Global Design: Ceramic lamp posts and more in Jingdezhen, China’s porcelain capital

JINGDEZHEN, Jiangxi – Driving into Jingdezhen, it looks like any other inland Chinese provincial city that has rampantly urbanised: concrete infrastructure and superhighways sprawled against a rustic landscape of paddy fields and mountains.

But I start noticing lamp posts and road dividers clad in blue-and-white porcelain, which look a little out of place in the grey city, but point to Jingdezhen’s past as the world’s porcelain capital. 

The dusty city in south-eastern Jiangxi province has been producing porcelain wares for more than 2,000 years.

It is surrounded by the Gaoling Mountain range, which is rich in the kaolin clay deposits needed for the finest porcelain.

According to China’s imperial records, when Emperor Shizong of Liao (947-951) heard that the kaolin here produced ceramics that was “white like jade, bright as a mirror, thin as paper” and “sounds like a bell”, he arranged the Gaoling mines to supply porcelain exclusively to royalty.

Royal kilns were built and over time, the porcelain was also exported.

Chinese porcelain made its way to Persia around the ninth century. At the same time, Jingdezhen artisans became acquainted with Persian cobalt, which turned a vivid blue when fired under high temperatures.

China’s blue-and-white ceramics became a hugely popular colour combination for decorating tableware. From the Tang Dynasty (618-907) onwards, the porcelain became a major export for China that was copied globally.

At its peak, Jingdezhen employed more than a million men, women and children in 3,000 kilns in the 18th century.

The manufacturing process was split into areas of specialisation. Some workers focused on mixing clay, for instance, while others fired the kilns. Artisans drew patterns, painted and carved.

This division of labour continues today, though many processes have changed with the times.

Today, most workshops have abandoned the kaolin from nearby mountains for purer deposits in other provinces. Electric kilns have replaced wood-fired ones.

Political upheaval and mass production in factories elsewhere are among the reasons for the diminished dominance of Jingdezhen porcelain.

But the craftsmanship never left the city, and the tradition is slowly being revived. While state-owned porcelain factories have shuttered, many have been converted into art hubs housing private studios and workshops. 

Rising affluence in China has brought new customers, while the government’s move in 2010 to promote tourism has resulted in domestic and overseas visitors flocking in.

More than eight million tourists visited Jingdezhen during China’s week-long National Day holiday in 2023, according to the Jiangxi Department of Culture and Tourism.

The city has also attracted over 30,000 Jing Drifters – young Chinese migrants escaping the stress of life in major metropolises like Beijing and Guangzhou.

They are drawn to Jingdezhen’s lower rents, slower pace and opportunities to pursue art, set up cafes or discover themselves.

Here, design lovers, influencers and travellers can marvel at porcelain rotundas, spend time at repurposed brick kilns-turned-art hubs and cafes, and shop for ceramics.

Taoxichuan Ceramic Art Avenue is an art mall converted from an old porcelain factory.

Parts of the brick kilns and chimneys have been retained, while the original factories have been repurposed into art studios, shops selling ceramics, eateries and open spaces for entertainment.

In the evenings, the bustling plaza is filled with stalls helmed by young potters and entrepreneurs selling ceramics. 

Salesman Wang Xiaowei says: “Most of the factories and workshops in Jingdezhen today are small. The scale is not large because it is still mainly manual production here. There are many small family-run workshops.”

He works at Qi He Tang, a porcelain shop outside Jingdezhen Sculpture Porcelain Factory, a ceramics bazaar built on the former site of a state-owned factory. His family runs a factory with some 20 employees, mostly relatives.

He says porcelain tableware can be mass-produced by machines in Jingdezhen, but items such as vases and tea sets are still mostly finished by hand.

“The tea sets are mass-produced, but the patterns are painted by hand,” he adds. “So, it is more expensive, and the output is low.”  

Another highlight is the beautiful Jingdezhen Imperial Kiln Museum, located in the restored historical neighbourhood of Taoyangli. Next to it are the ruins of an imperial Ming Dynasty kiln.

Designed by Studio Zhu Pei, the award-winning museum was built using recycled kiln bricks and new ones. Recycled bricks are plentiful in the city, as the kilns are demolished regularly to ensure top thermal performance.

The archaeological museum is composed of buildings shaped like old Chinese kilns, and houses ceramic relics and shards found in the city. 

It is popular with tourists and international students keen to learn about pottery and Chinese ceramic culture, says Ms Zhu Ziqi, an English-speaking guide who graduated from the Jingdezhen Ceramics University.

“This year also marks the 60th anniversary of China-France diplomatic relations. So, there are also many French people visiting,” she adds. 

Just outside Jingdezhen is a porcelain “palace” built by grandmother and retired ceramicist Yu Ermei.

The “palace” features three-storey rotundas covered from floor to ceiling in porcelain shards. More than 60,000 colourful ceramic wares, including a pair of precious Ming vases, decorate the windows, doors, ceilings and walls.

The attraction is a hot spot for domestic tourists and youngsters, many dressed in traditional clothing or hanfu for photographs.

Jingdezhen, which once made ceramics for royalty and dominated the world stage, has successfully transformed itself to be cool and relevant again in 21st-century China.

Different types of Jingdezhen porcelain

Jingdezhen ceramicists today make a huge variety of wares – from delicate Chinese tea sets to modern Western-style tableware to contemporary art pieces commissioned by museums, casinos and other entities.

A visit to the studio of ceramic artist Zhu Legeng, a grand master in China’s ceramic art world, shows how he is able to mould and fire clay into fantastical objects of art with vivid colours. 

Born in Jingdezhen, Zhu studied at the Jingdezhen Ceramics Institute and researched the craftsmanship, history and culture of ceramics.

In an interview with China Daily, the artist noted that in ancient China, pottery and agriculture went hand in hand.

“Many Chinese ceramics were products of agricultural civilisation,” he said.

Zhu often uses domesticated animals as motifs in his works, and his studio displays many ox and horse sculptures in all shapes and sizes.

Some of the ox sculptures are made from a special clay fired to a beautiful rustic orange hue with light gold streaks. The creations have a distinct Chinese aesthetic.

Ceramics salesman Wang Xiaowei says the city mainly makes four types of porcelain: qinghua porcelain (blue-and-white porcelain), linglong porcelain with pierced ornamentation, famille rose porcelain and enamel colour-glazed porcelain.  

Qinghua is regarded as the most famous and popular of the four styles. Many Chinese households have blue-and-white dinner sets and vases. The main raw material, cobalt oxide, turns blue when fired at a high temperature.

Linglong porcelain features carved patterns filled with a translucent glaze. This technique is used in Chinese tableware, where rice grain-sized shapes are hollowed out and a glaze applied several times to cover them. When held against the light, a pattern emerges.  

High-temperature colour glazes and colour enamel porcelain are also favoured by Jingdezhen ceramicists, who make teacups and vases with this technique, often using shapes and styles from the Song and Ming Dynasties.

Mr Wang’s shop sells handmade, flower-shaped enamel red porcelain teacups, a style from the Song Dynasty.

“The five-mouth teacup was from the Song period, when the people loved flowers,” he says. “These cups are made entirely by hand. Our relatives make it in small workshops, so the output is small and only one to two people are involved.”

Famille rose porcelain, a technique brought to China in the 17th century from Europe, is when white porcelain ware is fired with a translucent glaze. Colours are applied by hand before the items are fired again.

Such porcelain was especially popular in the 18th and 19th centuries. Large quantities of these wares were exported from Jingdezhen to Europe, the United States and Singapore. 

The famille rose porcelain in Singapore was made specially for the wealthy Straits-born Chinese community. Straits Chinese or Nonya porcelain is characterised by exuberant colours, and often features phoenix and tree peony motifs.

The Singapore Peranakan Museum has a small but beautiful collection of Nonya porcelain made in Jingdezhen. There is also a selection for sale in the museum’s souvenir shop, as well as in the household department of Tangs.