When you walk into the Jing Kiln Ceramics Exhibition Hall in Jing'an County, Jiangxi Province, you will be greeted by a simple and heavy atmosphere. Various bottles and jars are displayed in the exhibition hall, all in black, exuding a thick and warm brilliance. The reporter carefully picked up an eggshell black pottery cup with a high handle and weighed it. The cup looked heavy, but was actually as light as tissue paper.
"It is light because it is thin. The thickness of the eggshell is about 0.3-0.4 mm. The thinnest part of this thin eggshell black pottery is only 0.2 mm." Wu Yingfang, the provincial inheritor of Jing'an black pottery making skills (see picture, interviewed Photo provided by the author) While introducing, he picked up the black pottery fragments and compared them with egg shells for display.
As thin as an eggshell and completely black inside and out, in 2014, Wu Yingfang successfully recreated the traditional firewood-fired eggshell black pottery goblet. Behind this "paper-thin" is the inheritance of the family's porcelain making business, which also embodies his decades of study and persistence.
In 2011, an eggshell black pottery goblet was unearthed at the Laohudun site in Gaohu, Jing'an County. The characteristics of "as thin as paper, as hard as porcelain, as loud as a chime, and as bright as paint" deeply shocked Wu Yingfang.
Unfortunately, because the local black pottery firing technology has been lost, there is not much information to follow, and there are technical difficulties such as material ratio, thickness, and blackening, the ancient wood-burning technique of eggshell black pottery goblets has been difficult. Crack.
Wu Yingfang decided to re-fire the black pottery.
The first step is to draw the thin blank. The thinnest part of black pottery is only 0.2 mm, challenging the limits of handcrafting skills.
"If your hands shake, the billet will break. A heavy breath or a careless movement may cause all your previous efforts to be wasted." Wu Yingfang tried to calm down, locked himself in the studio, and practiced drawing the billet hard. When he is hungry, his wife brings him food; when he is sleepy, he puts the chairs together and lies down for a while. In this way, from 1 mm to 0.9 mm, 0.8 mm... Wu Yingfang continued to challenge the limits and finally overcame the difficulty of billet drawing.
The most difficult thing after that is firing the kiln. The fire temperature in a wood kiln depends entirely on human judgment. To fire black pottery that is completely black inside and out, the temperature must be accurately controlled. It takes about 60 hours to fire a kiln with wood. Subtle factors such as the speed and method of adding firewood, climate conditions, etc. will affect the color of the work. The kiln burner needs to continuously add firewood and pay attention.
After constant persistence and exploration, Wu Yingfang finally succeeded. Not only that, on the basis of re-firing black pottery, he increased the firing temperature of black pottery from 600-900 degrees Celsius to over 1280 degrees Celsius. Through the ratio of natural materials and process innovation, coupled with a high enough and uniform temperature, the surface of black pottery is unglazed and can produce a glazed luster.
Since then, Jing'an's black pottery making skills have been successfully declared as a provincial intangible cultural heritage project, Wu Yingfang has become a provincial representative inheritor, and Jing'an kiln has been awarded the "Black Pottery Research Base" by the Jiangxi Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archeology.
"My father never gave up, and he was getting closer to success, which is amazing." Wu Yingfang's son Wu Shi said that now his family is also joining the effort.Joining the inheritance team, "I learned my father's skills. My younger brother Wu Chao also joined us after graduating from the ceramic painting major of Jiangxi Ceramic Arts Vocational College."
Wu Yingfang discovered that some intangible cultural heritage items are gradually fading out of people's sight, and it is urgent to improve the intangible cultural heritage protection and inheritance system. To this end, he participated in the formulation of five provincial-level local standards for traditional black pottery, black glazed porcelain, unglazed black porcelain, traditional brick ladder kiln, and traditional brick dragon kiln; he founded the Jing Kiln, the Intangible Cultural Heritage Exhibition Hall, and the Black Ceramics Experience Room , integrating the research, inheritance and study of traditional black ceramic ancient techniques, attracting many black pottery enthusiasts at home and abroad to visit and learn for free.
“A Beijing girl is very interested in black pottery and came to study with me in 2016. After that, she came here every summer vacation, and it has been almost 9 years now. Now she can make black pottery and black glazed porcelain works, and I hope to continue to develop in the field of ceramics." Wu Yingfang's face was full of joy when talking about the stories of inheriting the black pottery making skills one after another.
"People's Daily" (Page 07, June 30, 2024)
