Pottery Firing Craftsmanship

Ⅷ-98Traditional CraftsmanshipYixing, JiangsuBatch 4 (2014)Extension Item

01 · Historical Records

The Yixing Jun-style (Junt陶) pottery making craft is concentrated in the area of Dingshu Town, Yixing City, Jiangsu Province; it has remained essentially unchanged since the late Qing dynasty, specifically roughly from Shushan in the east, to Baidang and Tangdu of Dingshan in the west, to Bainichang in the south, and to Qianluo and Shangyuan in the north. Yixing Jun-style pottery developed from the glazed pottery of the Sui and Tang periods, and by the Song dynasty the Jun-style firing craft gradually matured. The Ming dynasty was the flourishing period of the Yixing Jun-style craft; the 'Ou Kiln' made Jun-glaze pottery with dignified forms and brilliant, dazzling glaze colors. In the Qing dynasty, the 'Ge Kiln' fired Jun-style pottery that became famous at home and abroad; the Japanese called it 'sea-cucumber ware' (Haishenqi), rich in glaze colors.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

The Yixing Jun-style pottery making craft mainly refers to the traditional pottery-making craft characterized by and decorated with the Jun glaze and clay-sprigging (duihua). Yixing Jun-style pottery products are of many types, mainly daily coarse pottery, with primitive, dignified, and lovely forms, described as 'seeing elegance within rusticity.' The Jun-style body comes in two kinds: white clay and purple clay. The Jun glaze layer is relatively thick; phosphorus-containing lime-kiln kiln-sweat is added to the glaze as a flux, giving the glaze layer a milky, opaque feel. The glaze colors on the vessel surface include dozens of kinds such as sky-blue, gray-blue, azure-blue, sweet-white, ink-green, sky-blue, milky-white, golden-yellow, and antique-bronze. The craft process comprises several steps: raw-material processing, forming, glazing, clay-sprigging, and firing. Jun-style clay-sprigging, also called 'appliqué' (tiehua), is a pottery-making skill unique to the Yixing area: using the thumb as a brush and five-colored clay as ink, through the flexible use of finger methods such as 'rolling, twisting, smearing, pressing, and tapping,' exquisite pictures are piled and applied onto the Jun-style body. Jun-style pottery comes in many varieties with distinctive shapes, long known to the world for its rustic elegance, brilliant glaze colors, diverse varieties, and long history. The Ou Kiln glaze color prized the gray-blue glaze; 'blue halo within gray, gorgeous like a butterfly flower' is the basic glaze color of the Ou Kiln. During the Yongzheng reign of the Qing dynasty, Yixing Jun-style pottery became an imperial-use object. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Yixing Jun-style pottery making craft developed with each passing day; many varieties were further innovated on the traditional basis, and the craft was transmitted and developed in an orderly manner. But in recent years, the main raw materials of the Jun glaze—kiln-sweat, mud slurry, copper ash, and the like—have become increasingly scarce, affecting the development of Jun-style pottery. Jun-style pottery possesses both the northern ceramics' dignified, grand, and majestic profound style and the southern kiln system's delicate and refined graceful character. The Yixing Jun-style pottery making craft has absorbed a great deal of the essence of traditional culture, reaching an artistic realm appreciated by both refined and popular tastes; its unique Jun-glaze and clay-sprigging decoration crafts possess extremely high artistic and aesthetic value, composing an important page in China's ceramic culture.

Archival Account of Craft Procedures

The craft process comprises several steps: raw-material processing, forming, glazing, clay-sprigging, and firing.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

The Yixing Jun-style pottery making craft is centered on Yixing City, Jiangsu Province, forming its own line alongside zisha (purple clay) and duanni (segment clay). Yixing's pottery clay comes in all five colors; white clay suits fine wares, purple clay suits coarse wares, and Jun-style pottery takes its opaque glaze color and rugged forms, so it is mostly made into daily-use and garden-display objects. The Yixing City Cultural Center is the protecting unit of the item, and its Jun-style pottery workshops stand on the same street as the zisha teapot shops.

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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

Li Shoucai (per official inheritor archives): Male, Han ethnicity, born in June 1954, a native of Yixing City, Jiangsu Province. Representative inheritor of the pottery firing craft (Yixing Jun-style pottery making craft), a national-level intangible cultural heritage item of the fifth batch. Senior arts-and-crafts artist. In 1971 he entered the Yixing Jun-style Pottery Craft Factory, learning the clay-sprigging skill from the old artisan Zhang Haoyuan. He has comprehensively mastered the Jun-style pottery making craft and is rich in innovative ability. He pioneered the shift of Jun-style daily pottery decoration toward artistic display pottery, and originated the technique combining flat sprigging with semi-relief and relief, with exquisite sprigging skill and a unique style. Over fifty years of artistic practice, his works have won more than thirty gold, silver, and bronze awards in provincial-ministerial-level and above ceramic-art competitions; several works including 'Phoenix Playing with Peony' and 'Qunhuan' have been collected by institutions such as the National Museum of China and the Capital Museum. In 1985 he founded a clay-sprigging studio and trained twenty-six apprentices, which became a practice base for several domestic colleges and universities.

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 ↗

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