Aimee McLeod in China

by Aimee McLeod

Recently, I spent 3 fantastic weeks in Jingdezhen, China, which rightly calls itself Porcelain Capital of China.

Organised by ANU, Canberra, this trip was for the distance ceramics diploma students.  As a graduate, I was fortunate to join them.  We stayed and worked at the Experimental Pottery Workshop, run by Takeshi Yasuda which is situated inside an old imperial porcelain sculpture factory with 2000 workers. www.potteryworkshop.com.cn/english/jingdezhen

Our own work schedule included demos by specialists from the factory in mould making, press moulding and slip casting, carving, underglaze transfers and cobalt painting, overglaze decals and enamel painting, and then having a go ourselves.  We had 3 kinds of porcelain to choose from, but we were also given slip cast blanks.  Everything is raw glazed in Jingdezhen, and this was done for us.  I was a little disappointed that we were not actually working in a traditional workshop with traditional throwing methods.  Good or bad, I was never outside my comfort zone.

More interesting however were our numerous trips.  The first one around the factory showed us how totally specialised every area is, and how interdependent workers are to do the various stages required to get to the finished product.  Most work is slip cast, but small details added on by hand.  The work is taken to the kilns by handcart, or even on platforms hung from a pole slung over the shoulder.  Tricky!  Trolley kilns seem to be the norm and fired with gas.

Jingdezhen is a place that takes pride in its industry that employs 800,000 of the population.  The People’s Republic Park has bronze sculptures depicting the various pottery labours, and streets are lined with hand painted porcelain lampposts and traffic lights.  Each district seems to have its own ceramic specialty- eggshell porcelain dinner sets, mass produced wares with blue and white tissue transfer designs, or streets of little family businesses.  Laochang is an area of medium and low grade decorative porcelains while Fanjiajing, specialises in imitation antiques.

Supporting the industry, there are also streets which specialise in glaze shops, brushes, tools, decals or transfer factories.

A long hot (34°) uncomfortable trip on a bus without suspension, on an unfinished road , took us to Mt Gao Lin, where Kaolin (a clay mineral) was first discovered.  Traditionally, the porcelain stone (a stony mineral) is ground to a fine powder by water hammers, washed and dried out in wooden moulds to make  porcelain bricks called dunzi.  Kaolin mixed into it reduced the rate of distortion and made the porcelain more plastic, also raising the firing temperature and improving whiteness of fired colour.  The kaolin, a loose material, is easily quarried and needs no cracking so that it can be washed directly. (for a more complex explanation, read The traditional crafts of porcelain making in Jingdezhen, by Bai Ming, 2002)

A stop at San Bao Ceramic Art Institute, a more rural setting where international artists can do residencies (www.chinaclayart.com/artres ). The millennium wall, built by locals and resident artists is an interesting structure!  Both here and at the Experimental Pottery Workshop, they are keen to have foreign artists bring new ideas while immersing themselves in local techniques, to help develop the stagnant industry.  Most of the highly skilled workers slavishly copy old masters and innovation is rare.

On to Yaoli, a sleepy little riverside town where all the glazes for Jingdezhen used to be made.  These days they are made in the town, and sold ready made in soft drink bottles from any number of shops in the glaze street.  Yaoli was probably the only place I saw that could be labelled picturesque, with a feel of old China.  Not getting into politics, I feel a lot of previous splendour  has been destroyed to make way for bland, grey and ugly concrete construction.  

Another trip took us to the Big Pot factory.  As it has only been on this site for about a year, the factory is quite airy and clean. The kilns are enormous. So are the pots. The street lampposts are made here as well as an assortment of large tall pots and oversized bowls. These pots are thrown, and assembled bone dry, before decorating or glazing.  The last part, the neck, is simply fired in place. The amazing thing is  all the carving and painting is done painstakingly by hand, even if they do use the same images over and over again.  Unfortunately, they were not throwing that day, but I believe 2 people throw together, one on each side of the pot.  Seeing all those huge pots all together is a little bit overwhelming, and the question begs to be asked: Why? I guess, because  they can, and maybe the utter drabness of the environment demands brightening with over the top overglaze enamel decorations!

We went to the eggshell porcelain factory, where tiny cups and bowls were thrown off the hump.  This porcelain is totally translucent when fired.  Quite a contrast to the big pots.  At the Blue and White factory, both hand thrown and jigger and jolleyd items were decorated with cobalt and other underglaze decorations. This place had the only real show room we saw.

We saw so many places, I could fill many pages, but a place that definitely made an impression was the defunct Cosmic Factory.  In it’s heyday in the 80s, it employed 20,000 people. Then it went broke. The remains is a large roofed area covered entirely with smashed pots, mainly butter dishes destined for some Scandinavian country.  It is very sad, and one wonders what happened to all the workers?  Next to it is the plate cemetery: thousands a upon thousands of seconds.  Probably the most photogenic spot. A Peter Lange type installation!

The scale of the ceramic work produced in Jingdezhen is mind-blowing. Everything imaginable is made in porcelain, and although mainly slipcast, all the details are still finished painstakingly by hand.  The working conditions vary from mediocre to really grotty and unhealthy with glaze and clay dust everywhere, and dodgy electric wiring.

The workers eke out a living. They would not be able to do so if any safety regulations were enforced.

If you think making a living from pottery is hard in NZ- think again!

Aimée McLeod