My system is not decent

It is not easy to reveal the mystery of colored glazes, especially some of the top glaze colors, how can it be so easy to fire?

After the establishment of the Republic, it took more than 50 years to develop more than 40 kinds of color glazes.

Langhong is one of the most famous colored glazes.

But "if you want to be poor, burn Langhong", it is really not for nothing.

Just from this popular saying, it vividly illustrates the difficulty of firing Langhong.

"To burn Langhong, one must be prepared to go bankrupt."

Chen Wenzhe had fired Lang Hong before, so he was well aware of the difficulty of firing Lang Hong.

This time I mentioned Langhong porcelain again, mainly because Langhong is related to the firing process of Liuxia lamp.

They are all copper red glazes, all of which are high-temperature colored glazes. The most important thing in their firing process is temperature control.

Because the temperature of the traditional kiln is not easy to control, and the predecessors did not grasp the law of kiln transformation, the failure rate of firing Langhong is extremely high.

Master Deng Xiping discovered through long-term scientific research and repeated experiments that there is a temperature range of 5 degrees Celsius for the appearance of the red color.

If the kiln temperature is higher or lower than this range, it will fail.

Later, by improving the formula and other methods, he extended this temperature range to 80 degrees Celsius, which greatly reduced the difficulty of firing.

However, the difficulty of firing Langhong is not only the formula and temperature of the glaze.

Processes such as billet drawing, glazing, and firing are also very critical, and flaws will appear if there is a slight negligence.

As mentioned earlier, Master Deng has overcome many difficulties in red firing of Lang Kiln, making it easier to fire Lang Kiln.

However, the difficulty here is that it is easy to succeed in firing copper red glaze, but not all copper red glaze works are fired only by controlling the temperature.

For example, when firing a BMW, Master Deng Xiping tried many times when he fired a Lang Hong BMW, but the finished product was still crooked.

In the end, it was found that the problem was the horse's head, because the statue was top-heavy and unstable.

Under high temperature, deformation will occur.

After making targeted improvements, the firing of the sweaty BMW was successful.

The whole body is dark red BMW, the fur is shiny, and it looks like a steed.

If you look closely, you can find that under the shiny surface, there is a silky texture similar to horse hair, which is amazing.

In fact, just slightly modifying the shape of the BMW here can be fired successfully.

However, this is a small device type, what if it is a large device type?

Not to mention anything else, just a stick of mud can torture you to death.

Few people know that it usually takes more than half a year to burn a large porcelain that is two or three meters high.

After a year, it is not surprising that the firing is still unsuccessful.

Why?Let’s talk about large-scale clay bars, do you think it’s the same as making small-scale ones, you can just pull out the embryo and trim it?

That's not the case at all, it's very difficult to make embryos in Daqi.

Therefore, it turned out that Chen Wenzhe said that it is not easy to make large-scale vessels, and it is even more difficult to successfully fire them.

So where is the difficulty?The center of gravity mentioned just now is counted as one. When firing eggshell pottery goblets, special attention should be paid to the center of gravity.

If the center of gravity is unstable, the shape of the vessel will definitely fail to be fired. If the temperature is slightly heated, the shape of the vessel will be deformed, and this is not the most important thing.

There are six basic techniques of pottery art, and one of the basic forming methods is called the clay strip coil construction method.

To put it simply, the method of building clay sticks is to use mud sticks of uniform thickness to make works of various shapes.

This is one of the oldest methods of making pottery. When making porcelain, the works made of clay strips have the characteristics of uniform wall thickness and easy firing. Sometimes the natural texture of the clay strips can be preserved, making people feel vivid and vivid. Variety.

When using the mud stick method, the thickness of the wall can be determined according to the size of the work.

The wall thickness of the work is large, and the clay strips used are also thick;

For small works with thin walls, the clay strips used are also thin.

This is why there is often such a method for making large vessels, because there is no way to draw embryos for large vessels.

The method of coiling the mud strips can be changed, for example, it can be coiled in a circle, it can be coiled in a spiral shape, and some decorative mud strips can be added to make it produce a special aesthetic feeling.

It is also simple to do, that is, take a piece of mud, knead it into mud balls of the same size, roll them into mud sticks, and pay attention to the even strength of both hands.

Next, use a strip of mud to form a snail circle as the bottom, then use a carving knife to carve out the rough edge, and apply mud on the rough edge.

Then start to coil the mud strips on the bottom plate. When coiling the mud strips, pay attention to the joints between the mud strips to be pressed tightly, and tools can also be used to smooth the inner wall.

Finishing and firing are finished.

However, for a real master, if you don’t talk about other things, just talk about the time of panning the mud strips. You can’t pan out a large vat with a height of more than one meter in one go, right?

Not to mention anything else, just gravity can crush and deform the embryo, not to mention drying it in the shade before firing it.

Therefore, it is extremely time-consuming to make a large utensil, and generally it is slowly rolled up from the bottom.

Wait until the lower part dries up a bit and reaches a firmness that can support the weight of the upper part before proceeding.

In this way, the clay strips are rolled one by one, and finally the embryo making is completed, and it can only be fired in the kiln after all the complicated processes behind are completed.

However, when you open the kiln and check the firing situation, you often see failed products.

Flowing glaze, glaze change, poor hair color, these are minor problems.

The big problem is that it cracks directly, and the worst case is that it burns and collapses directly, and the entire shape of the vessel collapses and is completely destroyed.

Why?It is because of the mud strips that there are problems when making mud tires.

Dry and wet problems, density problems, heat problems, etc., etc., if any of the problems are not dealt with in place, the final result is firing failure.

Think about it, it took half a year, or even a year, and finally the firing was completed, but when you open the kiln, you can see that it is indeed a deformed porcelain, and you can't see it at all. How depressed it was at that time ?

Chen Wenzhe's firing success rate actually relies on his inherited experience. If he didn't have this experience, how could he have such a high success rate in firing porcelain?

Unfortunately, in the course of thousands of years of development, many porcelain-making techniques have been lost.

For example, the "Liuxia Cup" in the Ming Dynasty was originally only seen in the poems of the ancients, and no one has seen the real thing.

Master Deng Xiping spent 23 years cracking the secret of Liuxiazhan's craftsmanship.

He was even able to combine the craftsmanship of the secret porcelain of the Tang Dynasty to successfully develop the "secret glaze Liuxia lamp".

Such a work, the color is like flowing clouds, glamorous and unparalleled!

But how many people really want to make a perfect secret color glaze Liuxia lamp, how many people know the difficulty?

Different colors can appear only through the glaze prepared from the original ore, which undergoes physical and chemical changes at high temperature to form a gemstone structure.

Changes in the composition of the raw ore, changes in the firing process, and even different kiln positions will affect the final color.