Underglaze-red Stem Bowl with Triple Fish Design

Stem bowl with red triple fish design was an invention during the Xuande reign. Other than painting the copper red pigment on the biscuit beneath the transparent glaze layer, the traditional way of making an underglaze-red porcelain ware, the craftsman first applied transparent glaze layer to the entire biscuit, after firing, he removed parts of the transparent glaze (including a certain depth of the biscuit) and filled with copper-based glaze and re-fired it at high temperatures. The resulted red fish design touches raised with the natural luster of ruby. InRecord of Jingdezhen Ceramics (Jingdezhen Taolu), the extant ceramics archive, the manufacturing technique is called “red fill-in”. Here, the term “underglaze-red” in the title does not reflect the exact manufacturing technique of this piece of work but a loose term.