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Designs on Painted Pottery of Gansu

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    The painted pottery of Gansu is the earliest dated painted pottery culture that reached the  cultural zenith and lived the longest. The designs on the pottery are  prehistoric people’s direct reflection of nature and they displayed their  wishes, belief and worships with designs.   The makers, using their artistic wisdom, located the designs on  conspicuous position of the pottery of daily use and by applying colors that  gave strong impact to visual perception they     showed superbly power of expression of virtual with actual, black with  red, simple with complicated and abstract with concrete. And they left behind  with us a great number of brilliant artistic  treasures.

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                 Painted pottery of Dadiwan culture
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                            Colors varied and mainly are  brown

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     Most designs are crossed cord and slanting cord in heavy dark red with colored  rings along the inside and outside of ware mouth. There are more than ten types  of mysterious designs painted inside ware. They are considered by scholars as  symbolic records with specific meaning, or just symmetric design with  unidentified meanings. 

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                                Painted pottery of Yangshao  Culture

   Pottery mostly is red and designs mostly were painted in black. The color  assortment of red and black creates strong visual effect. Design was usually  painted around the middle part and only on the upper part of earlier wares but  it extended to the lower part and few wares have design painted all over the  body.  Inside designs appeared on late  wares and dance designs painted around rim increased. With time progression  design covered wider over ware and decorative function is increasingly  notable. 

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    Fish design is common for early Yangshao culture and it  continued as long as a thousand years. It was often painted on the upper and  middle parts of outside wall of ware in shape of round basin, though some bowls  and jars bears the designs on bottom.   Fish design was well arranged in order and rather regular. There are  usually two fishes painted on pottery, they are linked at head and tail with  each other, head was arranged at right and tail left. Fish design developed from  concrete to abstract and disappeared by the middle period of the Yangshao  Culture. The painted pottery basin with fish design is representative feature of  the Yangshao Culture and symbolizes the brilliant prehistoric culture of  China.  

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    Majiayao Culture can be divided into three types or periods  progressed in succession. Its pottery surface was polished smooth and shining.  The design was painted in black, red and white. Patterns often seen are spiral,  shell, concentric circle, saw tooth, diamond check, four big circles and  abstract celestial figure etc.  Their  characteristics of the times are very obvious. These designs were related  closely to the life and most of them reflect the worship of nature.

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  Spiral design begun in the late Yangshao Culture and became popular  in periods of Majiayao and Banshan. There are usually four central points as  centers of spirals, some has 6 or more. Design of spiral, spinning anticlockwise  and painted with black and red sawteeth strips forms two sides continual  patterns and increases effect of visual perception of spinning.  When the design is overlooked it looks like a  big whirlpool with ware mouth as center. The spiral design with fluent lines  inspires strong feeling of spinning and reflects the various-shaped backwashes  and endless whirling of the Yellow  River.

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   Design of Celestial figure, also Frog Design called by some scholar,  begun on pottery of the Majiaoyao Culture, is the most distinctive of all the  types of Banshan and Machang. Early image is fairly concrete, showing figure of  whole or partial human body.  Design of  Celestial figure of Banshan Type is abstract and by the late Banshan period it  transformed. Head became big with no facial features but filled with patterns.  Upper and lower limbs with ends stretching upwards have some claws. By the  period of the Machang Type it became more abstract. The circle indicating head  became bigger and some designs use the round mouth of ware as the circle and  only limbs were painted on the upper part of the object. Lower limbs increased  to three from two. the design of celestial figure of late Machang has no more  head and changed to geometry pattern finally. 

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    The most representative design of the Machang Type is Four Big  Circles. The design was originated from the Spiral Design of Banshan Type. It  consists of four circles mainly decorated on upper parts of big-sized wares. It  was made by first painting four big circles in red, then painting four ring  strips inside and outside the circles and filling the circles with various  geometric patterns. This design was considered as origin of design on porcelain  appeared later.
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