Riding the wind of rebirth

Mr. Qi was a little angry: "I don't know whether to praise you or criticize you. I said you don't look carefully, but you can find good things. I said you are experienced and have a sharp eye, but you don't even look at the things carefully."

Zhou Zhi smiled shyly and said, "All the things today were bought by Xiao Miao."

"Xiao Miao?" Old Master Wang was shocked: "Even this plate?"

“Grandpa Wang, don’t listen to Elbow’s nonsense.” Mai Xiaomiao smiled and told the old man about the experience of going to the ghost market this morning. The old man also found it interesting: “Why didn’t I think of playing like this before?”

"Talk about things, talk about things." Old Master Qi cleaned out a few snuff bottles and placed them on the table.

Snuff bottles are, after all, made of glass, and glass objects are not afraid of having their patina damaged. After being cleaned, a few pieces of glass will sparkle when placed on the table.

One is a pink piece with cinnabar red dragon patterns. This is the most beautiful one, with a green bottle cap and an ivory swab like an ear pick at the bottom of the bottle cap, which shows that this is a truly practical utensil. Many later handicrafts do not have this configuration.

Zhou Zhi initially thought that the bottle cap was also made of green glass, but after cleaning it, he found that it was obviously not. The bottom of the green bottle cap has a slight red color, a bit like half a cut watermelon.

"This is..." Zhou Zhi felt that this lid was not a container.

"This is a tourmaline." Master Ma said, "This is a lucky find."

Although tourmaline is now just like jadeite and nephrite, and its price is not very expensive, it is also a gemstone. This bottle stopper alone costs more than a few hundred dollars.

"Give this to your wife." Mr. Qi handed the small bottle to Mr. Wang, and then handed over the pure-color snuff bottle made of gold star material: "You like this calm color, this one is yours."

"Is this lid made of Burmese amber?" Zhou Zhi had not looked at the lid carefully yet, but now he discovered that there seemed to be some inherent green light in the brown lid, which was a sign of higher-grade Burmese amber.

"Yes." Mr. Wang said, "I don't know if it was a later marriage, but they look quite a good match."

After saying that, he took the pot in his hand and squeezed it: "Very good, when I replace the medicine spoon inside with a small brush, I can use it to hold walnut oil. Thank you, Xiao Miao, for picking a good item!"

Mai Xiaomiao refused: "Grandpa Wang, you are making fun of me!"

Mr. Qi picked up the remaining bright yellow one and said, "This one belongs to me. I just spent a lot of time cleaning it."

"It was quite dirty on both sides before, but now it looks so beautiful after cleaning!" Mai Xiaomiao exclaimed at the bright yellow snuff bottle: "It turned out to be two lion heads!"

“Hehehe…” Grandpa Qi was amused by Mai Xiaomiao: “Elbow, give Xiaomiao some scientific knowledge.”

Pu Shou is a base installed on the door ring. It is a traditional Chinese door decoration, also known as Men Fu. Legend has it that Fu Shou is the ninth son of the dragon, who is quiet, highly alert and good at guarding the door.

"These two animal faces should actually be called auxiliary heads." Zhou Zhi took the bottle and introduced to Mai Xiaomiao: "Auxiliary heads usually look like an animal face holding a ring in its mouth. They first appeared on bronze ware before the Spring and Autumn Period, showing the characteristics of Taotie patterns, but usually with a ring as a handle for ritual vessels." "Later, this pattern was moved to stone carvings and portraits in tombs, and became a common portrait stone carving pattern in the Han Dynasty. Because Taotie is a kind of vicious and greedy mythical beast in Chinese tradition, it is usually made to hold a ring and placed on the door as a door knocker to ward off evil spirits."

"Later, it was said that the knocker was the ninth son of the dragon. It combined the characteristics of many animals, resembling both an ox and a tiger. On the one hand, it was the embodiment of terror, and on the other hand, it was a protective god. Later, it became a common door knocker style in residential houses."

"The style of the auxiliary head on this snuff bottle is actually sampled from the Forbidden City's gilded copper gate jar, which the Imperial Household Department calls 'Golden Sea'. It is also a direction in the creation of jade carvings, which is to miniaturize the pattern objects to achieve the effect of seeing the big from the small."

“So that’s how it is.” Mai Xiaomiao nodded.

Zhou Zhi could somewhat understand why Mr. Qi chose bright yellow material. After all, the old man was also a bannerman, and a member of the two yellow banners, which just happened to clash with the color of the snuff bottle.

The lid of this small pot is easy to recognize. Mai Xiaomiao often picks it up by the Meigu River. It is made of agate.

"We haven't seen what Master Ma has found today yet..." Zhou Zhi felt that since everyone was going together today, it would not be good to just talk about what he had found, so he thought of bringing up a topic.

But he was interrupted by Mr. Wang, who continued to plate the dish: "Let's talk about this."

"Yes, there are many purple single-color glazes, but rouge purple objects are quite rare." Ma Ye said, "In addition, rouge purple with white ground and pastel inner painting, as well as pastel peach branches with cinnabar four-character bottom mark, are really rare."

In fact, the purple color in porcelain can be divided into two major categories, which can be viewed from the perspectives of high-temperature firing and low-temperature firing.

The purple in the high-temperature glaze is actually a comprehensive color of Yaobian, which is usually formed by the combination of the blue brought by iron and the red brought by copper.

The most prominent representative is of course the rose-purple spots in the Jun kiln. Then, with the advancement of technology, the kiln workers carefully controlled the temperature, and when it reached its pinnacle, they fired fine products with uniform color throughout the entire vessel - Jihong, Langhong, and the Meirenzui and Huoyanhong developed from underglaze red. Sometimes, there was a slight deviation in the temperature control, and the purple color appeared.

This type of purple is very easy to distinguish. No matter how uniform the glaze color is, upon closer inspection you can find that this type of red is composed of clusters of smiling color crystals in the glass inside the glaze. This composition method is very similar to the red composition method in Nanhong, and the effect can also present a "gem light" effect, which is very wonderful.

As for the red color of low-temperature glaze, China has long had only one kind - alum red, which is a kind of iron material. The famous blue and white underglaze red is this kind of red.

This red is much easier to fire than the copper red that is prone to Yaobian, and the temperature required is not high. The only drawback is that it is not bright enough. It is a relatively light-colored red and is easily burned into rust color.

This situation was not resolved until the 21st year of the reign of Emperor Kangxi, when rouge invented by the Dutchman Cassiar was introduced to China.

Because it comes from the western sea, this red material is called "magenta" or "Western magenta".

"Xiao Miao, don't you want to see the difference between overglaze and underglaze? This is a typical overglaze." Zhou Zhi introduced to Mai Xiaomiao: "Look at the surface, the glaze is very light and thin, without the glass light of the green glaze, and the white part of the bowl is two different styles, which means that the rouge color on the outside of this dish is made by spraying glaze on the fired plain porcelain, and then firing it again at a low temperature of about 100 degrees in the kiln." (End of this chapter)