Porcelain Stories

Cities worldwide-from Arita, Japan, to Meissen, Germany-made exquisite porcelain, but the town of Jingdezhen is unique for its continuous production of immense quantities of porcelain for China's imperial palace and domestic market, and for export to world markets, where it was highly prized. The name derives from Jingde (1004-1008), the early Song dynasty reign period during which the town was named by imperial decree. As early as the tenth century, white and green wares were being produced there, and throughout the Song dynasty (960-1279), the town was famous for qingbai ware, porcelain dressed in a jadelike, transparent glaze with a pronounced bluish tint. ¹ In the fourteenth century, when blue-and-white porcelain was first produced, Jingdezhen's reputation grew, and ever after, it was world renowned.

Dreaming of Jingdezhen, Henry Wadsworth
Long-fellow (1807-1882) wrote of "King-ke-tching" in his poem "Keramos":

O'er desert sands, o'er gulf and bay
O'er Ganges and o'er Himalay,
Bird-like I fly, and flying sing
To flowery kingdoms of Cathay,
And bird-like poise on balanced wing
Above the town of King-te-tching,
A burning town, or seeming so,-
Three thousand furnaces that glow
Incessantly, and fill the air
With smoke uprising, gyre on gyre,
And painted by the lurid glare,
Of jets and flashes of red fire.²

Unlike Longfellow, the eighteenth-century French missionary and Jesuit priest Père d'Entrecolles knew Jingdezhen and its porcelain industry firsthand. In a letter dated September 1, 1712, he describes the town as a massive furnace:

Today a middle-size modern city with traffic congestion and air pollution, Jingdezhen still prides itself on the large-scale manufacture of porcelain, from cheap dinnerware to costly works of art, primarily reproductions of esteemed imperial wares of earlier centuries. ⁴ Tall, slender smokestacks fill the skyline of the city (fig. 1), attesting to the prominence of the porcelain industry in the twentieth century. Yet valuable evidence of the past exists in the millions of broken bits of porcelain buried beneath Jingdezhen and scattered in huge mounds on its outskirts (fig. 2). These shards are important primary historical material. When combined with information in textual records, they reveal, century by century, the history of an extraordinary industry.

Archaeologists, like those at the Jingdezhen Institute of Ceramic Archaeology, under the leadership of Liu Xinyuan, have undertaken the systematic investigation of porcelain's past, tremendously expanding our knowledge of the industry in recent decades. Fundamental to a sound and detailed history of China's porcelain industry is the identification and excavation of kiln sites and a determination of their time spans and of the types of porcelain they produced. Archaeologists examine carefully not only porcelain shards but also kiln furniture-the disks, rings, and spurs on which the porcelain was placed during firing-as well as saggars, the ceramic boxes for encasing and protecting the pieces (fig. 3).

Scientific analysis of the composition of porcelain bodies and glazes is also essential in establishing a sound knowledge of the evolution of porcelain. It has the potential of helping to separate originals from more recent copies, which are often difficult to detect with the naked eye. One of the most significant recent discoveries is the fundamental difference between early northern and southern Chinese porcelain bodies. In the north, the basic material was a white-firing kaolin clay, while in the south, including Jingdezhen, porcelain stone was the basic ingredient . ⁵ Equally important, scientists have confirmed the soundness of the theory that prior to the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368), the bodies of Jingdezhen qingbai wares were made of stone. While porcelain stone was still primary, by the 1320s and thereafter, kaolin was added to the clay bodies of Jingdezhen ware to enhance its plasticity. Over time, more and more kaolin was added; by the early Qing dynasty, the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, top quality porcelain was half porcelain stone and half kaolin.

Why was Jingdezhen the porcelain capital to the world? How is porcelain made, and how was the production process organized at Jingdezhen? What distinguishes Jingdezhen as one of the world's first industrial towns?

Among the factors that made Jingdezhen the prime center of porcelain production in China is ease of transport. Although it is inland in Jiangxi province (see map of the kiln sites of China, p. 46), Jingdezhen's location on the Chang River offers convenient water transport to Lake Boyang. This lake connects to a wide network of waterways, including the Yangzi River, which linked Jingdezhen with the Grand Canal, and to rivers going south to Guangzhou (Canton) and to other major seaports and cities. Large quantities of Jingdezhen porcelain for the domestic and international markets were distributed via these waterways.

Second and even more vital is the abundance of raw materials, the presence of the makings of porcelain, porcelain stone and kaolin, in the mountains surrounding Jingdezhen. Long ago, volcanic eruptions, it is believed, left deposits of white porcelain stone across East Asia-Japan, Korea, and scattered throughout southern China, most prominently in the area around Lake Boyang and Jingdezhen. Here, porcelain stone, composed of quartz, potassium mica (sericite), and feldspar (albite), exists in close association with white-burning kaolin, clay that is rich in alumina and poor in iron.⁶ These geological riches, with which the Jingdezhen area is so well endowed, were instrumental in the success of the porcelain industry, which relied primarily on local materials to produce superb porcelain.⁷ Pine to fuel the kilns was also once in plentiful supply in the nearby hills.

The cycle of abundance and depletion of raw materials significantly impacted porcelain production throughout the centuries. From the tenth to the thirteenth century, when stone was the sole body material at Jingdezhen, porcelain stone was the decisive influence. After the thirteenth century, however, high-alumina kaolin clay, the so-called bone of porcelain, also played a critical role.

From the early fourteenth to the sixteenth century, imperial wares were made with porcelain stone and with high-quality kaolin mined at Macang, a kaolin deposit monopolized by the government. This monopoly ensured the superiority of official wares, as the privately owned commercial kilns were forced to use lesser clays. From the second half of the sixteenth to the late eighteenth century, however, Mount Gaoling, the mountain from which the name 'kaolin' derives, supplied superior kaolin for both official and commercial kilns, reenergizing porcelain production and enabling both imperial and commercial wares to flourish. In fact, by the seventeenth century, commercial wares were not only comparable to but frequently surpassed porcelain made for imperial use.⁸ Not surprisingly, access to top-grade raw materials was critical to producing fine porcelain.

Two additional factors in Jingdezhen's success were the specialization of labor and the significant level of government support from the imperial court.⁹ Not only was ceramics technology highly advanced in China, so, too, was the organization of the workforce. Jessica Rawson observes:

Jingdezhen was exemplary in this regard. The sixteenth-century Jiangxi sheng dazhi (Great Record of Jiangxi Province) describes in detail the organization of labor at the official kilns. Either a eunuch or a local official was appointed by the imperial court to provide overall control, while more than 500 masters and workers were divided among 21 to 23 departments, the most important being kiln masters, potters, painters, and writers of marks. In addition, there was a host of other departments including clay mixers and saggar makers.

Expectations of output ranged from 100 per day for a man throwing small bowls and saucers to 10 per day for a man making large vessels.¹¹ Clearly, porcelain was mass-produced by a specialized workforce engaged in a highly organized process. While not a matter of individual inspiration, porcelain production provides an impressive precedent for large-scale manufacturing.

How did the Jingdezhen potters transform rock, clay, and ash into striking white porcelain unequaled anywhere else in the world?

In 1743, following an order of the Qianlong emperor (r. 1736-1795), Tang Ying (1682-1756), imperial supervisor at Jingdezhen from 1728 to 1756, traveled to Beijing and there annotated a now lost set of twenty paintings illustrating the manufacture of porcelain.¹² In the following summary, Tang Ying's words are excerpted and accompanied by contemporary photographs.

The porcelain-making process begins with what Tang Ying terms "Mining the Stone and Preparing the Paste." He writes:

In the manufacture of porcelain the body is formed of molded earth. This earth is prepared from stone and must be mined and purified for the purpose. . . .The natives take advantage of the mountain torrents to erect wheels provided with crushers [fig. 4]. Having been finely pulverized, it is then purified by washing and levigation [separating fine particles from coarser by suspending the crushed stone in water; [fig. 5], and made up in the form of bricks [fig. 6].

Besides this there are several other kinds of earth called Kao-ling [fig. 7]. . . . They are dug out and prepared in the same way as the 'white bricks' [porcelain stone], and can only be used for mixing with this last.¹³

Tang Ying's next descriptive caption reads "Washing and Purification of the Paste: In porcelain-making the first requisite is that of washing and purifying the materials of the paste, so as to make it of fine homogeneous texture." He then describes mixing the materials with water so that the coarser impurities sink to the bottom, and pressing, pounding, and kneading the paste to free it of excess water and air to make it "compact and ductile. All the different kinds of paste are prepared in the same way, the various materials having been mixed in definite proportions according to their different properties".¹⁴

Glaze is made by mixing porcelain stone with smaller amounts of limestone and the ash of burned ferns. The two critical oxides in the composition of glazes are silica (silicon dioxide), the prime glass-forming oxide, and alumina (aluminum oxide), the "stiffener," which prevents the glaze from running off the pot during firing .¹⁵

After captions on "Burning the Ashes and Preparing the Glaze," "Manufacture of the Cases or Saggars," and "Preparation of the Molds for the Round Ware," Tang Ying comes to "Fashioning the Round Ware on the Wheel." Noting that different shapes require different treatment, such as carving, engraving, and molding, he describes the potter at the wheel:

Beside the wheel is an attendant workman, who kneads the paste to proper consistency and puts it on the table [fig. 8]. The potter . . . turns the wheel with a bamboo staff [fig. 9]. While the wheel is spinning round he works the paste with both hands; it follows the hands, lengthening or shortening, contracting or widening, in a succession of shapes [fig. 10]. It is in this way that the round ware is fashioned so that it varies not a hair's breadth in size.¹⁶

Once bowls and other "round wares" are formed on the wheel, the next step is "Molding the Porcelain and Grinding the Color":

After the large and small round pieces have been shaped on the wheel, and have been sufficiently dried in the air, they are put into molds . . . and are pressed gently with the hands, until the paste becomes of regular form and uniform thickness [fig. 11].
. . . The piece is then taken out and dried in a shady place till it is ready to be shaped with the polishing knives. The damp paste must not be exposed to the sun, as the heat would crack it
[fig. 12].¹⁷

To prepare cobalt-blue pigment, the ore was collected and roasted. Only the best pieces were selected for use. Ground and applied as a liquid suspension, the unfired cobalt appears "pale black" (fig. 13).¹⁸ In "Painting the Round Ware in Blue," Tang Ying remarks:

The different kinds of round ware painted in blue are each numbered by the hundred and thousand, and if the painted decoration upon every piece be not exactly alike, the set will be irregular and spoiled. For this reason the men who sketch the outlines learn sketching, but not painting; those who paint study only painting, not sketching; by this means their hands acquire skill in their own particular branch of work, and their minds are not distracted. In order to secure a certain uniformity in their work, the sketchers and painters, although kept distinct, occupy the same house.

For painting flowers and birds, fishes and water-plants, and living objects generally, the study of Nature is the first requisite; in the imitation of Ming dynasty porcelain and of ancient pieces, the sight of many specimens brings skill. The art of painting in blue differs widely from that of decoration in enamel colors.¹⁹

In "Fashioning and Painting of Vases," after listing different decorative techniques, Tang elaborates on artistic sources, noting the importance of textiles and nature:

In copies from antiquity artistic models must be followed; in novelty of invention there is a deep spring to draw from. In the decoration of porcelain correct canons of art should be followed; the design should be taken from the patterns of old brocades and embroidery, the colors from a garden as seen in springtime from a pavilion . . . the materials of the potter's art are derived from forests and streams, and ornamental themes are supplied by the same natural sources . . . and the artistic skill of the color-brush perpetuates on porcelain clever works of genius [fig. 15].²⁰

Glazing (fig. 14) is the next step. "Dipping into Glaze and Blowing in the Glaze" states:

All the different kinds of round wares and vases, including the pieces decorated in blue . . . must have the glaze applied before they are fired. The ancient method of putting on the glaze was to apply it . . . with a goat's-hair brush filled with the liquid glaze but it was difficult to distribute it evenly in this way.²¹

Dipping into a vat of liquid glaze and blowing on the glaze are alternative methods of glazing. Once the vessel is painted and glazed, the surface is polished, the foot finished, and the mark neatly written underneath. After it is packed in a protective clay box or saggar, the porcelain is ready for the kiln.

The culmination of porcelain manufacture is firing, followed by the opening of the kiln. Tang Ying first describes the kiln (figs. 16, 17):

The kiln is long and round and resembles the shape of a tall water-jar turned over on its side. It measures a little over ten feet in height and breadth, about twice as much in depth. It is covered with a large, tiled building which is called the 'kiln-shed.' The chimney, which is tubular, rises to a height of over twenty feet behind, outside the kiln-shed.

The porcelain, when finished, is packed in saggars and sent out to the furnace men. When these men put it in the kiln they arrange the saggars in piles, one above the other, in separate rows, so as to leave an interspace between the rows for the free passage of the flames. The fire is distinguished as front, middle, and back; the front of the fire is fierce, the middle moderate, the back feeble. The different kinds of porcelain are placed in the furnace according to the hard or soft quality of the glaze with which they are coated. After the kiln has been fully charged the fire is lighted, and the entrance is then bricked up, leaving only a square hole, through which billets of pine wood are thrown in without intermission. When the saggars inside have attained a silvery red color (white heat) the firing is stopped, and after the lapse of another twenty-four hours the kiln is opened.²²

The perfection of the porcelain depends on the firing, which reckoning from the time of putting in to that of taking out, usually occupies three days. On the fourth day, early in the morning, the furnace is opened.²³

Thus, the total firing time then as today was about thirty-six hours, and the kilns achieve maximum temperatures of well above 1300°C.

Enamel colors fluxed with lead were added on top of the transparent glaze after this first firing because they cannot withstand the high temperatures. The piece was painted, then underwent a second firing in a muffle kiln at temperatures of around 700°C. Lead enamels expanded the palette of porcelain, offering a wide range of color and the ability to achieve delicate shading.

After "Wrapping in Straw and Packing in Cases," Tang Ying concludes with a discussion of the devoutness in worship of the "immense number of people whose life hangs on the success or failure of the furnace fires." He relates the plight of Jingdezhen's deity potter Tong:

Their god, named T'ung [Tong], was once himself a potter, a native of the place. Formerly, during the Ming dynasty, when they were making large dragon fish-bowls, they failed in the firing year after year, although the eunuchs in charge inflicted the most severe punishments, and the potters were in bitter trouble. Then it was that one of them, throwing away his life for the rest, leaped into the midst of the furnace, whereupon the dragon bowls came out perfect. His fellow-workmen, pitying him and marveling, built a temple within the precincts of the imperial manufactory, and worshiped him there under the title of 'Genius of Fire and Blast.' . . . He is worshiped here as the tutelary gods of agriculture and land are in other parts of the empire.²⁴

In Tang Ying's time, Jingdezhen was flourishing under vigorous court patronage. Tang Ying exemplifies the extraordinary benefits of government support. A talented administrator with a deep understanding of the process of porcelain manufacturing, his control over the official kilns guaranteed a consistently high level of performance.

Today, Jingdezhen merits a visit by everyone with a strong interest in porcelain and its history. Museums, factories, and fields of shards preserve traces of its extraordinary past. This city, unique for the proximity of large deposits of both porcelain stone and kaolin, is renowned worldwide as the center of China's porcelain industry.

Mimi Gardner Gates

Footnotes
1. Chen Baiquan in Scott 1993, 12-32. S. Vainker in Rawson 1992, 238-42. See also chapter 1 and chapter 4, in which Jennifer Chen discusses white and green wares and qingbai glazing.

2. Cited in Tichane 1983, facing page 1.

3. Translation by Robert Tichane. Full translation of Père d'Entrecolles's letters (September 1, 1712, and January 25, 1722), as well as the author's contemporary account of a trip to Jingdezhen, appears in Tichane 1983, 51-128.

4. After visiting Jingdezhen, Robert Tichane (ibid., 4) estimated that somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 million porcelains are produced there each year.

5. Pierson 1996, 11; Pollard and Wood 1986, 112.

6. Harrison-Hall 1997, 196.

7. N. Wood in Kuwayama 1992, 151.

8. Liu and Bai 1982.

9. Rawson 1992, 30-31.

10. Ibid.

11. M. Medley in Scott 1993, 75-78. The Jiangxi sheng dazhi (preface dated 1597), which Margaret Medley explicates in "Organisation and Production at Jingdezhen in the Sixteenth Century," provides extensive information on the official kilns and how they were organized. See also Tsing 1978 and Zhongguo guisuanyan xuehui 1982, 360-69.

12. Tang Ying's annotations for "The Twenty Illustrations of the Manufacture of Porcelain," translated and with comments by S. W. Bushell, are reprinted together with historical prints and contemporary photographs of porcelain-making in Tichane 1983, 131-70.

13. Ibid., 134.

14. Ibid., 136.

15. Wood 1988, 12.

16. Tichane 1983, 144.

17. Ibid., 150.

18. Père d'Entrecolles writes of painting in underglaze blue: "When one applies it, its color is just a pale black; when it is dry and cov-
ered with glaze, it is completely obscured, and the porcelain appears entirely white; the colors are then buried under the glaze; the fire clarifies them in all their beauty, the same as natural warmth changes a cocoon into the most beautiful of colored butterflies" (quoted in ibid., 87).

19. Ibid., 152. Père d'Entrecolles also notes: "The work of painting in any given laboratory is divided among a large number of workers" (quoted in ibid., 78).

20. Ibid., 154.

21. Ibid., 156.

22. Ibid., 160.

23. Ibid., 162.

24. Ibid., 170.

This text is excerpted from the catalog Porcelain Stories: From China to Europe, Appendix I, pages 269-275.

Porcelain Capital to the World: Jingdezhen