Painted pottery is a kind of exquisite pottery widely popular in Neolithic age in China, and it is an outstanding achievement of Yangshao culture. Most of them are handmade, and the common shapes are bowls, pots, bowls, cans, bottles and other utensils, containers, pumps and so on. Its main feature is that the ceramic body is painted with brown, red, black and other colors, and then pressed, ground and sintered, and the painted color is not easy to fall off. Painted pottery paintings and decorative patterns have a strong flavor of life and a unique artistic style. Its decorative patterns include human body decoration, animal and plant decoration and a small number of human face patterns. These patterns are brightly colored and beautifully composed, and the patterns composed of some geometric lines are regular and changeable, with a strong sense of rhythm. The wonderful composition of some people and animals is mysterious with primitive witchcraft.

Tracing back to the origin of painted pottery, we must start with the invention of pottery, because only by producing pottery can painted pottery be produced. Our ancestors combined earth, water and fire to make pottery, which is one of the great inventions of prehistoric people.

The invention of pottery can be traced back to the early Neolithic age. At first, people used baskets made of bamboo, rattan and branches to hold water. Pottery was invented because of an accidental fire, the basket burned and the soil burned hard. Basket patterns are often found in pottery fragments unearthed in Wannian Xiandong, Jiangxi Province in the early Neolithic period in China. This kind of pottery adopts the most primitive "molding" pottery-making technology, weaving a basket mold with branches, and firing the basket mold after the soil hardens. Similar pottery-making techniques have been preserved in the Wa nationality in Cangyuan County of Yunnan Province and the Gaoshan nationality in Taiwan Province Province until modern times. Later, people went through the transitional stage of taking off the basket mold and continuing to form, and then entered the stage of making ceramics directly without basket mold. By the time of Hemudu culture 7000 years ago, its pottery-making technology had gradually matured and had its own characteristics.

Painted pottery jar of Majiayao culture With the progress of technology and the gradual enhancement of human aesthetic consciousness, people in Neolithic age gradually began to decorate pottery deliberately, so painted pottery came into being. Painting is the key link in making painted pottery. Neolithic ancestors painted a series of childish, simple and elegant decorative patterns on the prepared pottery blank with color pigments, which made the extremely ordinary pottery become precious prehistoric works of art as long as it was under the skillful hands of the Potter.

The earliest painted pottery in China originated from Dadiwan culture, and its color is dark red. After that, Yangshao culture and Majiayao culture were mainly black with a little white; During the "Mid-Levels and Machang" period, a large number of brown composite colors also appeared. During the excavation of some sites, some mineral pigments were unearthed. After years of scientific research, it has been proved that these pigments are an important reason for the gorgeous painted pottery.

Among the traditional arts in China, painted pottery is the earliest original artwork that perfectly combines patterns with object modeling. When drawing painted pottery, ancestors paid great attention to the relationship between patterns and modeling and perspective, and had noticed the visual effects of patterns from different angles. No matter from which angle, you can see the perfect picture, and the composition of the pattern is in harmony with the modeling of the equipment.