Pottery Firing Craftsmanship

Ⅷ-98Traditional CraftsmanshipDiqingzangzuzizhi, YunnanBatch 2 (2008)Newly Added Item

01 · Historical Records

It is said that the Nangqian Tibetan black pottery craft was introduced to the local area when Princess Wencheng of the Tang dynasty entered Tibet for a marriage alliance and passed through the Yushu region; from this perspective, it is the crystallization of the fusion of Tibetan and Han cultures.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

The Tibetan black pottery firing craft has a long history and distinctive features. It is mainly distributed in Tibetan-inhabited areas such as Tangdui Village, Nixi Township, Shangri-La County, Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province; Axi Village, Chitu Township, Daocheng County, Sichuan Province; and Nangqian County in the Yushu region of Qinghai Province. The black pottery firing technique of Tangdui Village uses highly adhesive, highly plastic white and red clay, combined with stone powder ground from weathered sandstone, mixed to form the raw material for shaping the body. Its making tools consist mainly of wooden paddles, wooden scrapers, wooden pads, and wooden mallets, extremely primitive and simple. By contrast, the firing process is quite sophisticated. Firing black pottery must go through twelve process steps in sequence: clay selection, clay tempering, body shaping, porcelain inlay, polishing, decoration, shade-drying, firing, carbon infiltration, and crack prevention. Shaping the pottery body uses the coil-building method, which requires a high level of skill. First, take well-kneaded and mixed clay, beat it into strips with a wooden paddle and place it on a base, then, according to the shape of the desired vessel, pinch out the outline by hand, then polish the inner and outer walls and the rim, then inlay white porcelain shards and dot on animal and geometric patterns, and finally fire at high temperature for about one hour to produce the finished piece. The Tibetan black pottery handicraft products of Tangdui Village can be roughly divided into two major categories: daily household items and religious implements. They come in a complete range with wide uses; all kinds of tableware, cooking utensils, tea sets, wine vessels, drinking vessels, as well as incense burners and butter lamps used by the Tibetan people, are fully supplied. This kind of pottery integrates utility, aesthetics, and craftsmanship, fully demonstrating the creativity and expressive power of Tibetan folk pottery art. Axi Village, Chitu Township, Daocheng County, Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, fires Tibetan black pottery. Axi black pottery uses local earth mixed with two other kinds of earth as raw material, then is shaped through manual techniques such as pinching, hammering, tapping, and beating, and then decorated with patterns using porcelain fragments. After these steps are completed, pine firewood is stacked and lit for firing, and the yellowish-brown clay turns black in the process. The fired pottery pots, jars, basins, kettles, and bottles are all indispensable household utensils for the Tibetan people. Nangqian County, Qinghai Province, is the birthplace of Yushu civilization, with a long history and brilliant culture. Nangqian Tibetan black pottery is a traditional handicraft of the Nangqian area, mainly produced in Shanrong Village, Nangqian County. Nangqian Tibetan black pottery is made by primitive manual methods, with careful material selection, using locally pure and fine red loam and clay as raw materials. Through manual crushing, screening, throwing the body, airing, trimming, burnishing, and painting, the body is formed, sealed in a large pottery jar, and then fired using the unique method of sealing the jar and smoking it to infiltrate carbon. During firing, the temperature and humidity are strictly controlled so that carbon particles infiltrate the pottery body during the smoking process, finally becoming black pottery that is 'black as carbon and hard as porcelain.'

Coiling the body

Ropes of clay are coiled on a base and shaped by hand; wall thickness and roundness depend entirely on the potter's fingers.

Carbonising and guarding against cracks

After firing, carbon is worked into the body to make it black and hard, and the pieces are checked against cracks.

The dragon-head fire basin

A dragon head must be modelled and fired in one piece, which is why the fire basin is the hardest commission in the village.

Butter churn and tea jar

The churn must survive beating while the jar keeps its heat; each shape is dictated by use.

Company plus farm households

Dangzhen Pichu founded a company, a pottery research room and a training centre that taught villagers free of charge.

From fair to museum

From the 1970s export fair to a 1991 Beijing exhibition of twenty-four pieces, village pottery entered museum display.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

At first, Tibetans exchanged pottery pots and the like for grain and other goods; now Axi black pottery has entered the market and become a handcraft with distinctive local characteristics.

Other submitting regions for the same item: Pottery Firing Craftsmanship · Pottery Firing Craftsmanship · Pottery Firing Craftsmanship · Pottery Firing Craftsmanship · Pottery Firing Craftsmanship · Pottery Firing Craftsmanship · Pottery Firing Craftsmanship · Pottery Firing Craftsmanship · Pottery Firing Craftsmanship · Pottery Firing Craftsmanship · Pottery Firing Craftsmanship · Pottery Firing Craftsmanship · Pottery Firing Craftsmanship · Pottery Firing Craftsmanship.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

Villagers of Tangdui Village, Nixi Township, Shangri-La County, Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, have the traditional handicraft of firing black pottery. The transmission of this craft locally has a long history and high research value. In recent years, in the context of cultural tourism development, the primitive pottery industry of Tangdui Village has developed. Nangqian Tibetan black pottery products currently mainly include jars, pots, incense burners, butter lamps, and religious articles, among which the religious articles and tribute items are the most exquisite. The Nangqian Tibetan black pottery firing technique has high academic value in the study of the development history of Tibetan culture and the history of Tibetan-Han cultural exchange. Sunuo Qilin (per the official archive of the associated inheritor): Representative inheritor of the third national-level batch of the intangible cultural heritage item 'Pottery Firing Technique (Tibetan Black Pottery Firing Technique).' Tibetan black pottery firing technician. Over more than fifty years of practice, he has fully mastered the black pottery firing technique, excels at making dragon-head fire basins and tea sets (shaking vessels, tea jars) for holding butter tea, and is bold in innovation, decorating black pottery with white porcelain shards so that black and white set each other off, turning ordinary household items into ethnic folk handicrafts. His works feature archaic forms and unique craftsmanship. He has actively taken on apprentices and taught the craft; under his leadership, Tangdui Village became a widely known black pottery firing craft village, and he is the most representative and influential inheritor of the Tibetan black pottery firing technique. In the early 1970s, he participated in the Canton Fair. In 1991, twenty-four of his works exhibited in Beijing were collected by the Cultural Palace of Nationalities and the preparatory group of the Chinese Ethnic Museum. Male, Tibetan, born in May 1948, died in July 2015, from Shangri-La City, Yunnan Province. Dangzhen Pichu (per the official archive of the associated inheritor): Male, Tibetan, born in May 1967, from Shangri-La City, Yunnan Province. Representative inheritor of the fifth national-level batch of the intangible cultural heritage item 'Pottery Firing Technique (Tibetan Black Pottery Firing Technique).' With more than forty years of practice, in 2005 he founded the Shangri-La Longba Tangdui Black Pottery Co., Ltd., using a company-plus-household model to lead the whole village to prosperity. He established a pottery research studio and a Tibetan black pottery craft training center, long offering pottery training classes and teaching the craft to villagers free of charge. He is devoted to rescuing and protecting traditional craftsmanship and to the research and development of new products, developing various traditional household utensils, Tibetan religious articles, and carved decorative handicrafts with distinctive ethnic characteristics. His works are finely made with strong character, integrating practicality and appreciation, and enjoy a great reputation in the pottery art circle.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗

This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript; it mirrors the bilingual dossier. 阅读中文版，或返回英文名录。