Item number: P6

Year: AD 1868-1910

Material: Porcelain

Size: 17.7 x 8.4 cm

Provenance: Guang Ya Zhai 2026

This is a Siamese five-coloured bowl adorned with deities and mythical beasts, representing a type of Chinese export porcelain from the Qing Dynasty.

Morphologically, the bowl features a slightly everted rim, slanting walls, and is supported by a ring foot; it has a white porcelain body embellished with overglaze enamels. The interior wall is primarily coated with an opaque turquoise ground, a high-alkaline enamel that came into general use only after the Qianlong and Jiaqing eras. The center of the interior well is decorated with a water-lettuce-leaf motif (lai dok chok), encircled by a foliate border, which constitutes a classic decorative design from the seventeenth-century Ayutthaya period. On the exterior wall, the primary ornamentation consists of alternating figures of Buddhist deities in a praying posture (Thepanom) and profile mythical beasts (Norasingh), both rendered in relatively large proportions. The deities wear Thai-style tiered pagoda crowns and are enveloped by full-body aureoles filled with iron-red enamel, with their hands clasped in prayer and their lower bodies clad in petal skirts. The mythical beasts similarly wear high crowns with haloes behind their heads, possessing a lion-like body with assumed wings and deer-like hooves, which likely signify one of the avatars of Vishnu. The background filler consists of white-bordered fire-and-cloud scrolls reserved against a black ground. The registers are demarcated above and below by classic scrolls and floral bands on a green ground, and white floral and foliate bands on a reddish-brown ground, exhibiting a dense composition and rich, saturated coloration. The red enamel within the fire-and-cloud scrolls and the green-ground floral bands verges slightly on a pinkish-purple hue, a color palette that came into use starting from the latter half of the eighteenth century. The exterior of the ring foot is applied with iron-red enamel, whilst the interior base remains white-glazed. The enamels are thickly applied, rendering parts of the design subtly palpable in relief, and noticeable usage wear and enamel loss are discernible in the interior well and along the rim.

From around AD 1220 onwards, Siam (present-day Thailand) established formal diplomatic relations with China, maintaining long-term maritime trade networks through frequent tributary missions and reciprocal exchanges of gifts. Although Chinese tradition regarded such interactions as a suzerain-vassal tributary relationship, the Thai perceived them as a pragmatic mechanism to secure bilateral friendship and maritime trading privileges; this mutual exchange of tributary missions persisted until it formally concluded in AD 1863 during the Tongzhi reign of the Qing Dynasty. During the Ming Dynasty of China, kilns in northern Thailand, such as those at Sukhothai and Sawankhalok, had already begun mass-producing and exporting stoneware vessels whose forms manifested Chinese influence. Concurrently, there are historical records documenting the importation of early Ming Dynasty Chinese blue-and-white porcelain into Thailand.

Following the rescission of maritime prohibitions in the early Qing Dynasty, Chinese ceramic workshops began experimenting with the manufacture of specialized wares painted entirely in overglaze enamels and integrated with traditional Thai aesthetic expressions, according to the specific specifications commissioned by the Siamese royal court and nobility; this unique category became known to posterity as “Sino-Thai ceramics.” The most core division within this repertoire is Siamese five-coloured (Bencharong) porcelain, a name derived from Sanskrit signifying a type of polychrome ceramic adorned with five overglaze enamel colors. During the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries of the Ayutthaya period, this high-grade porcelain was produced exclusively for the Thai royal house and upper-class nobility. In AD 1767, Taksin dismantled the Burmese occupation of Ayutthaya, relocated the capital, and established the Thonburi Dynasty. Following Taksin’s mental derangement in his twilight years, Rama I executed him and founded the Chakri Dynasty. To replenish the royal utensils lost during the catastrophic fall of the state, the court commissioned a vast quantity of porcelain from kilns at Jingdezhen and other regional centers.

By the nineteenth century, the trade of Sino-Thai ceramics reached the apex of its total prosperity as Thailand entered the Bangkok or Rattanakosin period, and the circulation of these wares gradually extended from the royal court to regional nobility. During the reigns of Rama II and Rama III, which coincided with the Jiaqing and Daoguang eras in China, the import volume of Sino-Thai porcelain achieved its historical zenith. Throughout this epoch, alongside Bencharong wares, a completely new category characterized by more intricate and sumptuous decoration, known as Lai Nam Thong (gold-washed patterns), gained immense prominence. This gold-decorated porcelain was predominantly commissioned by the queen of Rama II; after the glaze and underlayer enamels were fired, the artisans added a mixture of gold dust, iron-red enamel, and gum arabic during the final stage, executing a third, low-temperature firing in a muffle kiln. This process allowed the gold to interlace with the polychrome enamels as backgrounds, outlines, or local accents, and due to its exceedingly prohibitive production costs, it became a highly recognizable category of export porcelain reserved exclusively for the Bangkok royal court.

In the mid-to-late nineteenth century, because of budget reductions, the private workshops at Jingdezhen lacked rigorous official supervision during the Daoguang era, causing a decline in the quality of porcelain bodies and enamel pigments for a portion of the trade wares. Subsequently, the Taiping Rebellion, which erupted during the Xianfeng era, thoroughly devastated the kilns of Jingdezhen, abruptly severing the regular supply of porcelain merchandise. Deprived of direct access to finished products from Jingdezhen, artisans during the reign of Rama IV in Thailand even began importing unpainted blank bodies or standard blue-and-white wares from Chinese provincial kilns, executing a secondary overpainting of Thai patterns in Thailand. This trade was revived during the Guangxu era after the ceramic industry at Jingdezhen experienced a resurgence following its reconstruction during the Tongzhi reign. King Rama V of Thailand once again dispatched extensive official commissions to China for Bencharong and Lai Nam Thong porcelains, which included a vast number of archaistic vessels replicating the classical Ayutthaya style. Ultimately, however, with the demise of King Rama V in AD 1910 and the collapse of the Great Qing Dynasty in AD 1911, the production of these uniquely styled Sino-Thai ceramics ceased permanently, drawing a definitive curtain on this historical phenomenon.

物件編號: P6

年代: 公元 1868-1910 年

材料: 陶瓷

尺寸: 17.7 x 8.4 cm

來源: 廣雅齋 2026

這是一個暹羅五色天人神獸紋碗，為清代外銷瓷器。

碗緣微外侈，斜腹，圈足，白瓷胎，釉上多彩裝飾。內壁主施不透明的綠松石色地（Turquoise），該高鹼釉料於乾嘉之後才普遍流行。碗心飾水芙蓉葉紋（lai dok chok），周圍有一圈葉紋邊飾，為十七世紀阿瑜陀耶時期的經典紋飾；外壁主紋以佛教合掌天人（Thepanom）與側身的獅身人面神獸（Norasingh）形象交替排列，且比例較大。天人頭戴泰式塔狀高冠，舉身遍光，光冕填以鐵紅釉，雙手合掌，身著瓣狀裙。神獸則同樣頭戴高冠，腦後有光冕，獅身而疑有翼，具鹿掌，應為毗濕奴的化身之一。周圍飾黑地白邊火雲紋。上下以綠地卷草花卉帶與紅褐地白花葉帶框飾，構圖繁密，色彩濃艷。火雲紋與綠地卷草花卉帶的紅釉微帶粉紫，為十八世紀後半開始使用的釉彩。足圈外側則施有鐵紅釉彩，內側則為白釉。彩料厚重，局部具浮凸感，碗心與口沿可見使用磨耗與退彩。

自公元1220年左右起，暹羅(今泰國)便與中國建立了正式的邦交關係，雙方藉由頻繁的朝貢與互贈禮品維繫著長期的海上貿易網絡。儘管中國傳統上將此類交往視為宗主國與屬國之間的朝貢關係，但泰國人更將其視為確保雙邊友誼與海上貿易特權的務實手段，這種朝貢使團的互往一直延續至清代同治時期的公元1863年方才終結。在中國明代，泰國北部的素可泰與宋加洛窯廠已開始大量燒造並出口器型受中國影響的炻器製品。與此同時，明代早期的中國青花瓷器亦有輸入泰國的紀錄

隨著清代早期海禁的解除，此時的中國窯廠開始嘗試依照暹羅王室與貴族的具體規格要求，燒造出完全施以釉上彩繪且融入泰國傳統美學語彙的特殊品類，也就是後世所稱的「中泰瓷器」。這其中最為核心的門類便是暹羅五色（Bencharong，或音譯為班加隆）瓷器，其名稱源自梵文，意指由五種釉上色彩繪製而成的五彩瓷器。在十七至十八世紀的阿瑜陀耶時期，這類高檔瓷器專為泰國皇家與上層貴族燒造。公元1767年，鄭信滅亡阿瑜陀耶，遷都並建立吞武里王朝。晚年精神失常後，拉瑪一世處決達信，並建立扎克里王朝。為補充在浩劫中所損失的皇家用具，向景德鎮等窯訂購了大量瓷器。

十九世紀後，中泰瓷器貿易隨著泰國進入曼谷拉達那哥欣時期而達到了全面繁榮的巔峰，其流通範圍亦逐步自皇室擴大至地方貴族。在拉瑪二世與拉瑪三世統治時期，正值中國的嘉慶與道光年間，中泰瓷器的進口量達到了歷史最大規模。這一時期除暹羅五色瓷外，一種類型更為繁複奢華、被稱作「金線彩」的全新門類在此時大放異彩。金線彩瓷器多由拉瑪二世的王后親自下單定製，工匠在燒成釉面與彩料後，於最後階段添加由金粉、鐵紅彩及阿拉伯膠混合的材料，經由紅爐第三次低溫燒成，使黃金以背景、輪廓或局部點綴的形式與五彩交相輝映，因造價極其高昂，而成為極具辨識度的曼谷皇室專用外銷瓷器。

在十九世紀中後期，道光年間景德鎮窯廠因經費削減而缺乏嚴格監管，導致部分貿易瓷的瓷胎與彩料品質出現下滑，隨後咸豐年間爆發的太平天國運動更是徹底摧毀了景德鎮的窯爐，使瓷器的正常供應被迫中斷。在無法直接從景德鎮獲得成品的情況下，泰國拉瑪四世時期的工匠甚至開始從中國地方省級窯廠進口白胎或普通青花，並在泰國本土進行泰式圖案的二次過期加彩燒造。直至光緒年間，景德鎮窯業在同治朝重建後迎來復興，泰國拉瑪五世國王再次向中國發出大量暹羅五色瓷與金線彩瓷器的官方訂單，其中有大量重現阿瑜陀耶風格的復古瓷器。但最終，隨著公元1910年拉瑪五世國王的逝世，以及公元1911年大清王朝的覆滅，而使風格獨特的中泰瓷器因此成為絕響。