Fuzhangmin

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Fuzhangmin, Female, Han, from Jingdezhen, Jiangxi, is a fourth-batch national representative bearer of Jingdezhen Handmade Porcelain Craftsmanship (Ⅷ-7). The tradition is documented in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi. Within the regional tradition and school record of Jingdezhen Handmade Porcelain Craftsmanship in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi: Jingdezhen handmade porcelain-making is concentrated in the urban area of Jingdezhen City and the surrounding town and village kilns. After the imperial factory was established at Zhushan in the Ming and Qing dynasties, the city became the national porcelain-making center; division of labor within the industry grew increasingly fine, and trades such as throwing, mould-pressing, trimming, foot-finishing, dip-glazing and swirl-glazing each had their own lines of transmission. The Jingdezhen Municipal Research and Protection Center for Handmade Porcelain-Making Skills is the project's protecting institution. Craftsmen mostly transmit the craft through family and master-apprentice lines; today veteran artists' studios operate alongside porcelain factories, and overseas orders are largely distributed through here as well. The important forming process steps of the Jingdezhen handmade porcelain-making technique were initially established in the Song dynasty. By the Yuan dynasty, the 'binary formula method' of adding kaolin to porcelain stone had been invented, along with the technique of underglaze blue-and-white painting. In the Song dynasty, Jingdezhen presented the spectacle of 'kiln fires in every village, potters at work in every household,' and the customs of the porcelain industry had already begun to take shape. During the Republican period, the outstanding manifestations of Jingdezhen's porcelain industry customs were the continuous growth of the body of non-local porcelain merchants and the large-scale emergence of porcelain firms, porcelain shops and porcelain brands.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Female, Han, born in August 1968 in Jingdezhen City, Jiangxi Province. A national representative bearer of Jingdezhen hand-made porcelain technique, a fourth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. A senior arts and crafts artist and a master of arts and crafts of Jiangxi Province. Born into a family of ceramic polychrome painting, from 1980 she studied ceramic figure and landscape painting under her father and has devoted herself to inheriting and innovating the Fu family famille-rose technique for painting faces. Since 1986 she has worked at the Jingdezhen Ceramic Folk Museum, during which time she studied at the China Academy of Art and at the Jingdezhen Ceramic Workers' University. Through nearly thirty years of study and creative practice she has reformed the blending of pigments and the firing temperature and has formed her own distinctive artistic style. Her representative works include Qianqiu Xue (Snow of a Thousand Autumns), which won the gold award at the Fifth China Arts and Crafts Masters Fine Works Expo; Pudie (Catching Butterflies) and others were collected by the National Museum of China; and she has published the Collection of Art Works by Fu Changmin. She has taken on dozens of apprentices, many of whom have completed their training and started their own businesses. Within the documented technical tradition of Jingdezhen Handmade Porcelain Craftsmanship in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi: Among the first 24 nationally designated famous historical and cultural cities, Jingdezhen is the only one listed on the strength of its own special product. Archaeological excavations show that Jingdezhen began producing porcelain in the Five Dynasties period, developed rapidly in the Song and Yuan dynasties, and by the Ming and Qing dynasties had an imperial factory established at Zhushan, becoming the nation's porcelain-making center. Division of labor within the porcelain industry grew increasingly fine. Potters generally employed skills such as throwing, mould-pressing, trimming, foot-finishing, dip-glazing and swirl-glazing to form the porcelain bodies, and then used loading-and-firing methods such as upright firing in saggars, inverted firing on pad-saggers and inverted firing with ring supports. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, Jingdezhen's porcelain industry developed further. As the saying goes, 'For the making of a single blank, it must pass through seventy-two hands before the vessel is completed; even then, the finer details cannot all be accounted for.' The handmade porcelain skill system was essentially perfected, with process steps such as mining, washing, saggar making, clay pugging, aging, throwing, trimming, body painting, glazing, kiln firing, red-enamel painting, furnace firing, porcelain selection and packing closely interlocked. The degree of specialization rose daily; in every respect there were master craftsmen with consummate skills. Jingdezhen's handmade porcelain industry thereby reached its historical peak. The customs of Jingdezhen's porcelain industry are an important component of Jingdezhen's porcelain-making history. After the Ming and Qing dynasties, the establishment of the imperial factory at Zhushan and the further expansion of overseas markets stimulated the vigorous growth of Jingdezhen's porcelain industry, causing nearly all the small kiln workshops scattered across the countryside to concentrate in the city, forming numerous handicraft workshops that absorbed large numbers of workers: 'Kiln households and shop households made up seven or eight in every ten, natives two or three in every ten.' Jingdezhen thereby became a porcelain metropolis 'where people from all directions mingled,' known as a 'wharf of eighteen provinces,' laying a solid foundation for the final formation of the porcelain industry customs. Each merchants' guild had its own porcelain firm, porcelain shop or porcelain brand; they strengthened Jingdezhen's ties with other regions and also controlled the transport and sale of Jingdezhen porcelain. The customs and habits that came in from various places in their wake added new content to Jingdezhen's porcelain industry customs. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, with political and economic transformation and the continuous development of mechanized production in the porcelain industry, Jingdezhen's porcelain industry customs began to fade and are now on the verge of extinction. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "": "Archival Records of Process Steps": The important forming process steps of the Jingdezhen handmade porcelain-making technique were initially established in the Song dynasty.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

In 2012, Fuzhangmin was announced in the fourth batch of national representative bearers for Jingdezhen Handmade Porcelain Craftsmanship, with Jingdezhen, Jiangxi as the declared area. Within the documented safeguarding record of Jingdezhen Handmade Porcelain Craftsmanship in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi: The project was inscribed in the national inventory in 2006 (batch 1), with Jingdezhen, Jiangxi as its declared area, and Jingdezhen Shougongzhici Craft Research Safeguarding Center 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. Fuzhangmin · National Representative Bearer Archive