A long awaited trip that had to be postponed thanks to Covid in 2019 was at last undertaken this May, 2024 – a one month long residency at The Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, in northeastern Jiangxi province, China.
Otherwise known as the Porcelain Capital of the world, Jingdezhen is the home of The Pottery Workshop, a series of individual studio spaces and live in accommodation available to ceramic artists from around the world to experience life in Jingdezhen in the exploration of traditional Chinese methods of ceramic production. Set up by entrepreneur and artist Caroline Cheng in 2006, the PWS is currently located within The Sculpture Factory, an area encompassed between two major roads. It is a community of clay manufactures – of artisans who are all expert in their chosen professions whether they are throwers, flower sculptors, slip-casters, potters, glazers or public kiln firers. There is a PVD studio and numerous commercial pottery shops selling a huge variety of finished ware. Resident artists at PWS create their own work agendas aided by the studio co-ordinators who help with making contacts and translation between artist and the artisans within this community.
Thanks to the stories from many friends and colleagues who had been resident artists themselves over the years, Brunyfire was eager to become immersed in an environment dedicated to making ceramics, particularly in porcelain – a medium only available to Brunyfire as a mid fire, oxidised product. To be able to work with this medium at high fired reduction temperatures was to prove a real experience.
To say Brunyfire was excited on arrival was an understatement – a PWS driver ensured a swift transition to the Sculpture Factory to meet up with Maggie Yu – Brunyfire’s contact over the years – and to settle into one the artist rooms at the ‘9 Windows’ accomodation block – so named as the building’s 9 windows overlook the courtyard below. The studio is a short walk away and up a flight of stone steps next to the main office. The facilities all look a bit jaded given their age and their constant use over the years, but there’s a decent wheel, a slab roller, spray booth, glaze room, a couple of electric kilns and, blessed relief, a personal fan! And then it’s lunch time…..
Residents get fed like this every lunch and dinner but are expected to find or make their own breakfasts (there is a small kitchen at ‘9 Windows’) and to cater for themselves on Sundays – a great opportunity, it transpired, to test out the street food.
An afternoon is spent with Yang (one of four fabulous studio assistants at the disposal of resident artists) to discover the nearby workshops. Leaving a completely open mind as to how to proceed at this stage, the first purchase is the fabulous (and expensive) Jingdezhen porcelain as well as a robust body (from Ireland of all places – a beautiful clay with wood fired appearance when reduction fired). This is followed by the purchase of a simple celadon and a couple of interesting looking glazes from one of the numerous glaze shops in ‘glaze street’ plus some basic tools. A visit to the local carpenter followed for some timber to make a simple press tile mold for ideas that were fast forming and an introduction to the public kilns and the system of firing.
Such as the workshop containing one of the public reduction gas fired kilns (1300 degrees) – this one is known as Mao’s kiln – photo on far right is the workshop’s kiln master.
There were a number of small plaster modeller and mold maker workshops as well as the PVD workshop that I’d heard about from colleague and friend, Trudy Golley many years ago.
PVD (Physical Vapor Deposition) is a highly adherent fine ceramic coating, produced using a highly ionised plasma depositing process in a vacuum chamber, where the temperatures can vary between 60° and 500 °C. The high temperatures enable coatings with a high degree of purity to be obtained, which are chemically inert and biocompatible.
The outcomes of this process can be really over the top where the vapour adheres to a glazed surface……..
………but on an unglazed surface, finishes can take on a more subtle quality.
Left: Turning of the Fagus – Sun Catcher bowls in gold on unglazed surface. Centre: Sun Catcher bowls in silver on unglazed surface and right: detail of PVD Fagus leaves in gold.
The numerous glaze shops offer more glazes than one could poke a stick at – all ready made up – the red glaze Brunyfire chose translated as Laughing in the bushes and the salmon coloured glaze as Water lily pond in the spring time – very quaint!!
Vital to the activity of all the workshops and suppliers of materials are a cadre of porters who by foot, trolley and moped, service the various studios with their needs. ‘Jingdezhen is an amalgamation of hundreds or thousands of small workshops that all specialise in one skill,’ quotes Takeshi Yasuda, Director of the Pottery Workshop from 2005- 2010 (from an article by Goldmark Gallery) and so all pots and materials have to move from one venue to another constantly – a system that has hardly changed for a thousand years.
During the initial contact with Maggie back in 2019, Brunyfire’s plan was to work on a series of Japanese influenced suiban – these are shallow dishes used to display, in this instance, floral arrangements. That was the original plan, but this time round, Brunyfire decided not to work to any agenda but to attempt to respond to the place itself in an effort to define what was Jingdezhen! Not starting from a complete blank however, as back home in Tasmania, ‘the turning of the Fagus’ was about to occur, and it was this that became the predominant theme to tie together the ensuing work.
So that first night was spent exploring the Nothofagus gunnii – the Fagus – a compact deciduous alpine beech tree with small oval-shaped leaves that has grown in Tasmania for the past 40 million years.
Working sketch of Fagus for wall tile ideas – leaf image ready to take to model and mold makers.
Fagus has been called a ‘winter-deciduous’ plant – one of only a handful of deciduous plants in Australia that comes alive with colour in late April and early May – a period that Tasmanians have come to call the ‘Turning of the Fagus’. Sometimes growing as stocky trees, or like the image above, clinging to rock faces (it’s also referred to by bushwalkers as ‘tanglefoot’) – its small crinkly leaves turn bright yellow then orange then red to gold. The perfect excuse to explore some of those delicious looking pre-made glazes….
It’s still raining from last night’s thunderstorms providing some blessed relief from the previous day’s intense heat and humidity……..
…….and having spent the morning sloshing through the rivers of water on the streets to establish the location of the bank and the supermarket and to get a feel for the area, a much needed dose of caffeine was called for. The PWS coffee shop, located beneath the 9 Windows accommodation, became a watering hole of daily necessity – in fact the only place that did a decent coffee – always served up in an artist produced cup.
To get feel of the place, Maggie, studio assistants Yang and Sailor and Alexander and Leigh Copeland (Alexander, a fellow Australian artist-in-residence) spent an afternoon exploring the Spring Pottery Festival and its accompanying exhibitions at the Taoxichuan Cultural and Creative Block. Once an old factory site, Taoxichuan is situated in the centre of Jingdezhen’s East City Area, and has become a very successful business venture through a combination of tourist attracting renovations to its original buildings and in its recognition of the site’s industrial heritage. This combination has helped integrate Jingdezhen’s industrial past with its current urban renewal and is evident in various forms throughout the city.
Left: remains of kiln chimney overgrown with ivy and surrounded by old kiln setters – right: upgraded central building and water feature.
Work in some of the exhibitions included pieces by a couple of lovely Singaporean artists Brunyfire sat with on the flight from Shanghai to Jingdezhen, Steven Low (Right) and Nelson Lim (Left).
Left: work by Steven Low; centre: work by American artist Nick Vest; right: work by Nelson Lim. Below: details of textures in exhibitions.
The holiday crowds converge even before the weekend has started as Maggie had warned – Yang and Brunyfire battle through them to drop a Fagus leaf drawing off to the plaster modeller – both molds and stamp will be available in a day or so.
Simple press mold of Fagus leaf with matching stamp – pressing both together enabled the formation of texture on both sides of the leaf form.
On another outing, a productive afternoon was spent watching the artisans in the tile factory area painting on pre-made green ware tiles of varying sizes. Their painterly skills were quite extraordinary…..
………and the scale of the work was pretty impressive.
It seems in Jingdezhen, anything is possible!! The idea of creating a set of Brunyfire’s own tiles was appealing and Maggie was able to organise an afternoon at one of the factorys where for a minimum fee, the following triptych was produced in an afternoon…….
Left: Tile factory; Centre: Tile factory showroom where Brunyfire worked.
…..fired and framed – all within a couple of days. The tile theme continued with press molding using gravel from the yard below the studios as texture and some great shards literally found under foot that got imbedded once the clay tile had been flipped out of its timber mold. This method allows the production of pieces very quickly – these then had a white slip (made from the crushed and slaked porcelain body) and transfers added (once leather hard) and the shards then inserted.
Left: gravel with clay pressed on top – excess clay scrapped off – Centre and Right: white porcelain slip and blue transfer with broken shards embedded – and below: finished work – Turning of the Fagus with Mao.
Above: finished work – Turning of the Fagus – porcelain ‘branches’ with celadon glazed leaves. The branches were intended as a reference to traditional Chinese landscape painting.
Another morning, a visit to the site where the proposed new PWS setup will be to check out the Creative Market with Maggie, Yang and Sailor. The Creative Market is an outlet for all potters to sell their work and used to occur within the Sculpture Factory area, but has now moved to the new PWS site. The work was varied – some good, some ghastly – but the most intriguing aspect was the enormous shard pile – a mountain of broken crockery. There is over 18 million tons of ceramic waste produced annually in China – the equivalent to filling nearly 3 million football fields. Below – shard pile at Caroline Cheng’s new site.
This has been intentionally dumped here on Caroline Cheng’s request. She is part of Yi Design, a company she helped found in 2021 that is on a mission to help create a more sustainable ceramic waste management programme, through research and development of low-energy technology and a high re-cycle rate to create high-end, regenerated products. Evidence of some of Yi Design is at the Sculpture Factory cafe and comprise (centre image) a series of table tops and seats made from a terrazzo style composite.
Cheng’s desire to move the Pottery Workshop from its current site in the old Sculpture Factory location, because, she maintains, it’s being overrun by commercial enterprises, to the new site out of town, is sad. The current studio, despite being on the second floor of the building in which it resides (a pain when there is no lift and artists are working on a large scale or hefting bags of clay) is right in the centre of the town and within easy walking distance of everything that any artist could possibly want. Away from the crowds that congregate around all the commercial outlets, there are also remnants of the working area as it used to be with narrow laneways dotted with small workshops – sadly – these are becoming rarer.
However, there are still some lovely spots that can be discovered when one needs to get out of the studio for a much needed break.
Left: view from studio, centre: side alley and right: lily pond detail.
Remnants of a bygone industrial age are evident everywhere – from the pieces of broken figurines imprisoned within gabion cages (wired baskets usually filled with rocks to act as retaining walls – see far right), to broken pottery shards imbedded in walls and pavements and most intriguingly, the ‘fossilised’ remains of kiln furniture (including some ancient saggers) that have been built into garden walls – below centre.
Saggers are fire-clay containers used during firing to safeguard the ware within them from direct flame, smoke and ash within in a traditional wood fired kiln to ensure an unblemished surface of the finished product. The incorporation of saggers also enabled kilns to be stacked without the use of kiln shelves (as is the practice nowadays) – each sagger being stacked one on top of another – this also ensured a more even heating throughout the kiln, thereby enhancing the overall yield of successfully fired vessels.
Original sagger with bowl still stuck inside.
The piece above was designed to contain a single bowl which in this instance, became fused to the sagger during firing – its ragged upper edge testimony to its having to be forced apart with hammer and chisel once the kiln had cooled and the ware unpacked. This was purchased at one of the many shops that surrounded the studio and at a guess, came from the Huangnitou and Baihuwan kiln areas in the eastern outskirts of Jingdezhen. The ware fused inside the saggar could well be a Qingbai (青白, ‘Blueish-white’) piece produced during the Song Dynasty (1127-1279).
Whatever its provenance, it inspired a series of distorted and turned ware, whilst successful in the Irish clay body proved really difficult in the porcelain.
This stuff – purported to be ‘as white as jade, as thin as paper, white bright as glass and as sweet-sounding as the ancient chime stone’* was a swine to work with – its natural thixotropic** tendencies and its pyroplasticity*** making it feel like working with cream cheese and so there were numerous failures and much re-cycling.
*Quoted from Bai Ming’s book ‘The Traditional Crafts of Porcelain Making in Jingdezhen’ – Published by Jiangxi Fine Arts Publishing House,2002.
**Thixotropy: A property of certain substances that are thick or viscous under static conditions will flow over time when agitated, becoming liquid like.
***Pyroplasticity: The softening and therefore deformation of certain materials at high temperatures.
In a fit of pique, Brunyfire crushed up some of the dried porcelain, slaked and sieved it and used it as a decorative slip onto some slab platters in the Irish clay – venting frustration in some vigorous hand gestures that matched the language…….
……and even a couple of these went spectacularly and fabulously ‘wrong’ when the unknown recycled clay used for them collapsed in the 1300 degree firing! Love them!!
Nevertheless, perseverance paid off, and finally, a series of thrown dishes came through the firings in the porcelain clay with a celadon glaze to the Turning of the Fagus theme.
Unlike fellow Australian artist-in-residence, Alexander Copeland, whose giant thrown and painted vessels dominated the studio…….
…….and were intended for a solo show back in Oz, Brunyfire’s output was far more modest.
At the time of producing this exploratory body of work, the intention in the beginning was not to bring any of it home but to smash it all up and leave it – however, guilt prevailed on that score, especially having seen the number of rejects that remained at the large pot factory left by internationally renown British artist Felicity Aylieff. (Below left, Brunyfire with Aylieff rejects in factory yard and right: the exuberant Sailor).
(NOTE: Brunyfire is a huge fan of Aylieff and her work – it’s bold, insightful and beautiful – but there is the problem of what to do with the waste when pieces don’t survive the firing – which is often, especially at this scale………)
The other deciding factor in bringing the work home was in the fortuitous purchase of some pieces for Brunyfire’s cooking pot collection. The intention from the onset of the Jingdezhen journey was always to take a couple of side trips after the residency, to Shangri-La and the village nearby of Tangdui (famous for its black fired ware with inlaid fragments of porcelain) and Yingjing, Sichuan Province (for its black ‘raku’ style fired black ware made from a coal and clay body) to see how these pieces were made and to add samples to the collection back home.
Flights to Shangri-La proved straight forward with an onward exit from China back home, but the side trip to Yingjing proved way too difficult, especially for a solo, female and elderly traveller! However, fortune favours the wicked – unbeknownst to Brunyfire, this fabulous black ware set, a brazier and cooking pot from Tangdui……..
…….had been sitting in the PWS shop next to the cafe the whole time and was left over from an exhibition held many months prior. This was snapped up at a discounted cost – Brilliant! Then with the help from Yu-shu who co-ordinated the Friday night public lectures…..
Brunyfire’s Friday night lecture and Sailor’s sketch!!
……….Brunyfire also purchased, online, a great little brazier and cooking pot set from Yingjing – STOKED!!!
In addition to these quite large works, especially in the case of the pieces from Tangdui, further purchases were made that included some tools, presents for family and from Jingdezhen’s famous fake antique market, a great dragon plate.
Yang (our studio assistant) had taken Brunyfire and recently arrived resident artist from America, Jennifer Ling……
Jennifer Ling with pot for her project, Sailor, Maggie Yu and Yi-shu
……..to an unassuming backstreet where one of the district’s many antiques or fake markets thrive. Faking ‘antique’ ceramics is actually an old tradition according to Takeshi Yasuda ‘The fake antiques market, as it is known here is a very interesting area because the history of making fake antiques is indeed very, very old. Older than lots of antiques themselves, actually. Reproducing old artifacts is a proper Chinese activity’. The ‘antiquation’ of the ware is done quite openly – there is a certain pride in this as not only do the artisans who produce the faked antiques consider it not only an achievement to deceive the experts, but it also sustains the network of skills that keep the fame of Jingdezhen’s porcelain alive.
Finally, with only a few days to spare before departing, it was back to the original carpenter to order a crate and to organise, thanks to Alexandra’s and Leigh’s contact, the freight trip home for a wealth of reminders of Jingdezhen’s legacy of ceramic experience.
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