowers with dewdrops" and "butterflies with fluff".
  4. Reasonable layout: The composition is rigorous. The layout of the picture pays attention to the rules. The decoration and shape are closely combined, focusing on the overall effect. The design of the pattern is neither too dense nor too empty. The blank space is just right, giving people a sense of distant artistic conception.
  • In terms of decorative motifs:
  1. Wide range of themes: Mainly traditional themes, commonly seen are twined flower patterns, flower and bird patterns, figure patterns, landscape patterns, etc. Among flower patterns, peonies, camellias, peach fruits and other flowers are more common. In flower and bird patterns, the forms of birds are vivid and realistic, and the details such as feathers are depicted meticulously. Figure patterns are mostly images of maids and literati, and the expressions and actions of figures are delicately portrayed. Landscape patterns show the artistic conception and charm of landscapes.
  2. Auspicious meanings: Patterns with auspicious meanings such as homophonic "bat" (fortune) and "deer" (official salary) often appear, expressing people's yearning and pursuit for a better life.
  • In terms of inscriptions:
  1. Inscriptions such as "Made in the Yongzheng reign of the Great Qing Dynasty" and "Yongzheng nian zhi" are more common. Regular script inscriptions are mainly used, and seal script inscriptions are extremely rare. The fonts are neat, the layout is cautious, the calligraphy is graceful, and the strokes are powerful. Most are in Song style.
  2. There are also many hall names and symbols. For example, hall name inscriptions such as "Feng's Residence", "Bailu Hall", "Wenshan Stone House", and symbol inscriptions such as using a pen and a silver ingot to imply "certainly satisfactory".
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