Sancai
Tang sancai wares were sometimes referred in China and the West as egg-and-spinach by dealers, for their use of green, yellow, and white, especially when combined with a streaked effect.
The brown and green colours came from adding metal oxides to a lead glaze, and in fact blues and blacks are also found.
[5] The body of sancai ceramics was made of white clay, coated with coloured glaze, and fired at a temperature of 800 degrees Celsius.
Sancai is a type of lead-glazed earthenware: lead oxide was the principal flux in the glaze, often mixed with quartz in the proportion of 3:1.
[6] At kiln sites located at Tongchuan, Neiqui county in Hebei and Gongxian in Henan,[7] the clays used for burial wares were similar to those used by Tang potters.
[9] Sancai wares were made in north China using white and buff-firing secondary kaolins and fire clays.
The great majority of survivals are from burial goods, which in the intervening period are painted with pigments that are not fired (and so have now mostly fallen off the piece).
Northern Qi tombs have revealed some beautiful artifacts, such as porcellaneous ware with splashed green designs, previously thought to have been developed under the Tang dynasty.
Sancai travelled along the Silk Road, to be later extensively used in Syrian, Cypriot, and then Italian pottery from the 13th to the middle of the 15th century.
Under the Qing dynasty (1644–1910), sancai wares were one of several earlier Chinese styles revived at a high quality level, reflecting the antiquarian tastes of the emperors.
These pieces were made in Jingdezhen porcelain, with generally the sancai palette used in glazes to decorate contemporary shapes, often using bold splashes for a "dappled" effect.
In the 1980s and early 1990s reproductions of Tang sancai pieces were sent by the Chinese government to foreign leaders as gifts, and became very popular within China.
They churned out shoddy Tang-style sancai pieces in vast numbers, until they began to undercut each other in a chaotic price war.
