Cizhou Yao Firing Craftsmanship
01 · Historical Records
By the Song dynasty, Cizhou kiln had entered a period of prosperity, reaching its peak in the Ming dynasty; Pengcheng, as the center of Cizhou kiln, thereby became the porcelain capital of the north. The decorative art of Cizhou ware is equally praiseworthy. It falls into three main series: slip-coated white ware, black-glazed ware, and low-temperature polychrome-glazed ware. Its decorative techniques include slip-coated white ware, white-glazed carved and incised decoration, pearl-ground incised decoration, black-glazed carved and incised decoration, Song three-color ware, red-and-green polychrome, white ground with black painting, Qing-dynasty brown painting, Republican-period blue painting, and modern Cizhou kiln patterns.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Pengcheng Town, in Fengfeng Mining District, lies in the western part of Handan City, covers a total area of 32.6 square kilometers, and is the main production area of Cizhou kiln. As early as the Cishan culture period of the Neolithic age, the Fengfeng area was already able to produce fine pottery, making it one of the birthplaces of Chinese ceramics. The raw materials for Cizhou ware are produced locally, mainly including greenish clay, white alkali clay, vat clay, cage clay, loess (black medicine clay), purple wood-joint clay, purple sand clay, fireclay, and Shuiye feldspar. The kiln workers have a distinctive set of skills in the application of porcelain clay, enabling products in a rich variety of colors. The body-making techniques of Cizhou ware are also richly varied, including sculpting, wheel-throwing, coiling, and press-molding, each with a distinctive style. Centered on the traditional firing techniques of Cizhou kiln, a ceramics-industry culture has also taken shape, encompassing the folk customs of commercial streets, oral literature, and the architectural art of kiln workshops. At their peak, the temple fairs of the old town of Pengcheng numbered more than twenty a year, promoting ceramics trade and giving rise to unique and rich commercial customs, folk tales, and production proverbs, and leaving behind a large quantity of vessel inscriptions and paintings.
The Cishan beginning
Already producing fine pottery in the Cishan phase, the region is counted among the cradles of Chinese ceramics, and that tradition fed the later Cizhou kilns.
Eleven local materials
Eleven local materials — blue clay, white alkali, vat clay, black earth, purple seam, sand clay, refractory clay and more — are blended by rules known only to the kiln hands.
The kilns of the Pengcheng area
Kilns line both river banks, old and new fires standing side by side, and the trade rests on the town's coal and clay as much as on its hands.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Pengcheng Town, in Fengfeng Mining District, lies in the western part of Handan City, covers a total area of 32.6 square kilometers, and is the main production area of Cizhou kiln. In the Cishan culture period of the Neolithic age, the Fengfeng area was already able to produce fine pottery, making it one of the birthplaces of Chinese ceramics; thereafter the Pengcheng and Cizhou kilns followed a single continuous line, with kiln sites distributed around Pengcheng, Yijing, and Cishan. The Handan City Fengfeng Mining District Cultural Center serves as the project protection unit.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Under the impact of modernization, the traditional firing techniques of Cizhou kiln already face the retirement of veteran artisans, changes in traditional production methods and craft concepts, a shortage of production funds, and the loss of hand skills; comprehensive rescue and protection are urgently needed. Liu Lizhong (record from the official file of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in 1944 in Handan, Hebei. Representative inheritor of Cizhou kiln firing technique, a national-level intangible cultural heritage item of the first batch; master of Chinese arts and crafts; director of the Cizhou Kiln Site Museum. To improve his craft, he drew widely on the strengths of others and also apprenticed under Wei Hongbin, a famous Cizhou kiln artisan. For more than forty years of practice, he has devoted himself to the rescue and study of traditional crafts. Through his collation and recovery work, the 72 process steps of traditional Cizhou kiln firing have been completely preserved and continued, and more than twenty decorative techniques that had been lost have also been revived, such as colored-clay carved and incised decoration, pearl-ground decoration, and the red-and-green polychrome process. Over the years he has discovered nine ancient Cizhou kiln sites and collected more than ten thousand physical specimens and several thousand volumes of ancient pottery illustrations. From the selection of raw materials and clay refining through body making, decoration, and firing, every process step of Cizhou kiln firing has strong and distinctive local characteristics and many special treatment methods; mastery depends on oral and hands-on transmission between master and apprentice, and Liu Lizhong has continued to devote great effort to teaching apprentices. His representative works include a tea bowl with fish-and-algae design, the Cizhou ware Song-imitation series, and a prunus vase with white ground and black painting. An Jiheng (record from the official file of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in March 1969 in Handan City, Hebei Province. Representative inheritor of Cizhou kiln firing technique, a national-level intangible cultural heritage item of the fourth batch. He is a firing technician. Born into a ceramics family of Pengcheng Cizhou ware, he restored the traditional Cizhou kiln shaping and firing techniques centered on hand-thrown bodies, and has mastered techniques including white-ground colored sgraffito (known as saoluo), white-glazed carved and incised decoration (known as baike), black-glazed carved and incised decoration (known as heike), red-and-green polychrome, and white ground with black painting (known as tiexiuhua), successively developing more than 280 varieties of artistic ceramic products in different shapes and decorations. His works fully display the concise, bold, free, and serene elegance of the Cizhou ware style. He has collected and organized nearly ten thousand samples (fragments) of ancient and modern Cizhou porcelain and established the Cizhou Kiln Art Museum.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Liu Lizhong 01-0128
- An Jiheng 04-1835
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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