Flower pawning, also known as "pattern pawning", "mark pawning" and "pattern pawning", is a kind of non-literal pattern mark carved on the bottom of porcelain.
The homonym of "flower pledge" and "painting pledge" originally refers to the symbol of signing or replacing the signature on the document contract as a certificate to win people's trust. In the Tang Dynasty, there was a painting pledge, which flourished in the Yuan Dynasty, and became very popular during the Kangxi and Yongzheng Dynasties in the Qing Dynasty. In the early Qing Dynasty, the porcelain produced in folk kilns mostly used flowers as collateral instead of good money, which had a lot to do with the official regulations at that time. For example, in the "Fu Liang County Records Tao Zheng", it was recorded that "in the sixteenth year of Kangxi, Zhang Qizhong, a city official, and a town owner were forbidden to write porcelain books with year numbers and sages' handwriting, so as not to be broken".
during the Ming and Qing dynasties, there were many kinds of patterns of flower pledge, which can be roughly divided into Buddhist patterns, Taoist patterns, animal and plant patterns, Bo Gu patterns, dried bean curd patterns and four flower patterns.