How It Is Made
Official materials give the working steps in four parts.
1. The body (pita). Clay is selected, broken, proportioned, soaked, puddled, dried, kneaded, and aged. The body is then kneaded again, formed by hand, and trimmed. Decoration follows on the formed body: the design is laid out, the outlining lines are raised by hand (lixian), and the body is dried and bisque-fired to a semi-finished state.
2. The line clay (xian ni). Materials for the raised lines are selected, proportioned, and ground, then loaded into the line-raising tool.
3. The glaze (you liao). Glaze materials are selected and proportioned, fired into frit, proportioned and coloured a second time, and ground into glaze slurry.
4. Finishing (chengpin). The bisque body is filled in with the coloured glazes between the raised lines, dried, and fired a second time to the finished piece.
Official materials record the colours as blues, whites, yellows, greens, and purples, with a saying comparing the yellow to gold leaf, the green to jadeite, the blue to crystal, and the purple to eggplant skin; it also records flat colour washes, openwork, carving, and applied relief used alongside the raised lines, which strengthen the outline and give the design its relief.
Related Houses
- 乔家窑 (Qiaojiayao) — Yangcheng Xusheng Ceramics Technology Co., Ltd.,
Yangcheng, Shanxi
Source: official materials published by Yangcheng Xusheng Ceramics Technology Co., Ltd. Craft record from the house's own published record; condensed and translated, with no information added.