Doctrine of the origin of glaze crafts of glaze

As an ancient material and craft unique to ancient Chinese traditional crafts, Chinese ancient glaze has a history and cultural heritage of more than two thousand years.

About the origin of glaze, there has been nothing to be said and nothing to be examined, only the story of "Xishi's tears" has been passed down for a long time, which has been a love story for ages.

According to legend, at the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, Fan Li supervised the construction of the King's Sword for the newly succeeded King Goujian, which took three years to be cast. On the day the King's Sword came out, Fan Li found a magical powdery substance inside the sword mold, which, when fused with the crystal, was crystal clear but had a metallic sound. Fan Li thought that this substance had been refined by fire and had the softness of crystal hidden in it, which had the dominance of the King's Sword and the softness of water, and was the ultimate in the creation of yin and yang in heaven and earth. He called it "Kendo" and offered it to the king of Yue along with the cast King's Sword.

The king of Yue, remembering Fan Li's contribution in casting the sword, accepted the King's Sword, but gave back the original "Kendo", and named the magical substance "Li" after him.

At that time, Fan Li had just met Xi Shi, and was so impressed by her beauty that he thought that gold, silver, jade, and other common things under the world could not be matched with Xi Shi, so he visited all the skilled craftsmen and made the "Li" named after himself into an exquisite piece of jewelry, and gave it to Xi Shi as a gift for her love.

Unexpectedly, the war started again in that year, and Gou Jie decided to make a pre-emptive strike because he knew that King Fu-chai of Wu was training his troops day and night, intending to crush Yue to avenge his father's death. After Fan Li's bitter advice was unsuccessful, the state of Yue finally suffered a great defeat and almost died, and Xi Shi was forced to go to the state of Wu to make peace. When she was leaving, Xi Shi returned the "Li" to Fan Li. Legend has it that when Xi Shi's tears dripped on the "Li", heaven and earth, the sun and the moon were moved, and to this day, you can still see Xi Shi's tears flowing in it, which is called "Li Li" by the later generations. The later people called it "Liuli". Today's Liuli is evolved from this name.

In 1965, Jiangling Tomb No. 1 in Hubei Province unearthed a legendary ancient sword that has lasted for thousands of years but is as sharp as ever, with two light orchid-colored glazes inlaid at the scabbard, and the bird seal script on the sword body clearly shows "King Goujian of Yue, Self-executing Sword". The glaze decorated on the sword of King Goujian is the earliest glaze product found so far. Coincidentally, after the discovery of "King Wu Fuzhai sword" in Hui County, Henan Province, the sword grid is also inlaid with three pieces of colorless transparent glaze.

The two entangled life of the Spring and Autumn hegemony, with great achievements to dominate the world, "the king's sword" is not only a symbol of status and position, but also be regarded as precious as their lives. The two legendary kings, coincidentally, will be glazed as the only decoration on their accompanying swords, can not help but add a few more mysteries to the legend about the origin of the ancient glaze.

We can't confirm the origin of Chinese ancient glaze, but there were many human or mythological legends before the legend of Xishi's tears. But the legend of Fan Li's invention of glaze is more romanticized by Chinese culture than the Western legend of the origins of glass.

Legend has it that glass was invented by the Phoenicians (Lebanese). In 3,000 years ago, a group of Phoenician seafarers transporting natural soda, in the Mediterranean Sea, a beach campfire, they used large pieces of soda cushion feet, supporting a cauldron. After the meal, people in the ashes of the fire, found a substance like ice, it turns out that the main component of the sand of silica in the soda's main component of sodium carbonate mixed, melted at high temperatures, became sodium glass.

Another theory is that glass originated in ancient Egypt, where it was discovered by a clever and careful potter in the process of firing pottery.

In fact, once we analyze it from an academic point of view, these legends immediately lose their basis for existence.

Silicon dioxide has a melting point of about 1700 degrees Celsius, and the melting point of sodium glass formed after using sodium as a flux is also about 1450 degrees Celsius, and even with modern high-quality coal, the temperature inside an ordinary hearth is only about 600 degrees Celsius at the highest, not to mention the campfires of 3,000 years ago. Temperature-wise, only ancient Egyptian pottery-making is said to be still slightly possible.

Comparing the Eastern and Western legends, although the "sword theory" has some unique Chinese myths and romanticism, it is still more plausible from a physical and chemical point of view.

We can ignore the authenticity of the details of the legend, but it is worthwhile to pay attention to the biggest difference between the origins of Chinese ancient glaze and Western glass.

According to the analysis of the chemical composition of the unearthed glaze, the main flux of Chinese glaze is "lead-barium" (extremely close to the natural crystal), while the Western ancient glass to the "sodium-calcium" composition is dominated by the (with the use of the glass window to the present day. Glass is the same). In the Western glass formula "barium" component almost never appeared, "lead" is also the use of the same, and the West's real leaded glass until the eighteenth century A.D. is widely used, compared to the Chinese ancient glaze process, a full two thousand years behind.

We know that the casting of bronze requires extremely high temperatures, melting the main ingredient of glaze "silica" is no problem at all, and secondly, the formula for bronze, the need to add lead in copper (galena) and tin, barium is an ancient lead ore (galena) **** biology, can not be separated, so the ancient glaze lead barium **** survival is inevitable. ** exist is inevitable. Furthermore, the ancient sword casting sand mold contains a large amount of silica, so that the material to generate the glaze. Temperature. Flux conditions are available, everything else is also natural and logical.

In many Chinese monographs, it is mentioned that the glaze is made by mixing and burning of the fluids and lazurite.

"Money around the mountain industry talk" contains: Feng Chen library, the ancestors of the treasure also ...... glazed mother, if today's money dregs, block size is like a child fist ....... It is also said that the real temple towards the thing .... But can be made Ko Zi like, green, red, yellow and white with the color, but not since the must also.

Tiangongkaiwu - pearl and jade chapter ": where the glazed stone and Chinese crystal. Champaign fire Qi. Its class is the same ...... its stone five colors are with ....... This Qiankun creation, hidden in the easy ground. Natural glazed stone is becoming increasingly scarce, especially precious.

"Yanshan Miscellaneous Records - glaze chapter" in the "take their crystal, and to return to the green ......" process records also further evidence of the continuation of this process.

Judging from today's unearthed artifacts, the emergence of translucent glass in the West around 200 BC, nearly 300 years later than the emergence of China's ancient glaze, the emergence of transparent glass around 1500 AD, more than the documented Three Kingdoms period of the Lord of Wu glazed screen more than 1,000 years late. And the emergence of man-made crystal (similar to the glaze composition) in the West was around the end of the 19th century, more than 2,000 years later than the emergence of Chinese ancient glaze.

Chinese ancient glaze with a long history, in the strict sense, its physical state should be defined as a transparent (or translucent) crystal state, from the excavated artifacts, the earliest unearthed glaze is still the "Yue Wang Goujian Sword" on the ornaments. From the material point of view, glaze is a kind of ancient material and process completely different from crystal and glass.