Ding (Ting) ware

A white northern Song dynasty ware characterized by its ivory tone, elegant forms and thin walls, the thinness resulting in unusually light pieces. Connoisseurs have long recognized that runs of glaze, which they termed "tear-drops", characteristically appear on the exteriors of Ding vessels. Composed almost entirely of kaolin (China clay), the bodies of Ding vessels are only slightly translucent, transmitting a warm orange light if they transmit light at all. Because the potters grasped the bowls very tightly to dip them in the glaze slurry, genuine Ding bowls almost always have fingernail impressions on the exterior walls of their foot rims, as well as fingerprint interruptions in the surrounding glaze.

Made in Dingzhou in western central Hebei province, Ding ware was ranked among the "five great wares of the Song", along with Jun. Ru, Guan and Ge ware. Ding (Ting) wares which was fired upside down leaving the rim bare of glaze was the favored imperial ware during Northern Song dynasty in the late tenth, eleventh and early twelfth centuries until it was replaced by the Celadon colored Ru ware from the kilns of Ru-zhou.

Much of the later Ding ware was made by a combination of throwing and moulding, usually by firmly beating thickly-thrown leatherhard dishes and bowls onto convex pottery moulds. The backs of the bowls, dishes and plates were then turned down to a fine thinness, with their feet sometimes finished with a hand-held profile in a way that anticipated modern jiggering.

The molded designs seen on late Northern Song and Jin dynasty Ding wares are particularly fine. Not only is the body material of the vessels themselves very fine-grained, but the molds made to decorate them were also made of similarly fine-grained clay. This material allowed very precise cutting of the intaglio design into the surface of the mold. It was, however, the skill of the mold makers at the Ding kilns that produced the careful and minute modulation of the design that would appear in low relief on the surface of the finished Ding vessel. The fact that the molds were fired only to a low temperature, and were still very porous when used, allowed them to draw water from the clay of the damp vessels pressed onto them, facilitating the more precise impression.

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© Jan-Erik Nilsson, Gothenburg, Sweden 1998-2007