Diversified Porcelain Pilows of the Song Dynasty
1 min readPillow boasts a long history in China.It is believed that the earliest pillow was just a natural stone block.As time passed by，pillows made from different materials，such as bamboo，wood and jade were invented.Porcelain pillows began to appear in the Sui and Tang era along with the improvement of firing technique，and by the Song dynasty，it had become a common category of porcelain products.
Porcelain pillows were produced in many Song kilns, while those from the Cizhou kiln are the most famous andtake the majority among all the porcelain pillows we see today.
Porcelain pillows of the Song dynasty present rich shapes and decorations. Some of them took after shapes of human beings or animals, while others adopted geometric shapes, like silver ingot, square or oval. Patterns concerning all aspects of life, such as flowers, human figures and animals were applied on these pillows.More interestingly，like the Changsha kiln of the Tang dynasty，Song porcelain pillows also frequently applied Chinese characters as decorations，which expressed people’s free and easy attitude towards life.These pillows in diversified shapes and decorations bring us back to vivid daily scenes of the Song era，and enable us to enjoy the tranquility and leisure of people’s life then.The white-glazed pillow in the shape of a boy from the Ding kiln（collected in the Palace Museum），with its exquisite craftsmanship and lovely form，is a masterpiece of Song porcelain pillow.
