Bright red glaze bowl with gold cloud and dragon pattern

The piece is a bowl, and Red-glazed porcelain is the technique that decides how it reads. The pattern is laid before firing, so the colour sits under a clear glaze, protected and luminous rather than painted on top.

A bowl of this kind was made to be seen closely and from afar at once. The red-glazed porcelain ground rewards the near view; the silhouette does the work across a room.

The Jin court understood porcelain as a statement of capacity. To fire a bowl without a flaw was to prove the workshop, and behind it the state, could do the impossible reliably.

The red-glazed porcelain bowl is a quiet lesson in Chinese taste: control of fire first, beauty second, and the two arriving together. Sinocra carries the work, with more from The Palace Museum, in the shop.

Bright red glaze bowl with gold cloud and dragon pattern, The Palace Museum

Object details

NameBright red glaze bowl with gold cloud and dragon pattern (鲜红釉描金云龙纹碗)
Artefact no.新00083293
TechniqueRed-glazed porcelain (红釉)
PeriodJin dynasty (1115-1234 CE)
CollectionThe Palace Museum, Beijing
SourcePalace Museum Digital Collection (数字文物库)

Image © The Palace Museum. View the original in the Palace Museum Digital Collection.

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