Dehua Ci Firing Craftsmanship
01 · Historical Records
The making of Dehua porcelain rose in the Tang and Song dynasties, flourished in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and its distinctive techniques have been transmitted without interruption to the present day. In the Ming dynasty, the Dehua porcelain artist He Chaozong used locally produced high-quality kaolin and eight techniques — pinching, modeling, carving, engraving, scraping, joining, and appliqué — to create exquisite Dehua porcelain sculptures, which were collected by European countries for their distinctive artistic style. Dehua porcelain was thus hailed as an oriental artistic treasure, and was exported to Europe in the Qing dynasty.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Dehua County is located in the central part of Fujian Province. Dehua porcelain is made in two ways: one is to shape high-quality kaolin directly by hand; the other is to cast a mold and then form the piece by slip casting or press-molding. Dehua porcelain is generally glazed or left unglazed, according to need, after the clay body has dried; it is then placed in the kiln and fired at a high temperature of more than one thousand degrees Celsius. It has always been an important Chinese foreign-trade commodity, enjoying worldwide fame together with silk and tea, and has contributed to the spread of porcelain-making techniques and to cultural exchange between China and other countries. After the late Qing dynasty, the Dehua porcelain industry steadily declined, but artisans such as Su Xuejin and Xu Youyi still persevered in the craft, and their works won gold medals at international expositions in Panama, Britain, and Japan. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Dehua porcelain industry gained a new lease on life, with new talents emerging in succession who, inheriting the fine techniques and styles of their predecessors and continually innovating, restored the vitality of the Dehua porcelain firing techniques.
Modelling from kaolin clay
One method builds the vessel or figure straight from fine kaolin, the method behind the great Guanyin and Buddha statues whose robes and flesh emerge as one surface.
Mould, slip-casting or pressing
The other builds a mould and casts or presses from it, allowing complex forms to be repeated in quantity for the export trade.
Glazing decided after drying
Whether to glaze is decided only after the body has dried, so unglazed biscuit and glazed porcelain both emerge from the same kiln tradition.
Chinese white
Always a major export, Dehua porcelain travelled the world alongside silk and tea, carrying technique and contact in its wake.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Dehua County is located in the central part of Fujian Province; historically the name Dehua became known through porcelain, and in overseas trade porcelain ranked alongside tea and silk. Dehua porcelain is made in two ways: one is to shape high-quality kaolin directly by hand; the other is to cast a mold and then form the piece by slip casting or press-molding. The Dehua County Cultural Center serves as the project protection unit; the techniques are transmitted mainly from master to apprentice, dragon kilns and electric kilns coexist, and the white porcelain produced by traditional wood firing has an additional soft, moist luster.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
In recent years, owing to changes in lifestyle and the influence of foreign cultures, few young people are willing to enter this traditional industry, which has a long learning cycle and slow returns; most of the present artisans are around sixty years old, and there is concern that the techniques will be lost with the death of their practitioners, so attention and support from the relevant authorities are urgently needed. Su Qinghe (record from the official file of the associated inheritor): Representative inheritor of Dehua porcelain firing technique, a national-level intangible cultural heritage item of the first batch; master of Chinese arts and crafts; recipient of the special government allowance of the State Council. He worked in ceramic arts and crafts for more than fifty years, serving successively at porcelain factories in Jianyang, Gutian, and at Dongcheng and Baomei in Dehua. He continually innovated on the basis of inheriting the fine artistic skills of Dehua porcelain sculpture. In 1994 he completed the research and development of the new porcelain variety Yingyu Red. Yingyu Red is a variant of the rare transmutation porcelain that won world fame in the Ming dynasty — the Child's Red. Its porcelain body is fine, dense, and pure, with body and glaze united as one; it is crystal clear, suffused with red within white, warm and moist, elegant, and as beautiful as lard-white jade, appearing exceptionally lovely under illumination. His representative works include the Vase of Conveyed Beauty and the Three Saints of the Avatamsaka, among which Guanyin Standing on a Lotus and Guanyin Seated on a Rock have been collected by the National Art Museum of China. Male, Han ethnicity, born in 1941, died in 2012, of Dehua, Fujian. Su Qinghe persisted in cultivating inheritors of the Dehua porcelain firing technique, and through his efforts some of his successors have become rising talents in this field. Qiu Shuangjiong (record from the official file of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in February 1932, of Dehua County, Fujian Province. Representative inheritor of Dehua porcelain firing technique, a national-level intangible cultural heritage item of the fourth batch. From his youth he was imbued with the traditional folk ceramic sculpture techniques of Dehua; in early adulthood he worked in porcelain production at the Dehua Porcelain Factory, and through practice came to deeply grasp the essence of the traditional skills of famous Dehua masters of successive dynasties. He invented the new thin-body porcelain sculpture technique, originated new methods for producing large-scale Blanc de Chine sculptures, and put forward the development idea of firing porcelain with electricity in place of firewood. He has participated in craft exhibitions on many occasions and has published papers and professional books. He attaches importance to the transmission of ceramic techniques, teaching his disciples by word and example, and has trained more than two hundred professional talents in porcelain sculpture for society. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Chinese Arts and Crafts from the China National Academy of Arts and Crafts.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Su Qinghe 01-0129
- Qiu Shuangjiong 04-1836
- Chen Mingliang 05-2725
- Xu Ruifeng 05-2726
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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