Jingdezhen kiln green and white glaze printed chrysanthemum box

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

The white-glazed porcelain box 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.

Jingdezhen kiln green and white glaze printed chrysanthemum box, The Palace Museum

Object details

NameJingdezhen kiln green and white glaze printed chrysanthemum box (景德镇窑青白釉印花菊瓣式盒)
Artefact no.新00081152
TechniqueWhite-glazed porcelain (白釉)
PeriodJingdezhen ware dynasty (Ming to Qing)
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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