Wang Yinxian

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Wang Yinxian, Female, Han, from Yixing, Jiangsu, is a first-batch national representative bearer of Yixing Zisha Pottery Craftsmanship (Ⅷ-1). The tradition is documented in Yixing, Jiangsu. Within the regional tradition and school record of Yixing Zisha Pottery Craftsmanship in Yixing, Jiangsu: The Yixing handmade zisha pottery craft refers to a traditional folk pottery-making skill distributed in Dingshu Town, Yixing City, Jiangsu Province. This craft emerged during the Song and Yuan dynasties and matured in the Ming dynasty, with a history of over 600 years to this day.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

A woman of Han ethnicity, she was born in 1943 in Yixing, Jiangsu. She is a national representative bearer of Yixing Zisha Pottery Craftsmanship, a first-batch national intangible cultural heritage project, and a Master of Chinese Arts and Crafts. In 1956, Wang Yinxian was admitted to the Yixing Zisha Craft Factory to study zisha pottery, where she successively studied under Wu Yungen, Zhu Kexin, Pei Shimin, and Jiang Rong. During this period she also attended the training class that the Central Academy of Arts and Design ran in Yixing, which considerably raised her artistic level. For more than fifty years, Wang Yinxian has devoted herself to the cause of zisha pottery, studying diligently. She has not only undertaken profound research into the art of sculptural zisha vessels (huahuo) but also formed her own pursuits and understanding of restrained geometric bodies. Her technique is comprehensive, assimilating the strengths of all the various schools, and she is a zisha master of strong creative ability. She has designed and created more than three hundred pieces (or sets) of work, covering tea sets, coffee pots, drinking vessels, flowerpots, vases, the four treasures of the scholar's studio, and decorative ornaments. Her works are orthodox in craft, steady and grand in bearing, and richly endowed with both natural beauty and the beauty of daily life. Many of her finest pieces have been collected by institutions including the Palace Museum in Beijing, the Ziguang Pavilion in Zhongnanhai, the National Museum of Chinese History, the Hong Kong Museum of Tea Ware, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the United States, the British Museum in London, and the Chinese National Center for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Renowned for both virtue and artistry, she has trained a large group of skilled workers and inheritors, and she has written more than twenty papers and essays on zisha pottery. In 1997 she published the Collected Zisha Works of Wang Yinxian, and in 2009 the volume Wang Yinxian in the Complete Works of the Masters of Chinese Arts and Crafts. Within the documented technical tradition of Yixing Zisha Pottery Craftsmanship in Yixing, Jiangsu: The Yixing zisha (purple-clay) pottery-making craft is truly unique in the world. It uses zisha clay—a special clay unique to Yixing that possesses a distinctive granular structure and a double-pored texture (including varieties such as zini, zhuni, and benshan lüni, among others)—as its raw material. With more than a hundred kinds of self-made tools, the craft ultimately produces ceramic wares through steps such as slapping clay sheets, beating the body cylinder (for round wares), joining body sections (for square wares) or combining joinery with sculpture (for naturalistic wares), surface finishing, and ceramic-engraving decoration. The representative product of the Yixing zisha pottery-making craft is the teapot. Its wares fall into different stylistic schools of form: smooth wares (further divided into round and square wares), ribbed wares, and naturalistic ("flower") wares. Zisha wares are generally left unglazed both inside and out, their beauty lying in their purely natural texture and surface grain. As a superior tea vessel, its fine breathability lets one fully enjoy the color, aroma, and flavor of tea. Thus zisha ware resonates with China's traditional tea culture and has become an important component of it. Alongside the development of Chinese tea culture, from the late Ming dynasty onward, zisha artisans—through long exploration—created a whole series of decorative techniques: ceramic engraving; inlay (of gold, silver, jade, colored clay, mother-of-pearl, rosewood, porcelain flowers, etc.); tin-wrapping and lacquer-wrapping; clay painting; famille-rose; colored glaze; cloisonné enamel; gilded outline; relief carving; openwork carving; marbled clay; mold-impression; and appliqué ornamentation. The most representative among these is ceramic engraving, a perfect fusion of the arts of poetry, epigraphy, calligraphy, painting, and seal-carving with zisha craftsmanship. It deeply accords with the traditional aesthetic standards of the Chinese nation and especially matches the refined tastes of the literati class. Therefore, the zisha craft has always possessed the dual character of practical utility and artistic appreciation. However, because the raw material for zisha pottery is a scarce mineral resource, it has now been over-exploited and abused. Combined with the impact of industrialization, fine zisha wares have become ever fewer, and the outstanding zisha pottery-making craft has suffered a severe shock. How to carry forward this excellent folk handicraft has become an urgent issue to be addressed. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Shaping the round body by beating": The core technique for round vessels: beaten clay slabs are raised on the wheel and struck alternately by hand and wooden paddle until they close into a hollow cylinder. "Assembling a squared body from panels": Squared vessels are not beaten but built up: clay slabs are beaten flat, joined face by face into a rectangular tube, then the seams are trimmed clean. "Combining panel assembly with sculpting": Floral-vessel forms add sculpting to panel assembly: segments, foot and belly are shaped separately and then joined, combining geometric order with modelled relief. "Preparing the three body clays": The purple, red and green-shan clays differ in grain and shrinkage, so each is blended to suit the wall thickness of a given form and aged before use.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

In 2007, Wang Yinxian was announced in the first batch of national representative bearers for Yixing Zisha Pottery Craftsmanship, with Yixing, Jiangsu as the declared area. Within the documented safeguarding record of Yixing Zisha Pottery Craftsmanship in Yixing, Jiangsu: The project was inscribed in the national inventory in 2006 (batch 1), with Yixing, Jiangsu as its declared area, and Yixing Tao CiHangYe Association as its safeguarding unit. Since the project was inscribed in the national inventory, its declared area and safeguarding unit have carried out documentation, transmission and presentation within the national safeguarding framework. Together, the inventory record and the project archive form the public documentary basis for the bearer’s transmission practice.

04 · Associated Heritage Item Dossier

05 · Fellow National Bearers Lineage

National representative bearers recorded under the same item code, ordered from the first to the sixth batch. Batch order is not a teacher–student relationship.

06 · Archival Sources & Bibliography

1. Wang Yinxian · National Representative Bearer Archive