By the middle of the 15th Century, Jingdezhen potters were content to 'wash' substantial areas of the ceramic surface with blackish-blue cobalt; a recreation of the spectacular effects to be obtained earlier by reversing out designs in white on a rich violet-blue ground, without recapturing the quality of the blue or the dramatic stencilled designs (notably white dragons reserved on dense blue grounds of breaking waves). The Interregnum period marked a technical pause, a period of consolidation, in the production of Chinese ceramics, before Jingdezhen potters began to create three magnificent phases of ceramic innovation two decades later under the Chenghua Emperor