“Fahua” Prunus Vase with the Painting of Visiting Friends with a Chinese zither

“Fahua” literally means delineated or controlled decorations. It is a kind of low-temperature glaze, which embellishes pottery or porcelain wares on the surface with piled-powder. For bringing out the effect, it is necessary to use a special mud bag with tubes to outline bulging design contours on the surface of pottery body; then use yellow, green and purple glaze to fill in the bottom and design colors before putting the product into furnace. This “fahua” green porcelain prunus vase made by Jingdezhen Kiln is made exactly by engraving design contours on the base, then dipping ceramic paste with brushes and piling it into a clay dam with certain height, placing it in kiln for firing into a plain body, then filling in various colored glaze into the contours and firing again at about 1000℃. Although part of the glaze has peeled off, we can still clearly tell that the basic design is the scene of a profound scholar visiting friends with a Chinese zither, a common theme in ancient Chinese literati paintings.