Xie Jinying

01 · Lineage & Regional School

He studied under Mr. Chen Xiuling, a celebrated traditional Chinese painter of Chaozhou, and on that foundation joined the Chaozhou Painted Porcelain Factory, where he worked in creative design and training. Within the regional tradition and school record of Chaozhou Caici Firing Craftsmanship in Chaozhou, Guangdong: The Chaozhou painted-porcelain craft began in the mid-to-late Qing dynasty. According to research, Chaozhou already had porcelain production in the Tang and Song periods; the famous Song-dynasty Bijia Mountain kiln porcelain already employed such techniques as incised flowers, painted flowers, and relief flowers, as well as underglaze decorative methods. With the popularity of famille-rose (fencai) in the Qing dynasty, by the late Tongzhi reign the Fengxi porcelain district already had large-scale painting workshops (caiguan) engaged in porcelain painting; during the Xuantong reign, porcelain such as a 1.2-chi "hundred birds paying homage to the phoenix" four-seasons plate and overglaze figure-painted plates made by local artisans crossed the oceans to participate in the Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, USA, earning high praise. The Chaozhou ceramic-making craft's transmission lineage is intricate and complex, with innovation and evolution in every generation, forming a "multi-master" pattern of multi-school transmission that has been passed down to this day.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Male, Han ethnic group, born in August 1946 in Chaozhou, Guangdong Province. National representative bearer of Chaozhou Caici Firing Craftsmanship, a fifth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. He is a Chaozhou painted porcelain firing technician. Over more than fifty years of practice he has integrated the brush-and-ink skills of Chinese painting into the traditional techniques of Chaozhou painted porcelain, enriching its expressive forms. His works are rigorous in style, profound in mood and skilled in technique, possessing a strong flavour of folk craft and traditional local character. He has consistently devoted himself to transmitting the art of Chaozhou painted porcelain and has cultivated a group of Chaozhou painted porcelain artists through mentoring and other means. Within the documented technical tradition of Chaozhou Caici Firing Craftsmanship in Chaozhou, Guangdong: The Chaozhou painted-porcelain firing technique is a ceramic craft popular in Chaozhou City, Guangdong Province, and its surrounding areas, in which special ceramic pigments are used to paint vases, brush pots, hanging plates, porcelain-panel paintings, and other porcelain, which is then fired. It spreads across Xiangqiao District, Fengxi District, Chao'an County, and Raoping County in Chaozhou City, as well as Dabu County and Gaobei County in Meizhou City. The Chaozhou painted-porcelain firing technique is world-renowned for its painting; its subject matter is mainly divided into figures, flowers-and-birds, landscapes, and patterned categories, with forms of expression including poem-painting, medallion (kai-guang), full-color, gold-ground myriad-flowers, patterned borders, and continuous-scene composition. The painted utensils are mainly white-bodied porcelain; the types of brush used number nearly twenty to thirty, such as eyebrow brushes, washing brushes, and moss brushes, with auxiliary tools being iron pens, bamboo pens, cotton balls, sponges, pounding pestles, and pounding mortars. The Chaozhou painted-porcelain firing technique is intricate: one must select a porcelain body with a pure-white glaze and proper form, set the draft according to the vessel's shape and design requirements, use an eyebrow brush to draw lines of varying thickness and depth on the traced design, pay attention to the depth of color and even thickness in filling and washing, and after the enamel firing draw gold and fill in on the fired design and relief lines. The pigments of Chaozhou painted porcelain are rich in color, and most can be mixed and blended with one another; the gold pigment is made from gold into gold oil and used separately. The core element of this technique is enamel firing, with the kiln temperature controlled between 700 and 850 degrees Celsius. The Chaozhou painted-porcelain firing technique features novel styles, full composition, brilliant and rich color, clear gradation, fluid lines, fresh tone, and fine painting; together with the gold-piling craft it appears resplendent and magnificent, possessing a strong local Chaozhou color, clearly distinct from painting techniques such as famille-rose and Guangzhou (Canton) enamel. Chaozhou painted porcelain applies the techniques of Chinese ink painting to painted porcelain, rich with the brushwork of Chinese painting, elevating traditional fine art to a high-level artistic work. The Chaozhou painted-porcelain craft has rich cultural connotations, displaying the uniquely Lingnan regional artistic style and folk-craft wisdom, with high artistic and socio-cultural value. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Enamel firing at controlled heat": After painting the piece is fired again at a held temperature of 700 to 850 degrees Celsius — too low and the colours do not bond, too high and they burn away or go dull; this stage decides the final hue and durability. "Division of labour among the fine brushes": Fine brushes for outlines, washing brushes for graded washes and a tip brush for stippling; an iron or bamboo needle for line work, cotton wool and sponge for lifting colour, and a mortar and pestle for grinding pigment. "Applied gold and gold-oil outlining": In 1976 Ye Zhuqing introduced gold applied over the glaze, a distinctly Chaozhou line; the gold is used as a separate gold-oil paint and never blended with other colours, and outlined lines are then filled in to give the piece its brilliance. "Reserve panels and gold-ground all-over flowers": Subjects range from figures, birds and flowers to landscapes and pure patterns, treated as painted scenes, reserve panels, full colouring, gold-ground flower grounds, patterned borders or all-over compositions.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

In 2018, Xie Jinying was announced in the fifth batch of national representative bearers for Chaozhou Caici Firing Craftsmanship, with Chaozhou, Guangdong as the declared area. Within the documented safeguarding record of Chaozhou Caici Firing Craftsmanship in Chaozhou, Guangdong: The project was inscribed in the national inventory in 2014 (batch 4), with Chaozhou, Guangdong as its declared area, and Chaozhou Arts and Crafts Research Institute 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. Xie Jinying · National Representative Bearer Archive