Exhibition: Songnachaiqi | Manufacturing and Firing Techniques of Wood-fired Ceramic Kiln in Jingdezhen

Venue: China National Arts and Crafts Museum and China Intangible Cultural Heritage Museum

Time: 9:00-17:00 (admission closes at 16:00), closed on Mondays (except holidays)

Exhibition Introduction: The thousand-year kiln fire in Jingdezhen has brought out the splendor of Chinese ceramics and illuminated the avenue of ceramics in the world. Tang Ying, a pottery supervisor in the Qing Dynasty, said, “The kiln fire is the basis for the success of porcelain”. Kiln fire is from the kiln, while the kiln is the carrier where the porcelain clay and glaze blend and reborn as ceramic art. To understand the making of ceramics, one should first begin with the kiln.

For thousands of years, the kiln and firing skills, continue to maintain the essence and unceasingly make innovations. In contemporary times, Jingdezhen’s ceramic craftsmen have continued to research, explore, improve, and test, resulting in the artistic wood kiln called Songnachaiqi. “Song” means wood as fuel and ash using for glaze-making while “Na” means the inheritance and innovation of a hundred arts and crafts. “Chai” means that kiln can make anything and endow them with natural color while “Qi” signifies small beauty in the grasp, large vessels becoming the scene. This kiln can not only refire Jingdezhen ceramic works of various historical periods, but also fully meet the firing conditions of various contemporary ceramic arts, and can vividly show the magic of “one color in the kiln and ten thousand colors out of the kiln”.

More than one hundred pieces of artistic Chai kiln works in the exhibition are created by dozens of Chinese masters of arts and crafts, national intangible cultural heritage inheritors, Chinese ceramic art masters, professors, provincial masters of arts and crafts, etc., and fired by the Songnachaiqi kiln, which demonstrates the historical connotation and contemporary value of contemporary art ceramics and wood kilns.

Translator: CHEN Nuoqi

Reviewer: ZHAO Huinan