This bowl belongs to the long argument about Chinese porcelain: a wucai (five-colour) porcelain body, thrown, glazed and fired until the surface turns to glass. the Jin workshop that made it treated whiteness and colour as a single problem to be solved in the kiln.
What looks like decoration is also a record. The children at play motif was chosen, not incidental, and on a court vessel a repeat pattern is a way of saying order without using words.
Chinese ceramics carried the weight of a civilisation that measured its courts by what they could fire.
A bowl like this outlived the hands that made it. It is why a wucai (five-colour) porcelain vessel from the Jin dynasty (1115-1234 CE) still reads as a small piece of statecraft, fired and then forgotten by everyone but the collector.
Object details
| Name | Oil-red ground multi-colored gold baby play bowl (油红地五彩描金婴戏图碗) |
|---|---|
| Artefact no. | 新00044725 |
| Technique | Wucai (five-colour) porcelain (五彩) |
| Period | Jin dynasty (1115-1234 CE) |
| 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.