The piece is a brush washer, and White-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 brush washer of this kind was made to be seen closely and from afar at once. The white-glazed porcelain ground rewards the near view; the silhouette does the work across a room.
The Ding ware court understood porcelain as a statement of capacity. To fire a brush washer without a flaw was to prove the workshop, and behind it the state, could do the impossible reliably.
The white-glazed porcelain brush washer 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.
Object details
| Name | Ding kiln white glaze carved with daylilies pattern (定窑白釉刻花萱草纹洗) |
|---|---|
| Artefact no. | 故00143069 |
| Technique | White-glazed porcelain (白釉) |
| Period | Ding ware dynasty (Northern Song) |
| Collection | The Palace Museum, Beijing |
| Source | Palace Museum Digital Collection (数字文物库) |
Image © The Palace Museum. View the original in the Palace Museum Digital Collection.