Folk kilns represent Cizhou kilns.

Cizhou Kiln is the largest folk kiln system in ancient northern China, and it is also a famous Han folk kiln. The kiln site is located in Guantai Town and Pengcheng Town, Cixian County, Handan, Hebei Province. Cixian County belongs to Cizhou in the Song Dynasty, hence the name. According to the survey, Cizhou Kiln was built and burned in the middle of the Northern Song Dynasty, reaching its peak. During the Southern Song Dynasty, Liao, Jin, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, it continued to burn, with a long history, vigorous vitality and numerous relics handed down from generation to generation.

The shape and ornamentation of Cizhou Kiln are deeply loved by the people, with wide influence and rapid development. All parts of the north have imitated it one after another, and a huge cizhou kiln system has been formed with Guantai Town in Handan as the center, mainly distributed in Hebi kiln in Henan, Dangyangyu kiln in Xiuwu, Bachun kiln in Yuxian, Quhe kiln in Dengfeng, Jiexiu kiln in Shanxi, Huoxian kiln in Shandong, Zibo kiln in Jiangxi, Jizhou kiln in Ji 'an, Quanzhou kiln in Fujian and Guangyuan kiln in Sichuan, all of which are similar in style to cizhou kiln.

Cizhou Kiln is famous for producing white glazed black porcelain. The contrast between black and white is strong and bright, and the pattern is very eye-catching. Can be carved, scratched, picked and colored. He also creatively painted China's painting techniques on porcelain in the form of pattern composition, which has fascinating artistic charm. It opened up a new way for China porcelain painting and decoration, and laid a foundation for the great development of Jingdezhen blue-and-white and colored porcelain after the Song Dynasty.

Historical documents about Cizhou kiln porcelain in Song Dynasty were not seen in Song Dynasty, but mainly appeared in Ming and Qing Dynasties. In the early Ming Dynasty, there were Cao's A Brief Introduction to Gegu, Jia Gegu's A Brief Introduction, Xie's Five Miscellaneous Notes, Ci Zhou Zhi, Ming Hui Dian in the early Qing Dynasty, Tao Shuo, Lan Pu's Jingdezhen and Xu Zhiheng's Drinking Liuzhai and Talking about Porcelain.

Cizhou Kiln is a famous Han folk ceramic kiln system in China, which is located in Pengcheng and Cixian of Handan City, Hebei Province, and is the representative of northern ceramics.

These areas belonged to Cizhou, Zhang Defu, Henan Province in the Song Dynasty, so they were called South Jingdezhen and North Pengcheng. Cizhou Kiln is a porcelain kiln with outstanding achievements and rich folk characteristics in Song Dynasty.

Cizhou kiln has rich glaze colors, including white glaze, black glaze and sauce glaze; And green glaze. White glaze is the most famous. Black and white contrast method is mainly used in decoration, among which flower painting, flower picking and pearl land are the most popular. Flower painting is based on local mottled stones, and black patterns are drawn on white glaze. Decorative patterns are mostly leafy flowers and lifelike fish room kiln. With unique creativity, we changed the monochromatic decorator pattern in China before the Song Dynasty, and created black and white underglaze ceramic products. And create a series of decorative patterns. The world's earliest Song, Hong and Qing glazed paintings were created on the basis of colored glass by adding color to the surface of fired white porcelain and making it look good after secondary barbecue. Only the above two technical and artistic achievements have established its important position in the history of world ceramics.

Creative Cizhou potters created more than 30 kinds of decorative ceramics in Song, Jin and Yuan Dynasties, such as white background carving, rust carving, pearl carving, white background brown color carving, white flower carving, black glaze carving and pyrene carving. It can be said that it is a combination of ceramic decoration techniques and affects future generations. In particular, it is very vivid to write a figure with a few black paintings and white and black flowers. Formed a well-behaved, unrestrained and uninhibited unique artistic style. On the subject matter of expression, what ordinary people see are flowers, birds, fish, insects, dragons, dragons, deer, horses, street scenes, children's officials, poems and songs, all of which are really historical and folk images.

Cizhou kiln is a huge product type with this style in the north and south of the Yellow River. At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, this kiln produced a large number of blue and white products, covering vast areas in North China and South China, such as orchid bowls and plates. Represents the prosperity of folk blue and white. Hyundai has become one of the largest porcelain producing areas in China, and its products are deeply loved by people all over the world. It has extremely high appreciation, collection and use value. The ancestors of Fengfeng in Cizhou began to burn pottery as early as 7500 years ago. A large number of brown pottery and red pottery with sand were unearthed in the Neolithic site of Cishan, 20 kilometers north of Pengcheng, which was named "magnetic mountain culture" by China Academy of Social Sciences. Thus, the historical position of this area as the birthplace of ancient pottery was determined.

During the Jin and Southern and Northern Dynasties, Pengcheng and Linshui were located in the most economically and culturally developed areas in the Central Plains and became the scenic spots in the western suburbs of Yecheng, the capital of Beijing. The molding technology also tends to be mature, firing celadon and white porcelain for cosmetics, and completing the leap from pottery to porcelain. In previous archaeological investigations, more than 100 celadon bowls were found in the kiln site of Linshui kiln. More than half of these utensils began to be coated with white makeup soil and blue-yellow transparent glaze on their mouths, and the makeup part was yellow and white. This is the initial stage of the transition from glazed pottery in Cizhou kiln to cosmetic white porcelain. 1975, an ancient kiln site in the Tang Dynasty and several pieces of white porcelain for cosmetics were discovered in Linshui. It shows that the firing of cosmetic white porcelain in Cizhou kiln has entered a mature stage at this time, and the kiln type has also changed from supporting firing to cage (sagger) bowl firing.

In the Song Dynasty, Cizhou Kiln began to enter a prosperous period. Cizhou kiln is a model of northern folk porcelain in Song Dynasty, which pays attention to practicality, beauty and economy in modeling and decoration. In the long-term ceramic practice, it has gradually formed a unique style and characteristics (that is, white makeup techniques). Unified modeling and unique decorative techniques constitute the style and appearance of Cizhou kiln products, which embodies local characteristics, national styles and characteristics of the times. Its products are mostly dishes, bowls, cans, bottles, cans, boxes and other utensils necessary for daily life. The lines are smooth and unrestrained, showing the rough and simple style of folk art. Cizhou kiln in Song Dynasty has a wide range of materials, diverse forms and rich meanings. The combination of ceramic skills and art has brought ceramic objects to a brand-new artistic realm and initiated a new era of ceramic art. Among the many varieties of Cizhou kiln, black flowers on white background (rusty flowers), carved flowers and kiln black glaze are the most famous. Its decorative techniques broke through the limitations of monochromatic glazes in five famous kilns (Ru kiln, Guan kiln, Jun kiln, Ge kiln and Ding kiln) at that time, and dozens of colorful decorative techniques were adopted. The craftsmen of Cizhou Kiln absorbed the traditional techniques of ink painting and calligraphy, and created the decorative art of black painting with white background in ink painting style, which opened the precedent of porcelain painting and decoration in China. Many artists are amazed at his skillful painting skills in one go.

In the Yuan Dynasty, Cizhou Kiln in Pengcheng area set off another porcelain-making climax, which not only inherited the traditional varieties of Song and Jin Dynasties, but also expanded the production scale and increased the production of large vessels. These products are often heavy, big and round in shape. Decorative patterns mainly include Yunlong, Fengyun, Yunyan and fish algae patterns. During the period of 1973, a stone grinding trough was unearthed in Dalugou, Pengcheng, and several typical fish and algae pots in Yuan Dynasty were unearthed. Its shape and decorative style are very similar to those of the Yuan Dynasty fish and algae pot unearthed in Beijing. For a long time, tens of thousands of Yuan dynasty porcelain and tiles have been discovered and unearthed in the reconstruction of Pengcheng old city.

In the Ming Dynasty, the Cizhou kiln in Pengcheng still maintained a considerable output, and an official kiln was set up in Pengcheng, and an "official altar factory" was set up in Nanguan of Cizhou, that is, a warehouse for storing official altars to prevent them from being shipped to Beijing along the Fuyang River. As the center of Cizhou Kiln, Pengcheng has become the porcelain capital of the north.

In the early Qing Dynasty, Cizhou kilns in Pengcheng entered a relatively prosperous period, with more kilns, larger kiln types, more varieties and increased output, and daily-use porcelain covered the folk market. "Cizhou Zhi" records that "Li residents in Fuyuan, Pengcheng are good at pottery pots, and boats and cars are in an endless stream, which are sold in other counties". There is a folk saying that there is Jingdezhen in the south and Pengcheng in the north. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, due to the import of "foreign porcelain", the output of Cizhou kiln declined, the variety dropped sharply, and the traditional artistic style gradually declined. At that time, there were only 130 porcelain kilns in Pengcheng town, and there were more than a thousand porcelain workers. The carcass of Cizhou Kiln is made of a special local kaolin with loose structure, fine elutriation, coarse particles, often unburned pores and iron spots, and high aluminum content. In addition, the raw materials contain high-color impurities such as iron and titanium, and the tire color is gray or taupe. There are mainly blue soil, white alkali, barrel soil, cage soil, loess (black medicine soil), purple wood festival, purple sand soil, refractory clay, Shui Ye feldspar and so on. Cizhou kiln porcelain has two kinds of fetal quality. One is that the fetal quality is hard, thin and gray. The other is that the fetal quality is loose and reddish brown. Things don't feel very heavy in your hand, but the imitations of the Republic of China and modern times are generally hard and heavy. The blank-making techniques of Cizhou Kiln are also rich and varied, including carving, drawing blank, wire, printing blank and so on.

Cizhou Kiln often uses cosmetic soil on the tire surface. The first kind of cosmetic soil is mud made of white high-quality porcelain clay to adapt to the fine workmanship of coarse porcelain and cover up the unevenness of the carcass surface, thus improving the appearance quality of porcelain and the whiteness and brightness of glaze. Later, makeup soil appeared. From the collection of ceramic pillows, it can be seen that the white-glazed black-flowered female pillow is made by coating a layer of ochre makeup soil on her ochre clothes, painting black flowers on it, and then firing with transparent glaze. White glaze carved lotus pillow is carved on thick makeup soil, and then the makeup soil outside the decoration is removed, which is also a change in the art of makeup soil. The pearl pillow is carved with thick white makeup soil. After the pearl is carved and stamped, there is a layer of colored powder in the decoration. Rub hard (some without colored powder) to make the concave part of the pattern and the pearl land full of colored powder. After the glaze is burned, the pattern is reddish brown, which is very beautiful. Cizhou Kiln skillfully uses cosmetic soil to achieve different artistic effects, making cosmetic soil a decorative art and reaching a superb level. Most of the firing methods are sagger firing, and the firing temperature is about 1250℃. There are many glazes hanging in general utensils. Bowls, plates, etc. are burned by overlapping method, and five strip burn marks are left in the container. The edges of bottles and jars and the bottom of pillows are often bare and not glazed. White glaze is mostly milky white with yellow, with ivory texture, the glaze layer is not very thick, there is no fullness and glaze hanging phenomenon, it is not very transparent and uniform, the glaze luster is not very strong, and there are often thin pieces. During this period, black glaze, blue glaze, yellow glaze, sauce glaze, peacock blue glaze, red glaze and tricolor were also fired. In addition, underglaze color paintings are made on the basis of white porcelain, such as: white glaze green dots, white glaze brown dots, white glaze underglaze black color, white glaze underglaze black color stripes, white glaze underglaze sauce color, white glaze underglaze sauce color stripes, pearl stripe, green glaze underglaze black color, white glaze red green color, white glaze red green yellow black color and so on.