Chaozhou Caici Firing Craftsmanship
01 · Historical Records
The Chaozhou painted-porcelain craft began in the mid-to-late Qing dynasty. According to research, Chaozhou already had porcelain production in the Tang and Song periods; the famous Song-dynasty Bijia Mountain kiln porcelain already employed such techniques as incised flowers, painted flowers, and relief flowers, as well as underglaze decorative methods. With the popularity of famille-rose (fencai) in the Qing dynasty, by the late Tongzhi reign the Fengxi porcelain district already had large-scale painting workshops (caiguan) engaged in porcelain painting; during the Xuantong reign, porcelain such as a 1.2-chi "hundred birds paying homage to the phoenix" four-seasons plate and overglaze figure-painted plates made by local artisans crossed the oceans to participate in the Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, USA, earning high praise. The Chaozhou ceramic-making craft's transmission lineage is intricate and complex, with innovation and evolution in every generation, forming a "multi-master" pattern of multi-school transmission that has been passed down to this day.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Chaozhou painted-porcelain firing technique is a ceramic craft popular in Chaozhou City, Guangdong Province, and its surrounding areas, in which special ceramic pigments are used to paint vases, brush pots, hanging plates, porcelain-panel paintings, and other porcelain, which is then fired. It spreads across Xiangqiao District, Fengxi District, Chao'an County, and Raoping County in Chaozhou City, as well as Dabu County and Gaobei County in Meizhou City. The Chaozhou painted-porcelain firing technique is world-renowned for its painting; its subject matter is mainly divided into figures, flowers-and-birds, landscapes, and patterned categories, with forms of expression including poem-painting, medallion (kai-guang), full-color, gold-ground myriad-flowers, patterned borders, and continuous-scene composition. The painted utensils are mainly white-bodied porcelain; the types of brush used number nearly twenty to thirty, such as eyebrow brushes, washing brushes, and moss brushes, with auxiliary tools being iron pens, bamboo pens, cotton balls, sponges, pounding pestles, and pounding mortars. The Chaozhou painted-porcelain firing technique is intricate: one must select a porcelain body with a pure-white glaze and proper form, set the draft according to the vessel's shape and design requirements, use an eyebrow brush to draw lines of varying thickness and depth on the traced design, pay attention to the depth of color and even thickness in filling and washing, and after the enamel firing draw gold and fill in on the fired design and relief lines. The pigments of Chaozhou painted porcelain are rich in color, and most can be mixed and blended with one another; the gold pigment is made from gold into gold oil and used separately. The core element of this technique is enamel firing, with the kiln temperature controlled between 700 and 850 degrees Celsius. The Chaozhou painted-porcelain firing technique features novel styles, full composition, brilliant and rich color, clear gradation, fluid lines, fresh tone, and fine painting; together with the gold-piling craft it appears resplendent and magnificent, possessing a strong local Chaozhou color, clearly distinct from painting techniques such as famille-rose and Guangzhou (Canton) enamel. Chaozhou painted porcelain applies the techniques of Chinese ink painting to painted porcelain, rich with the brushwork of Chinese painting, elevating traditional fine art to a high-level artistic work. The Chaozhou painted-porcelain craft has rich cultural connotations, displaying the uniquely Lingnan regional artistic style and folk-craft wisdom, with high artistic and socio-cultural value.
Enamel firing at controlled heat
After painting the piece is fired again at a held temperature of 700 to 850 degrees Celsius — too low and the colours do not bond, too high and they burn away or go dull; this stage decides the final hue and durability.
Division of labour among the fine brushes
Fine brushes for outlines, washing brushes for graded washes and a tip brush for stippling; an iron or bamboo needle for line work, cotton wool and sponge for lifting colour, and a mortar and pestle for grinding pigment.
Applied gold and gold-oil outlining
In 1976 Ye Zhuqing introduced gold applied over the glaze, a distinctly Chaozhou line; the gold is used as a separate gold-oil paint and never blended with other colours, and outlined lines are then filled in to give the piece its brilliance.
Reserve panels and gold-ground all-over flowers
Subjects range from figures, birds and flowers to landscapes and pure patterns, treated as painted scenes, reserve panels, full colouring, gold-ground flower grounds, patterned borders or all-over compositions.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Chaozhou painted porcelain centers on the old city precinct of Xiangqiao District and Fengxi District in Chaozhou City; the porcelain factories, workshops, and schools of the Fengxi area spread along both banks of the stream, while Chao'an County and Raoping County take on the overflow work, and the Dabu and Gaobei area of Meizhou, with raw materials and firing conditions complementary to Chaozhou, form a mutual support. Locally known as the Fengxi porcelain district, by the late Tongzhi reign this area already had large-scale painting workshops; in the late Qing and early Republic, the painting shops of the Xiangqiao old city precinct stood alongside the paper-flower and woodcarving trades, and painters often commanded both fine-line and patterned painting. After the modern opening of Shantou as a port, the distribution of the painted-porcelain trade readjusted with commercial exchange, and the painted-porcelain shops of Jieyang, Chenghai, and Puning areas mostly stemmed from this same line. The protecting institution, the Chaozhou Arts and Crafts Research Institute, undertakes technique organization and the training of new people; the overglaze gold-piling painted-porcelain line opened by Ye Zhuqing formed a new decorative category in Chaozhou.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Xie Jinying (as recorded in the official archive of the associated inheritor): male, Han ethnicity, born in August 1946, from Chaozhou City, Guangdong Province. Representative inheritor of the Chaozhou painted-porcelain firing technique, a national-level intangible cultural heritage project of the fifth batch. A Chaozhou painted-porcelain firing technician. With over fifty years of practice, he integrated the brush-and-ink techniques of Chinese painting into the traditional Chaozhou-painted-porcelain technique, enriching its forms of expression; his works display a rigorous painting style, profound artistic conception, and masterful technique, possessing a strong folk-craft character and traditional local flavor. He has long been devoted to the transmission of Chaozhou painted-porcelain art, cultivating a group of Chaozhou-painted-porcelain artisans through mentoring and apprenticeship. Ye Zhuqing (as recorded in the official archive of the associated inheritor): male, Han ethnicity, born in August 1935, from Chaozhou City, Guangdong Province. Representative inheritor of the Chaozhou painted-porcelain firing technique, a national-level intangible cultural heritage project of the fifth batch. A Chaozhou painted-porcelain firing technician. He began practicing Chaozhou painted-porcelain art at age nine and has done so for over seventy years, accumulating a deep foundation in ceramic design and manufacturing craft, and in particular pioneered the overglaze gold-piling painted-porcelain decorative craft in 1976, leading a new trend in Chaozhou painted porcelain. His works are based on nature and lyricism, depicted in fine-line new-color (xincai) form, with meticulous coloring and elegant brushwork, emphasizing the combination of solid and void, so that the modeled decoration of his works is spaced with density and weighted with lightness and heaviness, rich in three-dimensionality. He has long undertaken the training of Chaozhou painted-porcelain technical backbone, successively cultivating a large number of technical personnel.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Xie Jinying 05-2894
- Ye Zhuqing 05-2895
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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