Provenance of the cobalt pigment used for Jingdezhen minyao blue-and-white porcelain in the early Qing dynasty

Abstract

The earliest cobalt application to porcelains can be traced back to the Tang dynasty (618–907). The production of the widely recognised blue-and-white porcelains in Jingdezhen did not mature until the late Yuan dynasty. According to historical texts, imported cobalt pigments were applied to blue-and-white porcelains in Jingdezhen kilns from the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), and native Chinese cobalt pigments replaced imported sources in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). As such, scholars have focused intensive studies on the sources of these blue pigments used in the Yuan and Ming dynasties. In this study, fifteen fragments of blue-and-white porcelain excavated from Jingdezhen minyao sites were selected to investigate the provenance of the cobalt pigment used in the Reigns of Kangxi (1662–1722), Yongzheng (1723–1735) and Qianlong (1735–1795). The results suggests that the cobalt rich materials correlate more closely to the Yunnan asbolites, rather than the widely-accepted Zhejiang asbolites mentioned in the historical texts and publications.