Provenance of the cobalt pigment used for Jingdezhen minyao blue-and-white porcelain in the early Qing dynasty

The earliest cobalt application to porcelains can be traced back to the Tang dynasty (618-907). The production of the widely recognised blue-and-white porcelains in Jingdezhen did not mature until the late Yuan dynasty. According to historical texts, imported cobalt pigments were applied to blue-and-white porcelains in Jingdezhen kilns from the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368), and native Chinese cobalt pigments replaced imported sources in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). As such, scholars have focused intensive studies on the sources of these blue pigments used in the Yuan and Ming dynasties. In this study, fifteen fragments of blue-and-white porcelain excavated from Jingdezhen minyao sites were selected to investigate the provenance of the cobalt pigment used in the Reigns of Kangxi (1662-1722), Yongzheng (1723-1735) and Qianlong (1735-1795). The results suggests that the cobalt rich materials correlate more closely to the Yunnan asbolites, rather than the widely-accepted Zhejiang asbolites mentioned in the historical texts and publications.