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Q: Wouldn't it be relatively easy to make a mold of an old plate and pop out new ones?
You can replicate the general shape of any ceramic piece by making molds, but clay is wet and contains a lot of water. Even after an unfired clay piece has dried, there remains a great deal of space between the clay or paste particles, that will collapse during the firing process when the piece basically melts. An unfired piece of porcelain will actually shrink anywhere between 20% and 30% during the firing process.
To reproduce an old piece at the same final size, you would need to make a new mold that compensates for this shrinkage. For example, to end up with a plate that measures 23 cm in diameter, you would need to make a new mold about one fifth larger—approximately 27 cm in diameter in its unfired state.
There is much to say about how this issue was handled at the ancient kilns, but one important detail is that they employed specialists specifically tasked with making molds. It is also worth remembering that size is critical to the authentication of imperial pieces, which would have been highly profitable if they could have been accurately reproduced from molds.
Jan-Erik Nilsson
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