National Treasure: Jingdezhen Ceramics

By JDZ-Ceramic

 National Treasure: Jingdezhen Ceramics、

Jingdezhen Ceramics Museum remains the most renowned cultural tourist attraction in the city. 

Opening in 1954, the Jingdezhen Ceramics Museum became the first institution of its kind in China and today it remains perhaps the most renowned cultural tourist attraction in Jingdezhen, a city known as the Capital of Porcelain.

The museum houses a great variety of historic pottery and porcelain exhibits. Most pieces were fired in governmental kilns during the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911). Also featured are artworks from the Republic of China period (1912-1949) and masterpieces produced by renowned ceramists of modern times. The museum has become a window to a cultured past spanning 1,000 years of Jingdezhen’s ceramic civilization.

The collection includes rare porcelain wares from the Song (960-1276), Yuan (1271-1368), Ming (1368-1644), and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, many of which are considered national treasures. And the exhibit surpasses all other museums in its holding of ceramic masterpieces created in the past 100 years.

The total collection is comprised of more than 13 categories and 250 subcategories of ceramics, spanning more than 2,000 shapes and more than 10,000 patterns.

Housed here are 378 pieces that have won international, national, or ministerial gold and silver prizes with four having won the National Prize for New Product Development. Exhibits also include many porcelain wares that were presented as state gifts in times past, as well as noted porcelain wares from Germany, Britain, Japan, South Korea and the United States.

For decades the museum has cultivated talented artisans of the ceramic craft. Today there are four: Ning Qinzheng, vice curator of the museum and a master of art and craft in Jiangxi Province; Cao Ganyuan, academic supervisor of the museum and chairman of the Jingdezhen Calligraphers’ Association; Chen Jun, curator assistant of the museum and a senior specialist in art and craft; and Sun Lixin, a senior specialist in arts and crafts born into a family of ceramists and now acting as director of the Jingdezhen Wenbo Art Exchange Center. Many of their pieces have garnered domestic and international awards and are popular among collectors both in China and overseas.

Winning wide praise both home and abroad, in recent years cultural relics and artworks from the Jingdezhen Ceramics Museum have appeared at many exhibitions in France, Japan, Macao and Hong Kong. The year 2004 marked the millennium anniversary of Jingdezhen and in 2003, the Chinese Culture Center set up in Paris by the Ministry of Culture of China held “Burning Brilliance”¡ªThe Exhibition of Ancient Porcelain Masterpieces of Jingdezhen. French President Jacques Chirac personally wrote to the center and visited the exhibition. “As the essence of Chinese culture, porcelain spreads the fame of Chinese culture around the world, especially in Europe,” he said.

The ceramic exhibition and other featured mediums reflecting Chinese heritage at the Chinese Culture Year in France proved a strong draw for the French public. The exhibition, with only 60 pieces displayed, attracted more than 10,000 visitors and all exhibits were heavily attended.

Jingdezhen’s porcelain artworks have generated interest and participation within the international culture of ceramics. For instance, the ceramic industry of France has developed a close relationship with that of Jingdezhen.

From the Ming Dynasty to the middle Qing Dynasty, a large quantity of porcelain wares made in Japan were modeled after those made of Jingdezhen, which had already been widely traded and collected across the globe. Since the Ming Dynasty, countless Jingdezhen porcelains were transported by Portuguese traders to Europe via Macao. Over the past 100 years in Hong Kong, an international metropolis known by some as the Capital of Art Collections, there have emerged a number of collectors who revel in Jingdezhen porcelains.

The French newspaper, Le Figaro, in praise of the Exhibition of Ancient Porcelain Masterpieces of Jingdezhen, described its cultural wares as: “Resplendent white gold, beautiful Chinese porcelain.” These are the particular jewels of the Jingdezhen Ceramics Museum, a palace of art depicting a city’s 1,000-year-old ceramic civilization.

Background information:

A world-famous brand, since the 15th Century Jingdezhen has enjoyed great reputation within the ceramic industry, whereas genuine porcelain was not produced in Europe until the 18th Century. Under the influence of Jingdezhen ceramics, the industry began to truly develop in Europe in the 19th Century. From the late Ming Dynasty through the early Qing Dynasty, chinaware - with Jingdezhen as synonym - sold well in Europe and around the world. Known in some regions as white gold, porcelain wares were popular with families of both aristocratic and common background. Noblemen in Europe and Japan were proud of their collections of Jingdezhen ceramics and shipping companies gained great wealth by trading Jingdezhen ceramics. (Thus the derivation of the label China in Europe.)