‘Blue-and-white’ decoration describes Chinese ceramics painted with blue pigment onto a white clay body. Early blue-and-white objects date to the Tang dynasty (618–906) and display a coarse, greyish clay, rather than a ‘white’ ceramic body. To improve the whiteness, entire objects were often covered with a white slip. After the clay of the porcelain object dried, the blue cobalt pigment was applied with a brush before the artefact was glazed. The potted, painted and glazed vessel was then fired at a temperature of 1250–1300℃. This ‘underglaze’ technique endures today and continues to be further developed.

​

​Production was first advanced during the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368), when potters at Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province added kaolin to the clay recipes and improved their firing technology by achieving higher and more stable temperatures. The most virtuous painters used blue to draw the subject matter with fine outlines and opaque coats of blue, mastering a variety of shades within a single pictorial composition—an effect similar to the gradations in ink painting. Rarer objects display a reversed colour scheme that shows the subject matter in white on a densely painted blue, often patterned, background.

以藍色顏料繪製於白色瓷胎之上，即為「青花」。最早期的青花可追溯到唐朝（618–906年），其瓷胎仍然粗糙，色澤呈灰。其後為提升白度，工匠開始先用白色妝土覆蓋整個瓷器，待瓷土風乾後，再畫上鈷藍和塗上釉料，最後以1250–1300度的高溫燒製。此「釉下彩」技術流傳至今，且不斷發展。

​

青花瓷首個技術突破見於元朝（1279–1368年），江西景德鎮工匠將高嶺土加入瓷石，創出二元配方，並改良燒製過程，把溫度控制得更高而穩定。再者，景德鎮畫師造詣入妙，筆下鈷藍紋飾勾勒精緻、層次豐富，有如水墨畫般深淺有序。少數青花瓷更採用「藍地白花」手法，即塗上深邃濃密、樣式豐富的鈷藍顏料後，留出空白，以作花紋。