Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 1625: I missed a chance to win

He took out all his things. The clothes and medals were not very valuable. Although he could not understand the books very well, there were many illustrations in the German books that should be related to military camping, marching, and formation advancement. There were a lot of Chinese words in the Japanese books, and he could roughly understand the titles, which were "Showa Home Affairs", "Infantry Instructions", and "War, Formation, and Training".

After a quick flip through, I found some books about military character, but I didn't find anything valuable. These books looked like ordinary reading materials, and the content was quite similar to the militia training manual that Zhou Zhi had seen at Marshal Fang's house.

If there was to be something in this box that matched the four scrolls, it would most likely be in these small boxes.

The small box was made of rosewood and retained the original color of the wood grain. With a push of Zhou Zhi's thumb, the panel of the box retreated along the grooves on both sides, revealing the thick felt padding and walls, as well as a small object wrapped in yellow silk in the middle.

Take out the yellow silk package and open it, and there is a small and exquisite cup inside.

The cup is slightly larger than a wine glass, and its walls are very thin, even worthy of the exaggerated praise - "glazed but not body".

This is a small piece of doucai porcelain. Doucai refers to a technique of painting porcelain.

Similar to the colorful porcelain that Zhou Zhi had received from Old John a few days ago, this piece of porcelain also first had the outline of the pattern drawn on the body with blue and white, then a transparent glaze applied, and after high-temperature firing, various colored materials were filled in on the glaze, and finally baked in a low-temperature color furnace before taking shape.

The rich and gorgeous blue and white under the glaze close to the body, shines charmingly through the white glaze, and competes with the gorgeous and brilliant paintings on the glaze. This technique of dividing the painting into two parts, above and under the glaze, and then piecing together the complete picture is called "doucai" or "doucai".

Because it is a small exquisite product, the height of this small cup is even less than five centimeters, and the body is thin and transparent. The outer wall is outlined with blue and white, painted with colorful grape patterns, and the middle is filled with light yellow with a slight green tinge and purple like ripe grapes, which looks delicate and translucent.

It was this touch of light purple that allowed Zhou Zhi to confirm the identity of the cup. Zhou Zhi took a deep breath and turned the cup over. Sure enough, six characters were written in fine regular script on the bottom of the cup - Made in the Chenghua Period of the Ming Dynasty.

This is a horseshoe cup. According to legend, in order to express his sympathy and love to his beloved Concubine Wan, Emperor Chenghua Zhu Jianshen ordered the craftsmen in Jingdezhen to make various small and exquisite Doucai cups for her to enjoy. These small cups are divided into several types according to the patterns. The one that everyone is more familiar with is the Chenghua Doucai Chicken Cup, which was later sold at Sotheby's for a sky-high price of HK$280 million.

In fact, the correct division of this sentence should be Chenghua/Doucai/Chicken/Gang Cup. The chicken is the pattern, and the Gang Cup was one of the dozens of popular styles of cups at that time. It was named because its shape and proportions resembled a small jar.

  Chenghua Doucai Horseshoe Cup with Grape Pattern

In 2014, a Chenghua Doucai Chicken Cup was sold at a high price of HK$2.8 million at Sotheby's in Hong Kong. In a short time, the "Chicken Cup" became a household name, and various replicas and derivatives of the "Chicken Cup" became popular. This is how the Chenghua Doucai Chicken Cup and Sanqiu Cup, rare treasures that have been handed down to this day, came into being. In the porcelain exhibition hall of the Capital Museum, there is also a pair of Chenghua Doucai cups on display. The pattern of this pair of small cups is different from that of the Chenghua Doucai Chicken Cup and Sanqiu Cup. Because it is painted with grape patterns, it is called the "Chenghua Doucai Grape Pattern Cup".

The shape of the horseshoe cup is an inverted trapezoid when viewed from the side, with a smaller ring foot at the bottom. When turned upside down, it looks like a horseshoe, hence the name. So the one in Zhou Zhi's hand should be called the Ming Chenghua Doucai Grape Pattern Horseshoe Cup.

The patterns on Chenghua's small cups are all delicate and beautiful, and the themes are also close to "folk". For example, this cup has main patterns of grapes, mulberries, and bamboo; there is also a category of chickens; and another category is the "three more themes", namely Buddha's hand, peach, and pomegranate, which symbolize good fortune, longevity, and many children.

The most obvious feature of Chenghua artifacts, and also the feature that is most difficult for later imitators to restore, is the "brilliant purple" color.

In fact, the name “Cai Zi” was not originally the same as “Cai Zi” in “Cai Zi Yan Hong”, but “Chai Zi”, which originally described a life that was “not satisfactory”. The famous collector Mr. Sun Yingzhou described it like this: “It is a color defect caused by the difference in firing, so it is called Chai Zi. It can be said with certainty that any color with Chai Zi is absolutely authentic.”

Mr. Geng Baochang, a porcelain identification master of Rongbaozhai, said: "As for the unique purple, the color is like red iron, and the surface is dry and dull. In the past, some people did not know much about this color, and every time they washed it, they mistook it for dirt and scraped it, damaging the glaze. As a special basis for identifying Chenghua Doucai, this color can often be used to make a conclusion, and all subsequent imitators are far behind."

The colors of this grape cup are relatively simple, mainly light green, yellow and purple. Because of this, the characteristic of "purple" is perfectly reflected in this small cup. The original color defects have now become a plus point and a characteristic item, allowing Zhou Zhi to recognize it at a glance.

Because this color is too special, the purple used in Chenghua is actually the color of metallic manganese ions. Because this color had just appeared at that time, craftsmen often could not control it perfectly.

According to later scientific diagnosis, if the amount of mineral material used for this coloring exceeds "saturation", the purple color will lose its luster after firing. Therefore, in order to make up for the imperfection of this "dull purple" in the picture, after painting the purple, the craftsmen will add bright glaze to the appropriate parts to cover up the flaws.

However, a coincidence happened. The bright glaze used in Chenghua was not very pure, and was somewhat bluish. This processing technology created a luster of blue and purple, which better reflected the texture of ripe grapes.

During the firing process, the bright glaze merged and flowed with the purple underneath, making the grapes on the picture form an effect similar to the Chinese freehand grape painting, which first applies purple, then blue, and then water.

After this transformation, "Cha Zi" was transformed into the real "Cai Zi" and gained the high-sounding title of "Yipin Zi".

What’s even funnier is that when the glaze technology became more mature, after the craftsmen discovered the stable purple glaze, they naturally and ruthlessly abandoned this troublesome method of painting purple.

After several dynasties, when people's aesthetic taste changed again and they rediscovered the beauty of the "purple" in Chenghua Doucai, they found that this craft had been completely lost.

The three dynasties of the Qing Dynasty exhausted all their manpower and resources but were unable to restore it, not even close. Imitating the "brilliant purple" color on Ming Chenghua doucai porcelain has become the ultimate challenge in the history of Chinese porcelain imitation.

Of course, there are many shapes and patterns of Chenghua Doucai, and not every piece of ware has the "brilliant purple" color. The craftsmen in the Ming Dynasty were also reluctant to burn this time-consuming and laborious purple color which might not be successful. This resulted in Chenghua porcelain containing the "bad purple" color becoming increasingly rare and extremely precious.

Zhou Zhi knew that the Capital Museum had a collection of such cups, a pair of them, from the tomb of Hesheli.

Hesheli was a little girl who died at the age of seven. The reason why she had such precious burial objects was that she was the granddaughter of Sony, an important official in the early Qing Dynasty, the daughter of Soetu, and the cousin of Empress Xiaocheng. She was not an ordinary person.

Turning the small cup in his hand, Zhou Zhi whistled: "This leak is really a great deal..."

(End of this chapter)