Sancai
three coloured ceramic style of Chinese pottery, particularly associated with the Tang Dynasty
Sancai (Chinese: 三彩; pinyin: sāncǎi; lit. 'three colours') is a versatile type of decoration on Chinese pottery and other painted pieces using glazes or slip, predominantly in the three colours of brown (or amber), green, and a creamy off-white. It is particularly associated with the Tang dynasty (618–907) and its tomb figures, appearing around 700. Therefore, it is commonly referred to as Chinese: 唐三彩 Tang Sancai in Chinese. Tang sancai wares were sometimes referred in China and the West as egg-and-spinach by dealers, for their use of green, yellow, and white, especially when combined with a streaked effect.
The Tang dynasty three-color glazed pottery is the treasure of ancient Chinese ceramic firing techniques. It is a kind of low-temperature glazed pottery popular in the Tang dynasty. The glaze has yellow, green, white, brown, blue, black and other colours. The yellow, green, and white colour-based are predominant, so people call it "Tang Sancai". Because the Tang Sancai was unearthed in Luoyang earliest and is most found in Luoyang, it is also known as "Luoyang Tang Sancai".
“Sancai” enters the record as three coloured ceramic style of Chinese pottery, particularly associated with the Tang Dynasty. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Sancai, three and coloured can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1372026. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sancai” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.