The history of ceramic manufacturing is very long, starting seven or eight thousand years ago in the Neolithic Age by our ancestors who started the craft of making and using pottery. Porcelain is a significant invention from ancient China. People made primitive porcelain early in the Shang Dynasty, and real porcelain was first made in the Eastern Han Dynasty. Porcelain manufacturing in China gradually developed from the Wei, Jin and North and South Dynasties to the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Ceramic is one of the three greatest specialties from the Western Han Dynasty that has become internationally known. The town of Jingdezhen in Jiangxi Province is China’s "Porcelain Capital" in China.
Pottery is made by cooking clay. After humans learned how to start a fire and use it to cook, they tried many different methods to cook hunted animals and vegetation, and then store the remaining food and water. After a long period of attempts, humans finally learned to make pottery by cooking clay mixed with water.
Pottery is the process of cooking, forming, and drying clay or a mixture of clay, feldspar and quartz. Ceramics represent the artistic features of the cooking and forming techniques, as well as the color of the glaze and its decorative features.
Pottery is the oldest handicraft in China. As early as the Neolithic Age, roughly styled and artless grey, red, white, colored, and black pottery existed. Glazed and hard glazed pottery with primitive porcelain characteristics first appeared during the Shang Dynasty. Porcelain was first made in the Eastern Han Dynasty, and the production techniques became highly advanced level during the Tang Dynasty. The development of porcelain manufacturing blossomed during the Song Dynasty with many famous kilns. From body blank, decorating, and glazing to firing, techniques from the Qing Dynasty exceeded those of the previous periods.
Violet sand earthenware of Yixing in Jiangsu Province, Nixing pottery of Qinzhou in Guangxi Province, water pottery of Jianshui in Yunnan Province, and the Rongchang pottery of Sichuan Province are crowned as the four most famous Chinese potteries.
