The origins of Chinese pottery and ceramics go back to distant antiquity. And from the masterful excellence of Chinese ceramics, we can deduce the painstaking labor that went into making them. Painted on the surfaces of Ming (1368-1644 A.D.) and Ch'ing (1644-1911 A.D.) period pieces are delicate flowers, grasses, birds, and beasts that make one sigh and wonder how such fine work was ever produced.

Four objective factors influenced the beginnings and development of Chinese pottery and ceramics: clay, fuel, river systems, and markets. Heavy clay and large quantities of fuel are required for pottery and porcelain making. Prohibitively high shipping costs made pottery production economically impractical in areas without these basic prerequisites. So a locale with plentiful supplies of both clay and lumber as fuel had the best potential for setting up a ceramics kiln.

Once a large kiln has been set up, it often continues to produce for hundreds of years. The arts of preparing clay, glazing, and firing are often passed down from generation to generation; so each area will tend to develop its own individual glazes, clays, and decorating techniques, resulting in unique styles and designs. These special characteristics provide much of the basis of modern appraisal of ancient pottery and porcelain pieces: from the particular features of a piece, one can usually pinpoint definitively when and where it was made. Beginning with the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-220 A.D.), and into the T'ang (618-907 A.D.), Sung (960-1279 A.D.), Yuan (1279-1368 A.D.), and Ming (1368-1644 A.D.) dynasties, large quantities of pottery and porcelain were exported from China to Korea, Japan, the Ryukyu Islands, the Southeast Asian peninsula, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, the Middle East, the eastern coast of Africa, continental Europe, Great Britain, and the United States. Pottery and porcelain pieces exported during these periods are an excellent source of research materials on the history of China's communications, trade, and economic relations with other countries.

The key to why ceramic art has been able to develop to such a high level in China lies in the spirit of Chinese craftsmen to strive for excellence. Ceramic and porcelain pieces dating back to various historical periods have demonstrated again and again how Chinese artisans overcame the shortcomings of the materials they used, and how craftsmanship can conquer the difficulties encountered in working with clay. For example, in the late Yuan (1279-1368 A.D.) and early Ming (1368-1644 A.D.) dynasties, the material used to produce porcelain was porcelain stone mixed with kaolin, a material with relatively poor plasticity. Faced with this difficulty, the porcelain makers of the time came up with the idea of grinding the raw material to an extremely fine consistency, then soaking it in water for several years. This process of hydrolysis increased its stickiness and plasticity. In this way the clay could be stretched and formed on a potter's wheel into beautiful porcelain articles. When half-dry, a special knife was used to shave it until extremely thin; this is how the famous Chinese "Eggshell" porcelain, a product of the official kin of the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties, was made. Modern porcelain makers would today be hard put to reproduce this unique process for treating porcelain clay, and the highly developed craftsmanship that accompanied it-even with their state-of-the-art equipment and technologies.

Pottery and porcelain artisans of today have full access to modern technological knowledge, and can freely choose their equipment. But they all still carry on in the traditional belief that man can indeed conquer nature. Some imitate ancient designs, others produce avant-garde pieces. With their minds, their hands, and clay and fire, these potters express the artist's perception of beauty, his professional experience, his sensitivity, and his level of artistic cultivation.

History of Ceramics

After the invention of pottery in the Neolithic period, (5000-2200 B.C.), the ancient Chinese succeeded in producing painted pottery, black pottery and carved pottery. The long years of experience in kiln firing led China entering into a new ceramic age in the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-220 A.D.) Although archaeological finds have revealed that glazed pottery was produced as early as the Western Zhou dynasty (1100-771 B.C.), yet the production of glazed wares was not common until the Han Dynasty.

An obvious change in the attitude of figure modelling in the Six Dynasties (265-588 A.D.) was the inclination to include more details, an effort to make the models look more real. Six Dynasties potters also succeeded in improving the quality of early celadon wares both in glaze colour and in body clay. The production of glazed proto-porcelain was a significant achievement in Chinese ceramic history.
The major contribution made by Tang dynasty (616-906 A.D.) potters was their bold introduction of the multi-colour wares. In early Tang dynasty, production of sancai , or tri-colour pottery figurines dominate the pottery scene. Tang pottery figurines comprised three mayor categories, namely human figures, animals and fabulous tomb guards.

The success of ceramic production in the Sung dynasty (960-1279 A.D.) was seen in the monochrome wares. The most spectacular of the Sung monochromes was the celadon which has been called by various names base on its shade and tone or its pattern of crackles.

The production of blue and white wares at the end of the Yuan dynasty (1280-1367) and the beginning of the Ming dynasty (1368-1643) was generally of a poorer quality, possibly due to the shortage of imported cobalt during the period of political instability. In Yung Lo reign (1403-1424), both the potting and glazing techniques improved and wares attained a whiter body and richer blue than those of Yuan dynasty ware. The underglaze blue of the Yung Lo wares and Hsuen Te (1426-1435) wares noted or their rich blue tone.

Throughout the Ming dynasty, dragon and phoenix were the most popular decorative motifs on ceramic wares. Other animals, plant forms, and human figures in garden and interior setting were often used as decors for blue and white wares. It has been noted that after Wan Li (1573-1620), very few ceramic wares of the Ming dynasty bear reign marks.

The fashionable wucai wares of Chia Ching (1522-1566) and Wan Li (1573-1620) periods are usually fully covered with colourful patterns. Very often the colours are a bit too heavy. The colours used include red, yellow, light and dark green, brown, aubergine and underglaze blue. In Ming dynasty, a variety of porcelain wares were decorated with motifs coming up on coloured ground instead. They included wares with green glazed pattern on a yellow ground, yellow glazed pattern on a blue ground, green glazed pattern on a red ground and other colour combinations.

Another remarkable category of coloured wares produced in the Ming dynasty was the susancai or 'tri-colour'. The major three colours are yellow, green and aubergine. Tri-colour wares of the Ming dynasty appeared in the reigns of Hsuen Te, Chia Ching and Wan Li.

The peak of Chinese ceramic production was seen in the reigns of Kang Hsi (1622-1722). Yung Cheng (1723-1735) and Chien Lung (1736-1796) of the Ching dynasty during which improvement was seen in almost all ceramic types, including the blue and white wares, polychrome wares, wucai wares, etc. The improved enamel glazes of early Ching dynasty being fired at a higher temperature also acquired a more brilliant look than those of the Ming dynasty.

The production of doucai wares in the Yung Cheng period reached new height both in quantity and technical perfection. The use of fencai enamel for decorating porcelain wares was first introduced in Kang Hsi period. The production of fencai enamel wares reached a mature stage in the Yung Cheng era. As the improved fencai enamels had a wider range of colours and each could be applied in a variety of tones, they could be used to depict some of the highly complicated pictorial compositions of flower and plant forms, figures and even insects.

Ching dynasty is a period specially noted for the production of colour glazes. In the area of monochromes, Ching potters succeeded in reproducing most of the famous glaze colours found in ceramic wares on the Sung, Yuan and Ming dynasties. In addition, they created a number of new glazes, especially the monochromes. Among them were the Sang-de-boeuf, the rough-pink, the coral red and the mirror black. All these four glazes were invented in the reign of Kang Hsi.
Yung Cheng potters invented a flambe glaze know as Lujun, or robin's egg which was produced in two firings. Another significant colour glaze successfully produced by the Ching potter was 'tea-dust'. It is an opaque glaze finely speckled with colours in green, yellow and brown.

When Ming was taken over by Qing (about 1639-1700 AD), and when Qing was taken over by the Republic of China (about 1909-1915 AD), the disturbances in these two periods resulted in the collapse of the official kilns. In their places, private kilns were established by the operators and artists who previously worked in the official kilns. With their expertise, they produced high quality porcelain wares, such as the 'export porcelain wares made during the transition of Ming to Qing', which earned a high praise in overseas markets, and the excellent imitations of Sung, Yuan and Qing wares are made during the early stage of the Republic of China, which were almost true to the originals.

Chinese Invention of Porcelain

One of the most important Chinese exports to Europe in the 17th century was porcelain, which had been invented in China about 1,000 years earlier. As European demand for Chinese porcelain grew in part because European ceramic centers at this time did not possess the technical knowledge required to manufacture porcelain, porcelain from China was flooding the Europe market by the 1630s. The Dutch alone were importing more than one million pieces per year. But in the 1680s, the Kangxi Emperor reasserted imperial control over the kilns at Jingdezhen in Jiangxi, an area renowned for having the finest clay and for producing porcelain fit for an emperor, and the export of Chinese porcelain to Europe came to a halt for a period of time. This interruption in supply led in part to renewed attempts at ceramic centers across Europe to unlock the secret to Chinese porcelain, which did happen eventually but not until early in the 18th century. Prior to this time Europeans could only copy the look of Chinese porcelain models and keep working to duplicate the translucent quality of Chinese porcelain. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries Chinese decorative arts had a huge influence on European tastes during this time.

The manufacture of porcelain in China evolved over time into a highly specialized set of related crafts that together formed an entire industry. There were those who specialized in mining kaolin clay, others whose specialty was to mix the raw clay with other materials to create the particular mixture used for porcelain, and still others who actually shaped the objects, others who fired them, and still others whose specialty it was to paint and decorate the final pieces. As demand continued to increase, porcelain production in China began to resemble a highly specialized, mass production styled industry. A common view of the industrial revolution as it occurred in England in the 1750s is that the burgeoning textile industry was a key contributor to the complex interaction of various socioeconomic developments that led to that phenomenon; mentioned less often is the possibility that the porcelain industry, as it evolved in China, may have also contributed to this development.

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