After signaling to everyone, Chu Chen took the plate and began examining it carefully. The body, glaze, and treatment of the "iron-rust spots" did indeed bear the characteristics of the Yongzheng period.
But as he had just said, there had been neither the conditions nor any examples of imitating Yuan blue-and-white porcelain during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Could those few points mentioned above, together with the Yuan Dynasty mark left on the bottom, prove that this was Yongzheng-period imitation Yuan blue-and-white porcelain? Obviously, that was impossible.
Thus, Chu Chen took out a magnifying glass and began carefully examining the bubbles in the plate's glaze.
Chu Chen believed that using a magnifying glass to study whether the bubbles on a piece of porcelain were old or new was extremely important. If one mastered the technique well, one would buy fewer imitations.
Some experts denied the validity of bubble analysis. Chu Chen felt that they simply had not devoted enough effort to studying it. To them, looking at bubbles was like looking at a heavenly text: they were confused and bewildered, so denying it was the easiest solution. Yet many people studied tirelessly and eventually found a way to decipher that heavenly text.
When examining the age of bubbles, one had to compare pieces from the same period and of the same type. For example, with Yuan blue-and-white porcelain, one had to separately compare pieces made with Sumaliqing material and those made with domestic material. One could not mix together the bubbles from porcelain of different categories and periods. Such a comparison would have no basis and would only leave one trying to see flowers through mist.
The conditions for analyzing bubbles were easy enough to meet. All one needed was a magnifying glass, or preferably a microscope, and porcelain fragments