Because many of the guests at the scene had reservations about this Xuande-era Ming blue-and-white large dish with a cloud-and-dragon pattern and chrysanthemum-shaped rim, and because items from the Black Market had always been a mix of genuine and fake, when the auctioneer announced the start of bidding, hardly anyone responded. In the end, Chu Chen easily bought it for eighty thousand.
After Chu Chen swiped his card, paid, and collected the lot, he returned to his seat. Qiao Qingtai said worriedly, "Little Chu, I admit this thing really does look like the genuine article, but you should also know that early Ming Official Kiln rejects rarely made their way into the hands of ordinary people."
The reason Qiao Qingtai said this was that the Ming and Qing Official Kiln in the Porcelain Capital was funded by the government and supervised by appointed officials. Its products were mainly supplied for the emperor and imperial family, used as ritual vessels in the imperial ancestral temples, or given as imperial gifts. The standards for quality were self-evident.
The Official Kiln porcelain passed down to us today was generally fine in quality and exquisite in craftsmanship, flawless in every way. Yet behind these beautiful surviving pieces lay the price of countless defective products.
As mentioned earlier, the ratio of first-rate porcelain selected for imperial use at the Ming Official Kiln was often "one in ten," or even "not one in a hundred."
Apart from differing in quality, the rejected porcelain had exactly the same decorative methods and content. According to the regulations of the time, porcelain bearing a two-horned, five-clawed dragon pattern, yellow glaze, or an imperial reign mark was exclusively for the emperor and imperial family, and its circulation among the common people was strictly forbidden.
Under these restrictions, during the early