Introduction of firing technology of Axi pottery

Coarse porcelain is produced in Yaotou Town, Chengcheng County, eastern Guanzhong, Shaanxi Province. The area is rich in coal resources, and there are clay crucibles on the cliffs of gullies and streams, with white and purple raw materials, which are convenient for firing ceramics and sand utensils. Local farmers use the slack season to make blank paintings in summer and autumn, which are sold in winter kilns and passed down from generation to generation. Yaotou Ancient Town is located in the southwest of Chengcheng County, adjacent to Baishui and Pucheng counties. Many houses in the old city have been abandoned and later renamed Yaotou Village, which is called "Old Street" by the locals. Standing on the bank of the Xihe River, looking across the platform and the ruins of the old city on the cliff slope, the abandoned residual porcelain at the cliff head is piled up in the loess rubble, and the abandoned residual walls, rugged old porcelain kilns, refractory bricks, saggers, tiles and kiln slag are all over the hillside, stretching for about 3 miles from north to south. Judging from these relics, the largest folk kiln in central and eastern Guanzhong in history was developed locally. [ 1]?

Edit the historical origin of this paragraph.

Chengcheng Ceramics is mainly produced in Yaotou Town. According to the records of Chengcheng place names, Yaotou Town was called Yaotou Town in ancient times, which was named after numerous porcelain kilns. Because the ancient sage "Yao" and "kiln" have the same sound, the word "Yao" of the sage gradually replaced the "kiln" of porcelain kiln with the passage of time. The name of Yaotou Town has been extended. The kiln head coarse porcelain is a famous folk porcelain kiln in Weibei, Shaanxi Province, and its kiln site is also an important place for the remains of folk ceramic culture in past dynasties. According to the county records of the Ming Dynasty, Chengcheng "porcelain sand began in the Tang Dynasty". This is the earliest written record of Yaotou Kiln. 1522 to 1566 (Jiajing period of Ming Dynasty) recorded the collection of kiln tax. Every year, the kiln costs 289 yuan, reaching 500 yuan ... Main products: porcelain, Carboniferous period. Black magnetic Shantou Town specialty. " 1625 (the fifth year of the Ming dynasty's apocalypse), Tongzhou mansion also recorded: "Yaotou, Chengcheng ... produced pottery and porcelain." After the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, northern celadon gradually died out, and Chengcheng kiln could still burn celadon. This phenomenon is extremely rare in northern kilns, which adds a lot of color to determine the historical position of Chengcheng kiln. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the ceramic industry in Yaotou Town developed to a prosperous stage. According to folklore, in its heyday, there were more than 100 porcelain kilns with an annual output of more than 2.2 million pieces, which not only occupied counties and cities in Weibei, but also exported to Shanxi, Gansu, Inner Mongolia, northern Shaanxi and other places. From the end of the Qing Dynasty to the beginning of the Republic of China, the population of Chengcheng County decreased sharply. Due to the constant war and banditry, and the influence of the 1877 famine, the kiln head ceramics industry declined seriously. 1926 (Republic of China 15) "Chengcheng County Records" records that "the craft is not prosperous in China. No other specialty. The only one that is famous is the porcelain sand ware in Changrun Town (kiln head), and the rest are ordinary daily necessities ... There are more than 40 old ones, more than 20 in the Republic of China 15, and more than 30 are out of the kiln every year. At that time, the output was "about 30 strings per kiln, and about 1 10,000 strings were sold every year", which recorded the scale and production process of porcelain industry in detail. During the period of 1926 (the 15th year of the Republic of China), the number of porcelain-burning enterprises decreased from "more than 40" to more than 20, which shows that the scale of porcelain-burning industry at that time was only half that of the Qing Dynasty. [ 1]

Edit the technical features of this paragraph.

Yaotou Town has been rich in coal since ancient times. 1926 (15 years of the Republic of China) county annals said that "Chengdi has no other minerals, but Changrun Town produces a large amount of coal". Here, two small rivers, Xihe River and Houhe River, produce crucible mud for porcelain making, and there are five pits for digging crucible soil on the cliff slope along the river, which are very spectacular. According to the introduction of the old kiln worker, the kiln head made black glaze and sauce glaze from the inexhaustible loess in the local area, and the white glaze was imported from the nearby mountainous area of Fuping County. Blue-and-white porcelain in the Republic of China was made of cobalt "Shi Lan" and imported from southern Zhejiang.

Firing technology

Kiln head porcelain is all made by hand by indigenous method, and the raw materials are collected from local crucible soil. The processing process includes mud, blank making, glazing and calcination. First, dry soil ore is crushed, then soaked in a pool for a few days, then stirred into slurry and stored in separate pools. Coarse mud is made into large vessels such as jars and pots, and fine mud is made into fine porcelain such as bowls and dishes. On the tableland slope around Zhoujiadong in Yaotou Village, there are several porcelain kilns (called "black kilns" locally) for firing black glazed jars and pots and bowls, which still retain the ancient porcelain burning skills handed down from ancestors. Kilns are all steamed bread kilns, using coal as combustion fuel. For the "fire hole" with falling ash, the big kiln is set up with 8-6 wooden rafters, and bricks are placed on them to form a T-shape. There should be 72 fire holes in the big kiln, and people can drill through the underground passage to get fire. After the kiln door is closed, the upper fire hole and the lower coal hole are reserved. The fire observation hole is opened when the fire starts to burn and closed after the fire is ignited. After the kiln is cooked, open the fire hole for observation. When throwing coal, craftsmen still use wooden hand guards, which are called "firemen" locally. They are shaped like a half-opened bamboo tube with a groove in the middle. When throwing coal, they put the shovel on the fire hand to prevent the kiln worker from being burned by high temperature when throwing coal. The local kilns-kilns follow the terminology handed down from the old times. The top of the kiln is called "Longkou" and the top of the kiln is called "Lalongkou". The top of the kiln is covered with mud cake or unburned cylinder bottom, then sealed with mud, lime, carbon residue and mud, and blocked together with the fire hole.

Glaze color and modeling

The glaze color of coarse porcelain in Chengdi kiln head is mostly white, blue and black. In addition to white and yellow, there are also blue and brownish red, such as bowls, dishes or white glazed orchids with tributes of yellow glaze and rusty flowers, which are hand-drawn, simple and elegant. The flowers and animals decorated on all kinds of utensils are in the same strain as the local paper-cut and flour flower shapes, and the contents are mostly lotus, peony, chrysanthemum or the words "Fu, Lu, Shou and Xi". Porcelain products are closely related to the production and life of the masses. Their shapes are subtle in roughness and ingenious in clumsiness, giving people a simple and natural aesthetic feeling, which is quite different from the exquisite and delicate style of southern ceramics. Porcelain tiger pillow is exquisite, smooth, eye-catching but naive and lovely. It is not only a pillow but also an ornament, which contains the meaning of exorcism and courage. The "lazy woman" where the child sits has the taste of primitive painted pottery. When the child is sitting inside, the mother can free her hands to do housework. The black mouse jar and the lion jar have strange images, and they are covered with various forms of mice and lions for twisting hands, which is full of fun.

Decorative features

The decorative arts of Chengcheng Yaotou kiln are extremely rich, including black glaze carving, black glaze carving, white glaze rusty flower, blue and white background rusty flower, yellow background rusty flower and blue glaze carving, among which iron embroidery and carved flower are the most wonderful. Rust flower is the product of Yaotou kiln in Song and Yuan Dynasties. It is one of the typical decorations in Yaotou kiln. It is painted with white makeup soil or black, yellow and green glazes first, and then with transparent glazes. The patterns are mostly plum blossoms, chrysanthemums and butterflies at five o'clock, six o'clock, seven o'clock, eight o'clock and nine o'clock, which have the artistic characteristics of China's freehand brushwork. Carving is to carve patterns on the porcelain blank with white cosmetic soil or black glaze to expose the background color of the porcelain blank, and then it is fired at a high temperature of 1500 degrees, forming a decorative effect of strong contrast between black and white and gray. Most of the patterns are auspicious patterns with profound meanings, such as pomegranate, Xiantao, Tianma, Tuanhe, Bagua and Chrysanthemum. Smooth knife and pen, full of emotion, ever-changing, full of vitality, with the feeling of looking forward to life and dancing, reached a superb artistic realm.

Black glazed porcelain and blue and white porcelain

Among the coarse porcelain of Chengdi kiln head, black glazed porcelain is the most famous, commonly known as "black pearl". There are many fine products, and the glaze layer is generally uniform in thickness and often tears (early). The glaze is black and bright, small as a string of black pearls. The ceramic wall of kiln head is thick, and the fetal quality is mostly gray. The most famous is the black glazed rat pot. There are all kinds of mice crawling on the semi-circular jar cover, which is very vivid. The jar lid symbolizes the sky, the jar bottom symbolizes the flat land, the jar symbolizes the universe in the circle of the sky, and the mouse is the son of the god of reproduction, which indicates the reproduction of human beings. The black glazed porcelain in kiln head has the most ornamental value: first, it has the charm of Yangshao culture (there are many places where Yangshao culture is located), and its huge shape shows the national integrity of the Chinese nation; Second, the unique color charm, that kind of black to the end, solemn style, makes many colored porcelain dwarf; Third, its decorative effect, artistic expression and unique aesthetic value of black-carved flowers make other porcelain species far behind; Fourth, its rich cultural connotation. All the historical and cultural contents of ancient porcelain can be found in kiln head black glaze porcelain. The blue-and-white porcelain in Chengcheng kiln head is simple and steady in shape, soft and elegant in color, wide in decorative materials, free and easy to stretch with a pen, quaint in conception, informal in layout and vivid in shape, which is not influenced by the fine products of the official kiln at all. [2]

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The history and value of Yaotou kiln can also be seen from local folk songs and folk activities. "Don't the autumn harvest, wait until May 26th. Just drop a little this day and go to Yaotou to buy a big bowl. " I wonder how many years this folk song has been circulating in the local area. It means that the harvest in autumn has an extremely important relationship with May 26th in the ancient calendar. If it rains a little this day, there will be a bumper harvest in autumn. People immediately bought a big bowl of kiln head, which reflected people's expectation for a bumper harvest in the old society and also showed that kiln head ceramics were very famous in the local area. As a famous folk porcelain kiln in history, Chengcheng kiln head coarse porcelain had a glorious history. With the vicissitudes of time, it has lost its former elegance and prosperity. Its present situation is: First, the resources are idle and wasted, and the ancient kiln site is buried in broken porcelain pieces. Second, folk artists have been lost. Due to the development of science and technology, modern people rarely use ceramic products as daily household utensils, and Chengcheng kiln head ceramics gradually withdrew from the historical stage because of the lack of improvement in manufacturing technology. Later, it was difficult to see some traditional daily necessities painted by craftsmen. Chengcheng ceramics, which contains profound folk art, is not what it used to be. According to relevant statistics [3]? There are less than 20 folk ceramists in the county, most of them are in their sixties and seventies, and some of them are sickly. Few artists are familiar with dozens of porcelain-making techniques. The Yaotou Kiln in Chengcheng, Shaanxi Province is a folk kiln comparable to the famous porcelain kiln in China. However, the ceramic skills and culture inherited by the kiln head are on the verge of extinction and need urgent rescue. [3]