Pottery Firing Craftsmanship

Ⅷ-98Traditional CraftsmanshipPingding, ShanxiBatch 4 (2014)Extension Item

01 · Historical Records

The Pingding black-glaze carved ceramic making technique takes its name from the place, originating earliest at the ancient town of Bojing in Pingding Prefecture in the Tang dynasty; it is now mainly distributed in Pingding County, Shanxi Province, and Xiyang and Yu counties. As early as the Tang dynasty it produced white porcelain: "To the west, Pingding and Huozhou both fired white kilns in the Tang...". In 1977, the writing group for the Shanxi Province Light Industry Gazetteer, based on porcelain shard specimens excavated at the Bojing kiln in Pingding, verified that "the Pingding kiln of Shanxi belongs to the Ding ware kiln system of ancient China". The prosperous period of Pingding ceramic firing was during the Daoguang reign of the Qing dynasty - "for ten li the smoke trails fill the mist, village by village wild fires burn until dawn" - and the firing technique has been passed down to the present.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

The Pingding black-glaze carved ceramic making technique is the traditional craft of using local quality kaolin as the main raw material and, through process steps such as screening, elutriation, aging, clay preparation, wheel-thrown forming, glazing, and carving, firing carved porcelain. Pingding black-glaze carved ceramics use local kaolin clay prepared for blanks through 14 process steps, including aging, de-ironing, batching, grinding, and vacuum pugging; before the blank dries, the designs are carved with the knife standing in for the brush, completed in one breath, with sprightly, flowing lines and vivid, generalized images; using black and white as the main means of expression, and through special firing and kiln transformation, the works possess a quality that unites the beauty of the material, of decorative technique, of simplified imagery, and of archaic form. A characteristic of the Pingding black-glaze carved ceramic making technique is that it still preserves unique skills including brown glaze, white glaze, yellow glaze, Ge-imitation crackle glaze, kiln-transformation glaze, paper-cut resist decoration with added colors, and leaf kiln-transformation glaze; it both preserves the characteristics of the Ding ware kiln system of ancient China and inherits the special black-glaze firing technique of the Pingding kiln of Shanxi, and its works are full, rounded, plain, and weighty. Pingding has a long history of ceramic firing. According to the History of Chinese Ceramics, the Pingding kiln first appears in the Ming-dynasty Da Ming Yitong Zhi, compiled by imperial order under Li Xian and others, and in Lu Ying's Guang Yu Ji; it was historically known as the "Western kiln".

Archival record of process steps

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

The Pingding black-glaze carved ceramic making technique is centered on Pingding County, Shanxi Province; since the Ming and Qing dynasties it has developed alongside the local black coarse porcelain. In black-glaze carving, the pattern is incised with a knife and then covered with transparent glaze; the glaze pools black in the depths of the cuts and shows white where it is thin, so the pattern must be completed in one breath, since any delay causes the glaze to flake at the knife edge. The Pingding County Arts and Crafts Factory is the project protection unit.

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

This technique is transmitted mainly through family inheritance. Carved porcelain is a decorative ware of special significance among northern ceramics; the firing technique is highly complex, with glaze colors including not only white glaze but also black, brown, yellow, and blue glazes and many kiln-transformation colors, making it of great research value. The beauty of the works is contained in their black-and-white patterns and lustrous glazes, giving them an aesthetic value that appeals to both refined and popular tastes, simple and dignified, along with considerable historical and cultural value. Zhang Hongliang (official archival record of an associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born June 1970, from Pingding County, Shanxi Province. Representative inheritor of the pottery firing technique (Pingding sandware making technique), a fifth national-level batch intangible cultural heritage project. Master of Arts and Crafts of Shanxi Province. While strictly following ancient methods, he has boldly improved key stages such as the raw material formula, forming methods, kiln temperature control, and mastery of firing conditions, and beyond traditional sandware has developed new products such as high-end tableware, kitchenware, and tea ware artworks that are practical, green, and eco-friendly. In addition to continually visiting sandware producing areas across the country to learn and exchange experience, he has studied at Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Suzhou University, taking his own tradition as the foundation while drawing widely on other crafts. Over more than thirty years in the craft, he has taken on more than ten apprentices and established a training institute and research institute for the Pingding sandware making technique. Zhang Wenliang (official archival record of an associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born December 1968, from Pingding County, Shanxi Province. Representative inheritor of the pottery firing technique (Pingding black-glaze carved ceramic making technique), a fifth national-level batch intangible cultural heritage project. Arts and Crafts Professional of Shanxi Province. He is skilled in ceramic processes such as throwing, shaping, decoration, and material batching; his works have glazes like congealed fat and simple patterns, strongly preserving the style of Northern Song black-glaze ceramics. In addition, works in kiln-transformation (yaobian) ware, marbled (jiaotai) ware, and cloud-and-water ware express his creativity and pursuit of innovation. For many years he has devoted himself to excavating and organizing the black-glaze carved ceramic making technique, and has edited and published scholarly works such as Pingding Carved Porcelain. He founded Shanxi Shengtao Ceramics Co., Ltd. and has carefully trained two inheritors.

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。