景物-The Gift from Jingdezhen
Tuesday, July 07 2020 Xinyun Huang
景物-The Gift from Jingdezhen
According to legend , the ancient Chinese emperor Song Huizong went for a walk in the garden one day after he had finished his work. He saw that the weather was fine after the autumn rain. The sunlight passed through the clouds and brought out a thick blue color. So he pointed to the horizon and ordered the ceramic craftsman to fire the ceramic according to this color and gave it the name Azure(天青色).
Of course, it may only be a beautiful legend in history, but the Azure just revealed after the rain really needs to be baked in the atmosphere of some misty rain days, so this color is beautiful and elegant, but it is also very rare and precious.
Jingdezhen is a blue city to me, not only because of the blue and white porcelain everywhere in the streets and alleys, but also because of the quietness and cleanness after the rain stops and the sky clears up , the sky reveals pieces of azure reflected in the streets and alleys, which is pleasant and calm.
Jingdezhen after the rain
Photographer: Junhua
This may be a gift from Jingdezhen, a blue gift. I would like to take this gift with me.
Ruler, pen and test glaze
景物 is something I took away from Jingdezhen. It is stationery composed of pens and rulers. I didn't do much design. I just deposited my favorite blue color from Jingdezhen.
Because in winter, students who finish class from the Ceramic Institute can see that the mountains across the road are filled with fog. So I also recorded the shape of the mountain, hoping that it would have a richer artistic conception.
It takes luck to make this blue.
The glaze I used is a composite glaze, a new glaze that has been reorganized by some local craftsmen in Jingdezhen. With regard to the firing of ceramics, the local craftsmen depended on decades of firing experience, and I also took notes of my firing experience.
Notes on ceramic firing experience
It can be seen that in the process of kiln burning, there are many factors that affect the ceramics inside, such as the cloudy and sunny weather (high humidity in cloudy days, mild atmosphere, low humidity in sunny days, strong atmosphere), the high and low kiln position ( The temperature in the middle of the kiln is the highest, decreasing gradually towards the upper and lower positions, and the temperature in the lower position is the lowest. ), etc. Almost no old craftsman can tell you exactly how to burn this color. They can only use their experience to judge which color is likely to appear under which conditions.
Therefore, before we actually found this blue color, we had already burned nearly 100 colors.
Glaze reaction under different conditions
But fortunately, among the nearly 100 colors, we found some individual colors and shapes with excellent visual effects. I wrote down the name of the glaze used to burn this pattern and the required conditions with a sticky note, but my friend said to me,
"then why don't you make it into a business card and put it on the bottom to be displayed like a science museum?"
We stored the colors and shapes that we thought were excellent in resin, and translated its name into Chinese, Japanese and Korean for display in the exhibition hall of the Design Institute. The purpose of this is not to show how lucky I am, but to tell everyone that these are all gifts given to us by Jingdezhen.
An exhibition about glazes
Before getting that blue color, we also tried a great number of designs of stationery with different glazes.
This year is time for graduation and the time of saying goodbye to Jingdezhen. I made these gifts from Jingdezhen into stamps, hoping to send them to the students who are about to leave and pursue the prospect, and telling them, "you are also the gifts from Jingdezhen to other places."
Stamp design with glaze color
Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to this city which has brought me many inspirations. It is this city that makes me learn a lot. I spent my time in college here, and I will come back for a visit when I have the chance
Gift wrap like a graduation scroll
So,see you next time,Jingdezhen
To check out some of our offerings, click here!
Collaborator:Yixuan Wang(UAL)、Keyun Shi(JCI)、Zhengyu Wang(JCI)
Photographer:Yujie Chen