Pottery Making Methods of Colored Pottery

China's Neolithic pottery production methods can be roughly divided into hand-made, molded and wheel-made. From the early handmade by slow wheel trimming, development to fast wheel pottery production, experienced a long development process. In other words, the earliest pottery was made without a potter's wheel, the slow wheel was not produced until about 7,000 years ago, and the fast wheel was invented and used only in the Longshan culture on the lower reaches of the Yellow River around 5,000 years ago.

Handmade pottery can be divided into kneading method, clay piece sticking method, and clay strip building method. Kneading method is limited to a small number of small objects, as well as accessories on the object, such as ears, feet and attached to the object to become additional stacked pattern of hand-kneaded clay strips and so on. The mud piece paste building method is mainly popular in the southern region of China, the mud strip building method is the main method of pottery production in the Yellow River basin, including Gansu.

Molding method, that is, the mold as the basis of the pottery molding method. Its primary stage is the mold mud method, China's earliest colored pottery, that is, colored pottery excavated from the site of the Dadiwan culture, is made in this way. The mature stage of the molding method prevailed in the middle reaches of the Yellow River in Miaodigou, Long LLJ culture. The difference between the two is that while the former laid clay on the molds, the latter built clay strips on the molds.

Wheel-making is the process of pulling a billet into shape with a fast-rotating potter's wheel. According to Mr. Li Wenjie observation, only the rotational speed of 90 weeks per minute or more, the body can be quickly formed, below this speed, the wheel can only be used to trim the body of the process. It can be seen that the slow wheel has been used for pottery, but because it can not make the pottery molding, and therefore can only be used as an auxiliary means of trimming the body, so it can not be attributed to the wheel method.

According to the research results, Gansu colored pottery molding method is mainly for the mold laying mud method and mud strip building method.

The pottery pieces of the first phase of Dadiwan have a very distinctive feature, that is, the pottery pieces are layered. Mainly divided into inside and outside the surface layer and the inner layer, and the inner layer can be divided into two or three layers, from the pottery piece section can be clearly seen in each layer of the longitudinal through the texture. The inner and outer layers of the pottery bowl are red clay pottery, and the inner layer is grayish-black, with more uniform fine sand grains. Pottery broken stubble can be seen at the layered shedding phenomenon. From this preliminary judgment, the pottery billet is made of different clay layering. Why can be identified as molded?

There are several reasons:

One, according to the common sense of the pottery process, the clay bar built into the pottery tire wall is thicker, while the first phase of the pottery tires are thinner, generally 0.3 centimeters thick;

The second phase of the type of vessel type is simple, and many of the same size and size of the pottery, to further prove the possibility of molding;

The third and the most conclusive evidence, because the discovery of the interior of the production of pottery, the pottery is the most important part. Because the inner molds used to make the wares and the outer molds used to make the mouths of the pots were found to be solid clay molds that had been fired. From this, we can confirm that the earliest pottery molding is the mold laying method, that is, mainly based on the inner mold, directly extruding the clay into clay pieces, layer after layer to the mold.

The specific method of operation is as follows: first, the inner mold placed on a wooden mat or flat stone, mold surface sprinkled with a layer of fine dry soil, so that after the ceramic tires and mold separation. When laying the clay, place the mold on the mat board, with the big head facing downward, so as to facilitate the operation. Straight jar, deep belly jar, etc., because of its inner mold wall is steeply sloping, laying mud should be from the bottom up, otherwise, if the top-down laying, the fetal heart is easy to fall or break. The bowl of the inner mold wall is gently sloping, both from the center from top to bottom to lay, can also start from the edge, bottom up to complete. Dressing the mud is the most critical first step is to dress the first layer of the heart of the mud, to squeeze the method of squeezing the mud by hand, so that it is firmly attached to the mold will not fall off, and then continue to dress the mud layer by layer. Layers of clay should have a certain stacking relationship, the adhesive surface between each other to be uneven, so that the successive pieces of clay firmly bonded together.

The pottery tires are molded and demolded, and then a layer of clay is applied by hand to the inner and outer surfaces of the tires. In some of the inner wall of the pottery found in the bottom up finger smear marks, is to indicate that the surface layer is smeared into the mud. Wiping mud hands on the inside and outside of the vessel, pulling and squeezing, not only to exclude the mud layer between the stubble at the formation of air bubbles, but also to eliminate, smoothing the wall of the gap, so that the structure of ceramic tires to further tightly integrated, and the surface of the vessel has become smooth and flat.

Three-footed ware in colored pottery, the foot is completed with the method of patchwork installation. The feet are kneaded by hand, and are made to be easy to handle when the water evaporates and becomes slightly dry and hard. The pre-made feet are inserted into the holes drilled in the bottom of the vessel, and then the clay strips are pasted on the inner and outer bottoms, the seams are squeezed and pressed, and then plastered with mud.

The study of the pottery of the first phase of Dadiwan shows that the potters at this time not only used the inner mold of the body, but also used the outer mold of the collar of the pot (mouth edge), and were familiar with the different properties of the clay and the clay sand, and used two kinds of clay alternately at intervals on the same object. These facts show that people already had a relatively rich experience, indicating that this mold laying method is not the most primitive method of pottery production. The origin of this method is still not clear, and it needs to be solved by further research.

But because of the mold mud production process is complicated, coupled with the shape of the body, the size of the mold to be subject to the limitations of the large objects, it is difficult to produce. And made of artifacts monotonous shape, low productivity, firing process and often produce cracking and layering flaking phenomenon, resulting in a lot of waste, defective products, thus greatly restricting the further development of pottery. The increase in population and economic development brought about a large demand for pottery, and the pottery-making process developed gradually in the continuous production practice, so that this relatively backward pottery-making method was replaced by a new process - the mud bar construction method.

The clay bar construction method is a typical and mature handmade molding method, in the Neolithic era is the most widely used, the most long-lasting pottery billet molding technology. In this method, the clay is first rolled into clay strips, and then the clay strips are used to build the billet. In Gansu, from the Yangshao culture about 7,000 years ago, until the Bronze Age, the clay bar building method has always been the main method of pottery production. That is to say, Gansu colored pottery in addition to the Dadiwan culture, basically use this production technology.

It should be noted that in the early Yangshao culture, the above two types of methods **** used together. The bowls and basins with rounded bottoms were mostly colored pottery, which still used the mold-laying method. Their pottery pieces are still layered, thus proving to be the same as the first phase of the production method of Dadiwan. The difference lies in the fact that at this time, all layers of pottery are of the same quality, all fine clay pottery, and the combination between the layers is more tightly and firmly. Flat-bottomed wares and pointed-bottomed wares, which were used in large quantities, were constructed with clay bars. In the flat-bottomed ware, sometimes leaving the joints between the clay bars, in the bottom of the pointed-bottomed vase, can be seen in a circle circling the clay bar marks. To the Yangshao in the middle, the basic disappearance of wan bottom ware, clay bar construction method eventually completely replaced the mold method. This is a long process of development.

The clay bar construction method is divided into disk building, circle building two methods. Plate building is a clay bar connected one by one, a spiral built up the body; circle building is the clay bar

each end to end, made of clay circle, and then stacked into the body of the clay circle, and thus the tire wall is often left on the inside of the clay bar gaps. The two methods to disk building method is common, horse factory period pottery sometimes also use the circle building method. The specific operation of the inverted building and positive building two means. Inverted building from the upper to the lower part of the production of blanks, first build the wall and then build the bottom of the vessel, used for bottles with pointed bottoms, etc.; positive building method is to make the bottom of the vessel first and then build the wall of the vessel, used for flat-bottomed ware. The bottom of the vessel is made into a clay cake, and then from the bottom of the outer edge of the vessel with clay bars built into the wall, commonly known as "Tianbao Di". Sometimes the base of the vessel is made in the shape of a shallow disk, and the vessel is joined to the belly from the inside, commonly known as "tianbao tian" (earth wrapped around the sky). This kind of production is in a fixed workbench to complete the clay bar one after another, according to the need to continue to add or build add stacks. Changes in the various parts of the wall are controlled by the fingers that pinch the clay strips and change the shape. By turning the fingers inward or outward, the diameter of the object can be enlarged or reduced. Tilted inward, the diameter of the wall gradually increases to form the abdomen; tilted outward, the diameter of the wall gradually decreases to form the shoulder; perpendicular to the table, the diameter of the wall remains unchanged to form a straight abdomen or neck. Because the thickness of the wall depends on the thickness of the clay bar and the strength of the hand pinch, so in the whole process of building the clay bar into a billet, the operation of the hand plays a decisive role in the skill. Colored pottery is the unity of the combination of stylistic beauty and decorative beauty, and the perfect harmony of the styling depends on the skill of the craftsmen. The beauty of modeling refers to the beauty of the outer contour and image of the object, and the first condition is the harmony of the proportion between the parts. The ratio of the base diameter, the diameter of the abdomen and the caliber, the ratio of the diameter of the abdomen and the height, the height of the body and the height of the collar (or the edge of the mouth), and so on. The inclination of the lower abdomen is different, the shape of the artifact is different, such as the Yangshao mid-curved pot, tilt - degree is larger curved belly; Majiayao type of flat-bottomed bottles, tilt is small and therefore long straight belly; half of the type of pottery urns, tilt is large rounded belly. Different shapes show different beautiful curves, as well as the harmony and unity of the artistic style.

After the pottery billet is made, it needs to be properly trimmed, so as to make all parts of the artifacts regular and beautiful, the mouth edge and the appearance of the smooth, the shape is also more proportional. Trimming with a similar bone dagger piece, scraping off excess clay; can also be used in the inner wall of the ceramic pads and other blocks of pads, to adjust the curve of the object; or hand-added clay, processing, so that the ceramic tires to achieve the best shape. After the completion of the modeling, the pottery tire should be patted and rolled, in order to make the clay strip bonded to each other more tightly and firmly. In the Yangshao culture, the slow wheel trimming technique appeared, leaving traces of wheel spinning at the mouth edge of some pottery. Pottery jars and gourd bottles unearthed at sites such as Dadiwan and Wangjiayinwa, with orthocentric swirls at the bottom resulting from trimming, are sufficient proof of the existence of the slow wheel. Positive-center swirls are the texture produced when the body is inverted on the potter's wheel and the tool is gradually moved from the center to the edge when trimming the bottom of the vessel, which is different from the eccentric swirls produced when splitting the bottom of the vessel by the fast-wheeled potter's wheel. Although no pottery wheel has yet been found, a series of pottery turntables from the early to the late Yangshao period have been discovered in Dadiwan. The turntables are sandwiched ceramics, thick and heavy, mostly more than 30 centimeters in diameter. Early turntable in the middle of the rise for a flat work surface, late turntable in the center of the plate upside down a pot. Yangshao late set of artifacts, unearthed on the production of the situation: pottery pots inverted on the turntable, the center of the turntable has a circle of raised round mud prongs, just to fix the pots in the turntable. The turntable is placed on top of the potter's wheel, and the bottom of the 15-centimeter-diameter pot becomes the work surface for the construction of the biscuit. Some turntables have a number of concentric circles engraved in the center of the turntable, which makes it possible to make the rounded mouth, belly and bottom of the pot more regular. Some of the turntables have a number of small holes in the rim to allow for the drainage of excess mud from the pan. This set of pottery tools and its detailed and exquisite conception fully reflects the cleverness and rich creativity of our ancestors. Some villagers around Qin'an and Gangu still use slow wheels today. General first dig a pit, the pit buried shaft, pottery wheel made of grass mud, placed flush with the pit. When making the pottery wheel with footsteps, so that the wheel rotation. As there is no other power, the wheel can only rotate slowly, and a clay worktable is added to the center of the wheel. From this kind of equipment and working scene, we seem to be able to capture the information of the ancestors who made pottery thousands of years ago.

The prosperity of colored pottery is closely related to the development of pottery-making technology. After the rise of the fast wheel, colored pottery declined rapidly. The study found that: where there is a tradition of colored pottery production of ancient cultures, the pottery process is bound to stay in the handmade stage, mastery and the use of fast wheel pottery, the pottery process will soon follow the demise. Gansu colored pottery until Xindian, Shajing culture, still use the clay bar building method. Xinjiang colored pottery ended even later, because to the Han dynasty only passed on to the fast wheel pottery. China's northwest, the reason why the pottery production to the Bronze Age is still very developed, the important reason is that it failed to master the fast wheel pottery production method, also because of this, it makes the Gansu pottery colorful, colorful.