page_title: Popular fashion in ancient China
section_title: Popular porcelain
hierarchical_section_title: Popular fashion in ancient China / Popular porcelain
caption_attribution_description: English: Porcelain vases, Song dynasty (960-1279), Hunan Museum. 中文（简体）‎: 瓷花瓶。宋代（960年—1279年）。现藏于湖南省博物馆。
context_page_description: Popular fashion in ancient China was defined by a number of notable aesthetic traditions. The Tang dynasty and Song dynasty are the primary periods in which ancient China refers. There are four remarkable aesthetic categories of these two dynasties, including clothing, famous porcelain, favored flowers, and dominant literary form.
context_section_description: As a great country of porcelain and ceramics, China has been making prominent and extraordinary achievements in this field. Whereas there is a huge system of porcelain industry in both Tang and Song Dynasties, the representative achievements are the Tang Sancai (Triple-colour ceramics) and the greatly developed porcelain styles respectively. Tang is the most prosperous dynasty in history of China, in which one distinctive style ceramics Sancai is outstanding. Sancai is not only remarkable for its shape, decoration and glaze firing, but also for its artistic style—colourful and lively. There are many colours such as yellow, auburn, green, white and navy used in the Sancai making, which reflects an open and flourishing culture in Tang and the pursuit of resplendence in aesthetics. Such an aesthetic are also revealed by the vivid shape of Sancai, which is shaped with regards of many aspects in reality, for instance, buildings, livestock, human figure, and daily items (plates, lights, pillows, bottles. etc.). For example, the figures of horse are lively and natural for the smooth curves of the muscle of its legs and delicate saddle.
  However, in Song Dynasty, even though the aesthetics is influenced by Neo-Confucianism to some degree that reflected in simplism of clothing choices, the porcelain style still develops diversely. The development of porcelain technology in  Song Dynasty is unprecedented, with multifarious vessel shapes and rich and colourful decorative patterns. It does not means that there is no change in the aesthetics in Song. In contrast, people in Song Dynasty pursued the charm of extreme in aspect of porcelain. The contents of the decorative patterns have transformed into the lively flower, birds, fish or natural landscape, which needs various complicated techniques to accomplish. Even if there is no pattern in some porcelains, then the shapes and glazing colour will be the primary artistic appreciations. There are many techniques have been improved or innovated such as hollow out, embossing, applique (add material on the surface) and making glazing colour varying in one porcelain(the colour of glaze can look like a waterfall).  The porcelain products that contain clever design, unique technique or exquisite craftsmanship are praised and pursued as Song Dynasty was a period of highly developed science and technology as well as prosperity of porcelain crafts.
caption: Porcelain vases, Song dynasty, Hunan Museum
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D3200", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Ver.1.01", "Image DateTime": "2018:07:06 11:50:06", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "228", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 3, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "36332", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "300", "Thumbnail YResolution": "300", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "36460", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8652", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/15", "EXIF FNumber": "9/2", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Unidentified", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "1100", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2018:07:06 11:50:06", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2018:07:06 11:50:06", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "2", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "22/5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "30", "EXIF SubSecTime": "10", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "10", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "10", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "6016", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "4000", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "36302", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "45", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "High gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}