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When celadon was the majority of the market in the Song Dynasty, the Jun Kiln was making its special colorful glaze porcelains. The Jun kiln was located in the Yu County, Henan Province, close to the Song capital Kaifeng City. The Jun Kiln was established by the government in the Northern Song Dynasty and its porcelains used to be the favorite for the Emperor Huizong. In the Southern Song Dynasty, the Jun Kiln was one of the biggest kilns in North China. It was finally closed in the late Yuan Dynasty.

The design of the Jun porcelains were simple and unsophisticated, but very modest. The glaze color was usually sky-blue or moon-white. The Jun Kiln also created a very special copper red. The copper red color was caused by a special procedure called the furnace-transmutation. The Jun Kiln used copper-rich glaze to cover the roughcasts. The copper was very sensative to the variation of the kiln conditions. A tiny change of the temperature of air can create totally different color. The copper red was treasured by the Song nobles. Other colors such as violet or peach pink were also very welcome. The changing color on the porcelain vessels formed different natural pictures: some like mountains in the mist, some like green bamboos, some like waterfall in the valley. Some scholars called it "one color into the kiln and ten thousand colors out of the furnace."

In the Song Dynasty, the imperial family used many rare and valuable plants and stones to decorate their gardens. Therefore the government established the Jun Kiln to produce special flower vases, jars or basins to hold the flowers or stones. The production procedure was very strict.

 

Background Knowledge: History of China

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