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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Ken Yap, post: 4311983, member: 18699&quot;]Thank you for your view.</p><p><br /></p><p>As far as I know, min yao just means &quot;of the common people&quot; and as such there is no need for them to be marked. As I said, these 3 bowls were probably made as rough roadside restaurant wares, the type used by itinerant hawkers or found in stopover rest houses in China (the type in which there is inevitably a fight in old kungfu films), or used by coolies abroad.</p><p><br /></p><p>Kitchen Qing was invented as a term in an effort to separate colourful festive nonyaware used predominantly by the Peranakans, from their daily use blue-&amp;-white wares. One mistake that book made was to include all provincial B&amp;W wares, the finer as well as the crude. Whereas the colourful variety featured were predominantly used by the Peranakans, some of the coarser B&amp;W variety were not. That book compared a crate of different coloured apples to a crate of different coloured fruits.</p><p><br /></p><p>Nonya daughters were given 2 sets of crockery for their wedding: the &quot;kitchen Qing&quot; was meant for daily use and the colourful variety for festive use, as the overglazed enamels would be melted by the oily food in no time at all. These 3 bowls would be considered too cheap to be given as a wedding present and would be a loss of face for the family.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>For the Peranakans, the finer ware was called &quot;Shanghai ware&quot;, which includes the finer B&amp;W wares, the really fine ones. The coarse ware they called &quot;batik ware&quot;. These 3 bowls would fall under the latter category, if at all. Of course Peranakans could also use them in the kitchen - for cooking and condiments, but not to eat from unless they were impoverished - hence &quot;kitchen Qing&quot; is not wrong of course, but I still prefer boerenming or, to coin another term, boerenqing... farmers&#039; ware in the Ming and Qing periods.</p><p><br /></p><p>I hope I am not seen as insulting the beauty of these bows, as I love rustic charm myself, quite often preferring the crude to the fine.</p><p><br /></p><p>Post script: Flipping through the book again, I see vases, chamber pots and some pieces which could well have been taken as family heirlooms by the indigenous peoples, so again the term &quot;kitchen&quot; doesn&#039;t sit too well with me.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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