Glazed Tile

Feb 15th, 2007
Posted by handicraft

The glazed tile,as  a high-grade building material in old China,was used exclusively on palace buildings of the imperial house of the big mansions of nobles and high officials.

The glaze was normally in one of four colours:yellow,green,blue and black.Tiles coated with it not only add splendour to the buildings but,in old times,carried a political significandce.

Yellow tiles were reserved for use on the roofs of royal palaces,mausoleums,imperial gardens and temples.This,it is said,was because yellow is the colour of the Yellow River,once believed to be the cradle of the Chinese civilization.Probably for the same reason the earliest leader of the alliance of the tribes in prehistoric legend was named Huangdi or the Yellow Emperor,whose descendams all Chinese are supposed to be,in the meantime,the ancients believed that the physical universe was composed of five elements--metal,wood,water,fire and earth,and the yellow colour represented earth which lay at the centre of the universe.Yellow,therefore,was taken as the cardinal colour of the core and became the royal colour to be used exclusively by the rulers.

It can be seen that the colours of the roof tiles indicated the positions of the people who lived in the house.Even in the same part,as for instance the Summer Palace of Beijing,differently coloured tiles were used for different houses.The groups of halls and pavilions used by the monarch and his family,visitors will notice,have yellow roofs whereas the quarters for the court officials have green roofs.As for other structures erected for landscaping or for the accommodation of people with out a senior rank,they have as a rule black tiles.

Tiles of yellow glaze,however,also cover certain halls which were not built for the imperial family,as for instance temples dedicated to Confucius and Guan Yu*,worshipped for his bravery and loyalty,but this was because they were canonized by emperors of later dynasties as their equals and given posthumous titles as such.

Colours on ancient buildings were not only status indicators but in certain cases carried other implications.One example is Wenyuange,the imperial library in Beijing's Forbidden City which,amidst many yellow roofs,stands under a roof of black tiles.The reason:books were liable to catch fire,black was wupposed to be the colour of water,and a black-coloured roof would mean ever-ready water to put out fires.

Another example is the buildings of the Temple of Heaven.They were roofed with blue tiles,for the evident reason that blue is the colour of Heaven.
Incidentally,mention should be made of the red enclosure walls that invariably go with the yellow roofs of imperial palaces.Red has always been the colour of happiness and festivity in China;even today red lanterns and red streamers are still dominant featrues on occasions of pubilc enjoyment.Red walls,however,could only be built for palaces and temples and,in combination with the yellow glazed roofs,they were meant to play up the atmosphere of solemnity and happiness.

*A famous general of the period of the Three Kingdoms(220-280 A.D.)

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