Last year I had the opportunity to visit Jingdezhen referred to in this article. It is a great combination young ceramic artists and great museums but is not on most tourist itineraries. This article makes me want to visit again.
Thanks for such an interesting and informative piece. In the late 1980’s, I purchased a beautiful red porcelain vase from a pottery shop. The woman there told me red is an extremely difficult color to achieve with porcelain. What I have is certainly not the Chinese red, having a much brighter hue, but I think I’m about to go down a very deep hole to learn more about red porcelain.
"He now made letters for signboards and wine-labels; but his intelligence was not high enough to attain to art, nor commonplace enough to look merely to profit, so that, without satisfying anyone, he had ruined himself." - 😂 I feel seen 🥲
I absolutely loved that, thank you. Here's a story, I would like to know if you are aware of this. December, 2024, we were in Tianjin touring the "China House", a porcelain covered old French mansion in the old downtown. There are murals on the walls made up on shards and fragments of old porcelain. The guide pointed out that the red fragments from the Ming dynasty were worth 100Ks of Yuan EACH and that the process for making the color was lost even until today. I was sceptical at the time, but you confirmed it for me! So, thank you again.
This is fascinating. I have a lamp in a deep reddish color, which I believe is ceramic, maybe porcelain. I’ve been told they were manufactured by the thousands. My grandmother who left it to me thought it was very special. It doesn't have that captivating and alive sort of brilliance of the 14th C plate you have analyzed here! Thank you!
Thank you for writing this. It made me recall a day in the late 1980s when, as a librarian at Middlebury College, I visited Frances and Henry Sayles Francis at their home in New Hampshire to review the collection of art catalogs they were giving to the library. A dear friend of theirs, a ceramicist at Sevres Porcelain Factory in France, was visiting and made us an exquisite lunch of a freshly baked baguette, poached giant shrimp, and a green salad. As I said goodbye she told me she was leaving the next day for Beijing where she would work with Chinese ceramicists on trying to recreate the famously elusive lost red glaze.
Last year I had the opportunity to visit Jingdezhen referred to in this article. It is a great combination young ceramic artists and great museums but is not on most tourist itineraries. This article makes me want to visit again.
thank you so much for reading! I've never been, would love to go -- the imperial kiln museum looks amazing
Thanks for such an interesting and informative piece. In the late 1980’s, I purchased a beautiful red porcelain vase from a pottery shop. The woman there told me red is an extremely difficult color to achieve with porcelain. What I have is certainly not the Chinese red, having a much brighter hue, but I think I’m about to go down a very deep hole to learn more about red porcelain.
"He now made letters for signboards and wine-labels; but his intelligence was not high enough to attain to art, nor commonplace enough to look merely to profit, so that, without satisfying anyone, he had ruined himself." - 😂 I feel seen 🥲
I absolutely loved that, thank you. Here's a story, I would like to know if you are aware of this. December, 2024, we were in Tianjin touring the "China House", a porcelain covered old French mansion in the old downtown. There are murals on the walls made up on shards and fragments of old porcelain. The guide pointed out that the red fragments from the Ming dynasty were worth 100Ks of Yuan EACH and that the process for making the color was lost even until today. I was sceptical at the time, but you confirmed it for me! So, thank you again.
That’s amazing, I’d so love to visit one day!
You will be awestruck. I’m writing an article on our visit. 🙏
Theres a great one i stared at for about half an hour after first seeing
''A Chinese "cinnabar red" carved lacquer box from the Qing dynasty (1736–1795), National Museum of China, Beijing''
Beautiful article that truly highlights what it means to be rare, in life and in art.
This is fascinating. I have a lamp in a deep reddish color, which I believe is ceramic, maybe porcelain. I’ve been told they were manufactured by the thousands. My grandmother who left it to me thought it was very special. It doesn't have that captivating and alive sort of brilliance of the 14th C plate you have analyzed here! Thank you!
Thank you for writing this. It made me recall a day in the late 1980s when, as a librarian at Middlebury College, I visited Frances and Henry Sayles Francis at their home in New Hampshire to review the collection of art catalogs they were giving to the library. A dear friend of theirs, a ceramicist at Sevres Porcelain Factory in France, was visiting and made us an exquisite lunch of a freshly baked baguette, poached giant shrimp, and a green salad. As I said goodbye she told me she was leaving the next day for Beijing where she would work with Chinese ceramicists on trying to recreate the famously elusive lost red glaze.
Sheer beauty. Fit everything fits.
Excellent delineation of the matter. Research on the topic is ultimate.