Changsha Kiln Tongguan Ceramic Firing Craftsmanship
01 · Historical Records
By the Tang dynasty, Tongguan ceramics developed rapidly and the ceramic craft gradually matured. The Changsha-kiln Tongguan ceramic craft exerted a huge influence on ceramic production after the Tang dynasty and has been transmitted to the present day.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The ancient town of Tongguan lies on the east bank of the Xiang River in Wangcheng District, Changsha City, Hunan Province, and is one of the five great pottery capitals of the country. The Tongguan ceramic industry has a long history, rich cultural content, and a uniquely distinctive ceramic craft. Tongguan is the birthplace of the world's underglaze polychrome ceramics and pioneered the new craft of ceramic underglaze polychrome. The Changsha-kiln Tongguan ceramic craft reflects the innovative spirit of the forebears, and its making can be called a consummate skill. It mainly comprises many techniques such as wheel-thrown forming, pinch-formed modeling, sculptural forming, appliqué, painted decoration, glaze-making, clay-making, and firing. The Changsha-kiln Tongguan ceramic craft is a famous Chinese folk craft with a deep popular base in Tongguan; along both banks of the Xiang River, the ten-li pottery city stretches unbroken and its kiln fires never cease. The reason underglaze polychrome could be fixed in form at Tongguan lies in the process arrangement that separates the body, glaze, and color: first make the clay and model the form, then prepare the glaze and make the glaze material; the painted and appliqué decoration is done beneath the glaze, and finally firing seals the color into the glaze layer. This path keeps the patterns from flaking off through long use and friction, entirely unlike the approach of overglaze painting, and also let Tongguan's porcelain set itself apart from other northern kilns after the Tang.
Underglaze polychrome painting
The decoration originated at Tongguan, painting the motif beneath the glaze so that firing seals it inside the layer, where it resists wear.
Pin-forming and figurative modelling
Adding figures, animals and irregular forms by hand, this is the most demanding of the tongguan forming methods and the field of the inheritor Liu Kunting.
Painting and appliqué
Two parallel decorative routes, brushwork on one side and moulded slips on the other, both of which must agree with the glaze before firing.
Preparing clay and glaze
Clay and glaze are proportioned separately; the resulting hues of underglaze colour depend on the mix and thickness of the pigments in the glaze.
The stretch of kilns along the eastern bank
Tongguan stands on the eastern bank of the Xiang river, one of China's five great pottery towns, with kilns strung out for miles and shipped out by water.
Liu Kunting's talent in modelled form
Born in Changsha in 1963, Liu Kunting has a firm grasp and exceptional instinct for modelled design; beyond more than eight hundred works he has exhibited overseas.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Before the Yin and Shang dynasties, Emperor Shun led the forebears to begin the pottery industry along the Xiang River area. The kiln industry around Tongguan relied on the hilly slopes along the east bank of the Xiang River, spreading in clusters along the water-transport docks and forming the pattern of a ten-li pottery city. Products were shipped out via the Xiang and Yangtze river systems, carrying this place's underglaze polychrome together with the name of the Changsha kiln into a broader kiln-industry exchange network, and also giving a group of artisan households skilled in pinch-modeling and sculpture a stable livelihood along this waterway.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
In the Tongguan town area, a ceramic production zone with more than four thousand practitioners has now formed, and its products sell well throughout the country. Liu Kunting (per the associated inheritor's official archive record): Male, Han ethnicity, born in September 1963, a native of Changsha City, Hunan Province. Representative inheritor of the fifth national-level batch of the intangible cultural heritage item 'Changsha Tongguan Kiln Ceramic Firing Technique.' Senior industrial arts craftsman. With a solid grounding in skill, he inherits tradition and brings forth the new, especially showing extremely high perceptiveness in clay-modeling form design, and his works are uniquely designed. While creating more than eight hundred works, he has also devoted himself to the inheritance and pioneering of the Changsha Tongguan kiln, successively participating in many important exhibitions and in the dissemination of Changsha Tongguan-kiln craft in Taiwan region of China as well as in the United States, France, Japan, Australia, South Korea, and other countries. In April 2015 he was named the first Labor Model of Wangcheng District, Changsha City.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Liu Kunting 05-2879
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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