When the country had recovered from these internecine struggles, pottery art took a new lease of life, though under somewhat changed conditions. The Song wares went out of favour, and the old factories sank into obscurity, while the fame and importance of the great porcelain town of Jingdezhen, near the Boyang Lake in Jiangxi province, overshadowed all the rest. The imperial factory there was rebuilt and reorganized to keep the court supplied with the new porcelain. The staple product of Jingdezhen was the fine white porcelain that made china a household word throughout the world; and as this ware lent itself peculiarly well to painted decoration, the vogue for painted porcelain rapidly replaced the old Song taste for monochromes. Engraved examples are known, and Chinese commentaries refer to specimens decorated in red. After this early period, Ming wares generally are fairly easily recognizable. Porcelain replaced stoneware as the usual medium, and polychrome decoration became widely employed. The largest single group of Ming porcelain is that painted in blue underglaze. Much of the pigment used was imported from Middle Eastern sources.
Read more