Jewelry Enamel Fish Ear Furnace
3 min readJewelry Enamel Fish Ear Furnace features copper body, gold plating, round belly and swelling body, outward inclined mouth and ring foot, folding on abdomen and two ear-shaped handles on neck and abdomen. Based on light blue glaze over the body, neck and abdomen are also decorated with intertwining lotus flfl ower pattern. This furnace enjoys elegant beautiful modeling, bright gorgeous colors and dazzlingly brilliant patterns, which looks magnificent, exquisite and luxurious. It not only combines moist of jade, gloss of jewelry, delicacy of porcelain, brightness of gold, but also smoothness and corrosion resistance of glass, which is both practical and beautiful. This furnace was made by Imperial Workshop in the Ming Dynasty. The production was all completed by hand, which crystallizes ability and cleverness of craftsmen. This furnace is one of representative artworks of Chinese traditional crafts—Jewelry Enamel.
Intertwining flower pattern shows wavy curly stem which is interspersed and winding with each other, which is also known as “string flfl ower” and “ivy”. It implies the auspicious signififi cance of “being forever evergreen and continuous”, which was a popular decorative pattern in the Ming Dynasty. Among them, such flfl ower pattern taking peony as leading role is called as “intertwining peony”, such flfl ower pattern taking lotus as leading role is called as “intertwining lotus”, such flower pattern taking chrysanthemum as leading role is called as “intertwining chrysanthemum”, and such flfl ower pattern taking peony, lotus, chrysanthemum and other flfl owers as leading role is called as “intertwining flfl owers for four seasons”.
Production Process of Jewelry Enamel
In the production of Jewelry Enamel, craftsmen should make purple copper body, draw on them, use copper wire to stick design patterns on the basis of drawn contents on copper body, and then embed different-color patterns into enamel glaze materials, and fifi nally make repeated sintering, polishing and gold plating. The production of Jewelry Enamel not only adopts metals and ceramics, but also borrows ideas from traditional hand-painting and carving techniques, which epitomizes the Chinese traditional arts and crafts.
Arts and crafts of the Ming Dynasty
Arts and crafts of the Ming Dynasty can fall into two systems: court system and folk system. The former features delicate precise style and exquisite workmanship; and the latter features simple bold style and artistic maturity. During this period, complete variety of arts and crafts was achieved, including dyeing, ceramics, lacquerware, metalwork, sculpture, furniture and decorations, etc. What is particularly worth mentioning is that the special process of Jewelry Enamel, integrating shape, decoration and color in one, appeared during this period. Production and decoration of furniture enjoyed high achievement, and formed a classic style.
Jewelry Enamel
Jewelry Enamel is also known as “copper body filigree enamel”. The filigree enamel process was invented in Arab countries, which was introduced to China in the Yuan Dynasty, and later evolved into a distinctive Chinese-style arts and crafts technique. The original Jewelry Enamel was mostly antique bronze vessel. In Xuande Period of the Ming Dynasty, the most sophisticated products sprang up. In Jingtai Period (1450-1456), c r a f t s m e n f o u n d dark blue (peacock blue and sapphire blue) glaze. With this glaze, craftworks are grand, brilliant, calm and generous, which are “Jewelry Enamel” still in use now. In Qianlong Period of the Qing Dynasty, Jewelry Enamel further adopted more escalating copper as raw material, and its craftsmanship level reached its peak.
