Leadership Insights | Illustrated Lectures:Jingdezhen Porcelain: Representative Chinese Ceramics Popular Around the World

Among the first 24 national historical and cultural citiesin China, Jingdezhen is the only oneinscribed onto the list due to its specialty product—porcelain. Archaeological findings indicate that Jingdezhen has been producing porcelain since the Five Dynasties period(907-960). The local porcelainindustry saw rapid development during the Song (960-1279) and Yuan (1271-1368) dynasties. In the Ming and Qing dynasties(1368-1911), an imperial kiln was established in Zhushan, Jingdezhen, turning it the national center for porcelain production.

The molding method, a key process in Jingdezhen’s handmade porcelain making, had been initially formed during the Song Dynasty. With the passage of time, division of labor within the porcelain industry became increasingly refined, and artisans commonly used techniques such as wheel-throwing, mold-pressing, trimming, foot-finishing, glaze dipping, and glaze wiping to create porcelain bodies, and then fired them with methods such as saggar upward firing, saggar downward firing, and supported-ring overlay firing. By the Yuan Dynasty, the “dual-material method” of combining porcelain stone with kaolin clay and the underglaze blue-and-white painting technique were invented. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, Jingdezhen’s porcelain industry further developed, where “the making of a single porcelain piece underwent 72 steps, and even so some details still needed to be refined.”This indicated that back then porcelain-making craftsmanship had formed a mature system, with proceduressuch as clay mining, washing, body preparation, clay kneading, aging, wheel-throwing, trimming, shaping, glazing, kiln firing, overglaze painting, oven firing, porcelain selecting, and packaging all closely interconnected. As the level of specialization increased, craftsmen mastering different skills emerged, bringing Jingdezhen’s handmade porcelain industry to its historical peak.

In recent years, Jingdezhen has striven to build a ceramic cultural ecosystem experimental zone, innovatively launch pilot programs and recognition systems forgroups of intangible cultural heritage inheritors, and establish a multi-layered team of ceramic craftsmen. According to statistics from the Jingdezhen Intangible Cultural Heritage Research and Protection Center, there are more than 3,200 intangible cultural heritage inheritors at the municipal level or above in Jingdezhen, making it the city with the largest number of ceramic craft inheritors in China. Today, ceramics continue evolving, which are both ancient and modernand both traditional and youthful. By safeguarding and passing on ceramic culture, empowering the porcelain industrywith innovation, and engaging in global dialogue and mutual learning, Jingdezhen’s reputation as the “Millennium-old Porcelain Capital” shines even more brightly.

The fine traditional Chinese culture has continued unabated from ancient times to the present. Ceramics are a precious treasure of China and amajor calling card of Chinese civilization.

监制:蔚力

策划:丁素云

文案:杨俊康