Opening photograph: a contemporary blue-and-white scrolling lotus gaiwan from Azure Blanc.
A flower on a porcelain cup may be painted directly on the surface, transferred from a printed design, or decorated using both methods. To make sense of a “hand-painted” description, ask which parts were painted on the piece. The outline and the colour inside it may have been applied differently.
A Painted Original Can Become a Print
When a decorator paints directly on porcelain, the brush carries colour onto that particular object. With transfer decoration, a design is printed onto a separate carrier and moved onto the ceramic surface. A ceramic decal is a printed transfer made for this purpose; the decoration is fixed by firing.
At Royal Delft, some transfer designs start as brush paintings on paper. The original is scanned and reproduced by screen printing. A printed cup can therefore carry the shapes of brushstrokes from the original artwork.
Printed decoration is part of contemporary Chinese ceramics too. Jingdezhen University's ceramic decal course follows the work from design and colour printing through application and firing. “Designed by an artist” and “painted by hand on this cup” describe different stages of making.
Look at the Outline as Well as the Colour
A printed design can also receive painted additions. The Museum of the Home records a porcelain plate with a pink transfer-printed pattern and painted colours over the glaze. Finding a painted detail is only part of the answer: the surrounding pattern may have been applied another way.
Our photograph of the scrolling lotus gaiwan gives you several distinct things to examine. Dark blue lines curl around the lid; inside the petals, the blue is paler. The fine circles at the lid's edge are separate from the flower-and-vine pattern. Follow a single petal from its outline into its centre, rather than judging the whole surface as one patch of blue.
For a piece you are considering, ask for a sharp close-up that shows both the outlines and the filled areas. If there are several cups in a set, a photograph of them together lets you compare the same motif. Differences are worth examining, but they do not settle the manufacturing method on their own. A photograph is most useful alongside a description of how the decoration was applied.
The position of the colour is a separate question. Blue beneath a clear glaze can be painted or printed. Our guide to underglaze blue and overglaze enamel explains that distinction.
Ask About the Whole Pattern
A useful question for the seller is: “Are the outlines and the colour both painted directly on each piece, or is a printed design used at any stage?” For a mixed technique, ask which details are added by hand. An answer about the flower alone leaves the border unexplained.
You might value the work of a painter on each cup, or simply love a particular printed pattern. Knowing how it was applied lets you make that choice. For a floral cup, a close view of one complete flower and the border beside it is a good place to start.
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