When the porcelain ware is used or cleaned by wiping, the porcelain could not be avoided to be scratched. These scratches become the starting point to be weathered by the water and oxygen in the air. Since these scratches occasionally happened, the weathering happened unevenly on the surface of one ceramic surface. And the weathering on different areas could show different extent. It sounds reasonable that on older porcelain the glaze has be more weathered. But the weathering is up to how often the ware used or cleaned and how is the preservation environment. The heavily weathered glaze from Yuan period and Chenghua reign showed on the photo here (‘W’ is the weathered glaze, ‘G’ is the lustrous glaze).
On old porcelain ware we can find different types of scratches, some think, some thin, some with parallel lines, some deep into surface, and some only slightly on the surface (see the red arrow). There different scratches could be observed under the microscope with dark field light.
With age, the growing scratches showed smooth and round edge (‘S’ on the picture).
Instead of showing different types of scratches and weathered glaze, the imitating ware often shows some simple scratch lines.
