Famille Rose · Blossoms After Rain

01The story

Famille rose is an overglaze enamel technique, conventionally dated to the late Kangxi period and more fully developed under Yongzheng and Qianlong. Materials including opaque white enamel and rendering techniques create gradual light and shadow across petals and leaves, moving overglaze colour from flat fills toward delicate tonal layers. This theme takes its visual cue from the common structure of famille-rose floral decoration: porcelain white as the ground, rouge at the flower centres, and pea green, pale yellow and lake blue crossing in small areas. The vessel, branches and blossom composition are original Theme Atlas drawings rather than copies of a particular object.

02Where the colours come from

The interface uses only porcelain white, pale pink, rouge and deep ink in restrained roles. Decorative pea green, pale yellow and lake blue remain outside the semantic UI palette. The Palace Museum’s peach-blossom vase offers a clue to white-ground enamelling and petals deepening toward the centre; Palace Museum material on famille-rose techniques provides the period and process context.

03How the palette was built

Famille rose can easily become a generic pink interface, so the ground stays a warm porcelain white and the panel only a pale pink-grey. Rouge is concentrated in links, buttons and small focal marks. The syntax palette separates rouge, pea green, lake blue, pale gold and deep ink; illustration colours never take over the responsibilities of code or body text.

04Sources and references

• LinkFamille-Rose Vase with Peach-Blossom Design (粉彩桃花纹直颈瓶)↗Palace Museum collection recordUsed to check white-ground enamelling, floral rendering and layered colour; the site does not copy its design.
• ClassicA History of Chinese Ceramics (中国陶瓷史)Feng XianmingGeneral chronology for overglaze famille-rose enamelling in the Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong periods.
• ClassicYinliuzhai Shuoci (饮流斋说瓷)Ji Yuansou (Chen Liu), Qing dynastyLater critical vocabulary for famille rose, foreign colour and related painted porcelains.

05Credits and licence

Palette

Theme Atlas editorial team

Text

Theme Atlas editorial team

Graphics

Theme Atlas (original SVG)

Data licence

Palette data released under CC BY 4.0

Illustration licence

All illustrations are original SVGs; no specific museum pattern or photograph is reproduced.