Liling porcelain
Liling Porcelain
Dear friends:
Hello, everyone! After enjoying Hunan's cultural and natural landscapes and savoring its abundant delicious cuisine, do not forget to bring back some tourism souvenirs with Hunan characteristics to give to your relatives and friends, or keep them as a memento, sealing them away together with this unforgettable experience... Speaking of Hunan's distinctive tourism products, I must first introduce to you Hunan's Liling porcelain.
As we all know, ceramics are the great pride and immortal treasure of the Chinese nation. Together with traditional Chinese medicine, Chinese painting, tea, and bronze ware, they are known as China's five great national treasures. With their magical elegance and unique charm, they have captivated the world. This is because in human history, one epoch-making event was the emergence of porcelain. It is the combination of water, fire, and earth that produces a new substance that is neither water, nor earth, nor fire—ceramics. From the day porcelain was created, it has changed and influenced the world's material and spiritual civilization with its unique charm. It was the first truly chemical change in human history that turned one substance into another. Its emergence laid the foundation for humanity's later glassmaking and steel smelting, and pioneered the course of human chemistry. A thousand years of kiln fire recount the ancient history of the Chinese nation, and five thousand years of splendid culture were formed along with the art of ceramic fire. The English name of China, "CHINA," originally means porcelain. It can be seen that China was first known to foreigners because of its porcelain, and the profound cultural heritage contained in porcelain is also one of the essences of Chinese civilization.
Liling in Hunan is one of China's famous three great "porcelain capitals," equally renowned with Jingdezhen and Dehua, and has long enjoyed the reputation of "Porcelain City." It has a ceramic production history of nearly two thousand years and has long been well known at home and abroad. Liling's underglaze colored porcelain is a treasure of China's traditional ethnic craftsmanship. It uses specially excellent body and glaze materials and colorants developed from rare earths and nonferrous metal ores. With its unique and exquisite hand-decoration techniques, it is decorated between the body and the glaze. After being fired at a high temperature of about 1400°C, the colored glaze fuses into the body and glaze, and the patterns overflow onto the porcelain surface through the glaze layer. The colors are rich and varied, delicate and translucent, crystalline and moist, with very high whiteness, transparency, and glaze surface hardness. The products have graceful shapes and are noble and elegant. The pictorial decoration draws broadly from all things, with brilliant colors and lifelike appearance. It has the mysterious quality of being "colorful, crystalline and moist, delicate and translucent, visible but untouchable, and never fading," truly achieving the highest realm of "thin as paper, white as jade, bright as a mirror, and resonant as a chime." It has advantages unmatched by overglaze decal, famille rose, famille verte, and other porcelains. Because Liling porcelain contains no lead, cadmium, or any other substances harmful to the human body, and is resistant to acids and alkalis, it suits humanity's strict requirements for the living environment and drinking utensils. It is a safe, environmentally friendly porcelain, and is therefore hailed as "a treasure of Oriental ceramic art." It has won the praise that "the world's famous porcelain comes from Liling," and is a brilliant pearl in the porcelain kingdom, shining through ancient and modern times with its rich cultural heritage.
Liling porcelain first became world-famous 90 years ago. From February to December 1915, to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal, which connected shipping between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, a grand exposition hosted by the United States and attended by more than 30 countries was held in San Francisco. This was the historically famous Panama-Pacific International Exposition, which cost 17 million US dollars and could be called an unprecedented world gala. At that time, after more than a year of preparation, China raised 1,500 tons of various exhibits to participate. Among the more than 30 participating countries, China won the most awards. Among them, Hunan Liling's underglaze colored porcelain, for its fine porcelain body, exquisite painting, rich colors, and elegant brightness, won the exposition's highest gold medal award in one stroke. From then on, Liling porcelain, previously little known but with more than 260 years of porcelain-making history, became fashionable throughout the world. Merchants from various ports came to Liling in an endless stream to transport and sell it, a grand scene that seemed poised to rival Jingdezhen's porcelain industry. Thus, between 1909 and 1915, Liling underglaze multicolored porcelain, with its artistic features of excellent quality, moist elegance, rich colors, and brilliance without vulgarity, successively won the first-class gold medal of the Wuhan Industrial Exposition, the first-class gold award of the Nanyang Industrial Exposition, the highest award of the Italy Exposition, and the gold medal award of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. By this point, Liling underglaze multicolored porcelain was renowned at home and abroad, and Liling thus enjoyed the beautiful reputation of "Porcelain City."
Liling is located in eastern Hunan, at a strategic point between Hunan and Jiangxi provinces, and can be considered "within easy reach" of Guangdong. Water and land transportation are convenient. Within its territory are abundant porcelain clay, magnesia refractory clay, coal, and other mineral resources and forest resources, providing the objective conditions for developing the porcelain industry. In the seventh year of the Yongzheng reign of the Qing Dynasty (1729), Liao Zhongwei, a native of Xingning, Guangdong, opened the first earthenware porcelain factory in Weishan, Liling. This was the beginning of porcelain making in Liling.
That Liling porcelain could become a famous precious porcelain of modern China was mainly due to a rather legendary figure: Xiong Xiling, a native of Fenghuang, Hunan, who was a compiler in the Hanlin Academy during the Guangxu reign of the Qing Dynasty and after the Revolution of 1911 served as Premier and Minister of Finance. Historical records say that Xiong Xiling personally brought Liling porcelain to Beijing and presented it to Empress Dowager Cixi. After looking at it several times, Cixi said, "Liling porcelain is still better than Jiangxi porcelain," and rewarded him with a gold medal. In 1905, Xiong Xiling went to Japan on an inspection tour. Seeing that Japan's porcelain industry was more developed than China's and its products were excellent, he felt deeply pained, because Japan's porcelain-making technology had been transmitted from China. After returning home, Xiong Xiling immediately arranged with the Liling provincial graduate Wen Junduo to conduct an on-site investigation of Liling, and sent the porcelain clay produced in Liling to Japan for testing. The results proved that fine, superior porcelain could be made. In 1905, the Qing government allocated 18,000 taels of treasury silver and sent Xiong Xiling and others to establish the Hunan Porcelain Industry School in Liling. In 1906, Xiong Xiling introduced porcelain-making machinery and equipment from Japan and hired Japanese porcelain technicians, mold workers, wheel workers, kiln workers, and others to teach Eastern porcelain-making techniques, determinedly improving Liling porcelain, and finally built a relatively large new-style porcelain company with complete equipment and advanced craft. After nearly three years of exploration, porcelain craftsmen, building on traditional blue-and-white decoration and Changsha Tongguan kiln underglaze color, created the later world-famous underglaze multicolored porcelain.
Underglaze colored porcelain is made on white porcelain bodies fired at 800°C, using Japanese agate red and other materials. Many said: "These Liling porcelains, I think, have a unique style. Any work unit that does not use Liling porcelain is unprofessional. Chairman Mao still used a Liling teacup! Premier Zhou also used Liling porcelain." Among the Ten Great Buildings, the Military Museum, the Workers' Gymnasium, and the Nationalities Cultural Palace ordered more than 50,000 pieces of Liling porcelain in total.
In May 1960, the third batch of 600 Victory Cups (formulas No. 151 and No. 152) was sent to the rostrum of the Great Hall of the People. These teacups with butterfly patterns were used by Mao Zedong when meeting foreign guests, while those he used himself were the later-produced Red Plum and Bamboo No. 4 and Red Plum No. 2 teacups. It is well known that Mao Zedong loved chrysanthemums and plum blossoms. On the brush holders, ashtrays, teacups, rice bowls, fish plates, and toothbrush boxes he used, in addition to underglaze multicolored chrysanthemums braving frost and snow, most featured the cold-defying "pure guest," the red plum blossom. Among the plum blossom bowls Mao Zedong favored was a small plum blossom bowl with a mouth diameter of 10.4 centimeters and a height of only 5 centimeters. It was the smallest porcelain bowl among the many porcelains used by the chairman, designed according to the suggestion of the health doctor by Mao Zedong's side and specially used for holding fermented bean curd.
Why did Mao Zedong most prefer Liling porcelain? Some guess it was because Liling produced underglaze colored porcelain relatively early, and the greatest difference between underglaze color and overglaze color is that it contains no lead and does not fade. But others believe that Mao Zedong chose Liling porcelain more out of a hometown sentiment. Mao Zedong never forgot his hometown throughout his life, especially in his later years, when his longing for home grew deeper and he often wanted to return to Hunan for a short stay. After the founding of New China, he returned to Hunan more than 50 times. In particular, in 1966 he stayed hidden for 13 days in "a cave in the West"—Dripping Water Cave—and in 1974 he stayed in Changsha for 114 days. In what was then the "red forbidden zone," Songshan No. 1 (now changed to Building No. 1 of Dripping Water Cave), there are still displayed, just as they were, underglaze multicolored tableware custom-made in Liling in 1971 by the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the reception office of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee and personally used by Mao Zedong, known as the "king of porcelain"—medium-bodied porcelain bowls with famous porcelain red chrysanthemum and red plum blossom patterns, as well as plum blossom porcelain brush holders and ashtrays modeled on Song dynasty painting patterns from the Palace Museum, such as the orchid and peony pattern square-shouldered ashtray and other daily utensils.
Since 1956, when the State Council formally approved Liling as a porcelain industry base, it began to undertake the task of firing porcelain for Party and state leaders and central organs. It successively created for Mao Zedong a complete set of tableware, stationery, and other special porcelain utensils, including Victory Cups, double-sided multicolored eggshell bowls, covered fish plates, plum and bamboo pattern porcelain treasures, ashtrays, and brush holders, with a total of 1,555 pieces delivered. According to Wu Liandeng, former section chief of the Central Guard Bureau in Zhongnanhai who was responsible for Mao Zedong's daily life, most of the porcelain used by Mao Zedong in his later years was Liling porcelain. This is an honor that any porcelain-producing region in China would dream of.
In addition, Liling also produced gift porcelain for Zhongnanhai, the Great Hall of the People, the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, and Party and state leaders such as Zhou Enlai, Wang Zhen, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Zemin. Liling porcelain thus acquired the name "Red Imperial Kiln." As we know, imperial kilns generally refer to government-run kiln factories. Since the Daguan and Zhenghe periods of the Northern Song Dynasty, governments of successive dynasties all had their own porcelain kilns firing porcelain for court life. In the Northern Song, a kiln was established in Kaifeng, Henan; in the Southern Song, an official kiln was set up under the Xiuneisi; and in the Ming and Qing dynasties, the porcelain fired by the imperial factory in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi, was extremely fine in both quality and form. In the late Qing Dynasty, in addition to Jingdezhen, Jiangxi, an official kiln factory specially firing porcelain for the Qing imperial palace was also established in Liling in eastern Hunan. What we now call the "Red Imperial Kiln" refers to the "leader-use porcelain," "central organ-use porcelain," and gift porcelain presented to foreign heads of state produced after the founding of New China, mainly during the Cultural Revolution.
Although Liling fired quite a lot of porcelain for Mao Zedong, due to special political factors it was never made public. Most people had only heard of its name but had never seen its form, and had no chance to see the true elegance of "Chairman-use porcelain." According to the survey statistics of the "Chairman-use porcelain" investigation group of the Comrade Mao Zedong Memorial Hall in Shaoshan, the number of surviving "Chairman-use porcelain" pieces today does not exceed 300. Moreover, the vast majority are collected in the Comrade Mao Zedong Memorial Hall in Shaoshan, the National Museum of the Chinese Revolution, and Fengzeyuan in Zhongnanhai, with fewer than 100 pieces scattered among the people. "Chairman porcelain" is one of the most glorious terms in the history of modern Chinese porcelain development, and the four words "supreme beauty" are most suitable to describe it. When porcelain experts from the Palace Museum appraised the porcelain specially made by Liling for Mao Zedong in 1974, they considered that batch of eggshell underglaze double-sided multicolored floral porcelain to be crystal clear and translucent, as warm and lovely as tender jade-like flesh. All indicators displayed the unique charm and achievements of Liling porcelain, and it was praised as "the most glorious Chinese famous porcelain of the 20th century."
One of the greatest features of Liling's production of "Chairman porcelain" is that no gold or silver decoration was added at all. All of it was elegant and bright underglaze multicolor, using the style of Ming Yongle imperial porcelain, giving a rich and harmonious artistic effect. The chairman's special porcelain, made with the aim of "sparing no cost and striving for perfection," is a fine product reflecting the exquisite firing techniques of the Liling kiln. It created four "firsts" for the chairman's daily-use porcelain: the earliest firing time, beginning in 1958; the greatest variety and quantity fired, with 1,555 pieces of various vessels in total; the longest firing period, lasting 17 years; and the best firing quality. At the same time, it also set two newest craft achievements in the history of Chinese porcelain making: the glazed mouth-foot and the fully glazed foot rim.
Japanese art history professor Kimura Shigeto, after investigating various porcelain regions in China, wrote: "Particularly noteworthy is the uniquely styled Hunan Liling fine underglaze porcelain. Multicolored painting is directly carried out on the bisque body and then fired at high temperature. The porcelain produced by this added coloring has a clear and bright glaze color, and the patterns that emerge are splendid in color. They reflect each other with the pure white bisque, presenting all the more a noble and pure beauty." It is a porcelain treasure sought after by major museums and collectors at home and abroad.
Among the porcelains used by Mao Zedong, there was a double-sided multicolored eggshell bowl decorated with precious flowers of the four seasons. Its craftsmanship was exquisite and unique, and it can be called a rare treasure in the history of contemporary Chinese porcelain making. This bowl is light and translucent, weighing only 132 grams. It required five highly fire-resistant underglaze color materials, with painting, line drawing, water division, and color filling done on the raw clay body. Every process was like treading on thin ice; the slightest carelessness would ruin all previous efforts. In addition, there were covered fish plates as large as 42 centimeters in diameter and plum blossom covered bowls as small as only 7 centimeters high. There was also the astonishing peerless item that Mao Zedong kept secret from others during his lifetime—the denture box. Liling porcelain artisan Liang Liukui boldly conceived and created the design of the denture box, adopting the form of "round heaven and square earth," blending square and round into one. It was both beautiful and elegant, and ingenious and practical, and was listed by the National Museum of the Chinese Revolution as a national special-grade cultural relic treasure. In October 1993, when the head of a foreign enterprise in Shenzhen came to Liling to order porcelain, he proposed to the leaders of the porcelain company that he exchange a brand-new, extremely valuable world-famous BMW luxury car for a few pieces of chairman-use porcelain, but he was politely refused. It turned out that these sample porcelains had been brought back from Zhongnanhai in Beijing and had been personally used by Mao Zedong, and were precious state cultural relics. The foreign enterprise head could only sigh over the porcelain. At an auction held in Changsha, Hunan, in 1997, chairman porcelain became a hot bidding focus. A pair of porcelain bowls with a reserve price of 280,000 yuan sold for a high price of 1.78 million yuan, and 89 pieces of chairman-use porcelain were acquired by a Shenzhen buyer for a total price of 11.43 million yuan.
The reason Liling porcelain enjoys such high prestige in the porcelain world lies mainly in the following: First, Liling porcelain specially selected the now-extinct Xuefeng Mountain ball white clay as raw material and was fired at a high temperature of 1400°C through three entries into the kiln, making the body hard and fine, transparent and white, and the glaze moist, smooth, and lustrous, with an extremely low rate of first-grade products, and therefore extremely precious. Second, the products went through many processes, from raw material selection, grinding, and pulping to blending, and from pre-firing, trimming, first firing, second firing, and even third or fourth firing of the bodies; the pictures also had to undergo extremely meticulous processes such as pattern tracing, line drawing, water division, and color filling. Therefore, from one kiln of bodies, the finished-product rate was not high, and fine pieces were even fewer, so master-level products often commanded astronomical prices. Third, to fire this kind of exquisitely beautiful famous porcelain was not only time-consuming, labor-intensive, and costly, but also required extremely high technical skill, and the firing difficulty was very great. Hence the saying "born on the clay, dies in the kiln," and the technique of "extracting treasure from fire" was especially crucial. To adapt to the firing of special-grade fine porcelain, Liling's porcelain artisans created the stepped coal kiln, namely the "Liling kiln." In addition, the most fundamental reason lies in Liling porcelain's world-unmatched underglaze multicolor.
The basic pigments of underglaze multicolor are made by using various metal oxides or their salts as colorants, mixed with a certain amount of silicate raw materials. Unlike overglaze pigments, these pigments do not need lead-containing fluxes to help develop color and lower the firing temperature. Nor do they need low-temperature fluxes as binders to fix the color materials onto the products. The reason underglaze color materials can firmly adhere beneath the porcelain glaze layer is that during high-temperature firing, the molten substances in the color materials bond with the already molten body and glaze, and also because of the covering effect of the glaze layer. In this way, not only is there no lead poison or other toxic substances harmful to the human body, but due to the protective effect of the glaze layer, it can also resist erosion by natural acids and alkalis, and at the same time withstand wear during use. The most difficult part of firing underglaze multicolor is that at a high temperature of 1400°C, multiple metal oxides can complete simultaneously in one kiln and achieve the expected artistic effect, while the temperature requirements for the oxidation of these metal oxides in the kiln are completely different. Therefore, even today, Jingdezhen porcelain can only achieve "underglaze three-color," and the firing formula for Liling porcelain's "underglaze five-color" remains top secret to this day.
The firing of "Chairman porcelain" also adopted the firing method of "fire within fire," that is, placing the porcelain in the central part of the kiln and drawing on the fire within fire, using the fiercest high-temperature fire position in the coal kiln to fire the most ideal underglaze multicolor, making the porcelain glaze surface white with a touch of blue, soft and moist. The water color beneath the glaze layer then appears even more elegant, full of a sense of moisture, giving people an artistic effect that is both visible and untouchable, with beauty concealing elegance, brilliance without vulgarity, and lightness with spirit.
The ancient porcelain culture has influenced generation after generation of Chinese people. Today, among cities famous for porcelain, apart from Jingdezhen, Liling is probably the most representative. When you arrive in Liling, no matter when or where, you can feel the strong impact of porcelain culture: Liling people proudly show off the exquisiteness of Liling porcelain, and every civil servant hands foreign guests a business card printed with chairman-use porcelain and the underglaze multicolored porcelain vase that won the Panama gold medal. Today, as a representative of China's daily-use porcelain and stoneware, Liling leads the field domestically, especially in stoneware, with more than 94% exported to more than 70 countries including Europe, America, and Southeast Asia. In recent years, the output value of Liling's exported ceramics has basically remained at 200 million US dollars, steadily ranking first in foreign exchange earnings among Hunan's counties and cities.
Liling porcelain and the national liquor Moutai first "became acquainted" 90 years ago at the Panama International Exposition. At this grand gathering, the classic work submitted by the Hunan Porcelain Company, the "Underglaze Multicolored Hyacinth Bean and Double Bird Porcelain Vase," won the honor of the highest quality gold medal award and was praised by foreign public opinion as "the peak of Oriental ceramic art." The national liquor Moutai also won a gold medal at this grand gathering, and together with French Cognac brandy and British Scotch whisky, it is known as one of the world's three great distilled famous liquors. Today, 90 years later, Liling porcelain and the national liquor Moutai, which both won gold medals at the Panama International Exposition, have joined together, using Liling underglaze multicolored porcelain as the bottle. The two national essences combine to create glory for the national liquor.
Because of Liling porcelain's legendary experience and mysterious coloring, many people have shown strong reverence for and deep interest in Liling porcelain. In view of this, Liling has launched a porcelain industry tourism project in recent years to unveil the mysterious veil of national porcelain to the broad masses of tourists.
In China's only Liling Porcelain Exhibition Hall—the exhibition hall within the Liling Ceramic Research Institute—various artistic treasures dazzle the eyes: chairman-use porcelain, premier-use porcelain, state banquet porcelain, porcelain painted by famous domestic calligraphy and painting masters... all reveal to visitors the rich cultural connotations of Liling porcelain. In the production workshop, all production processes have had their mysterious veil lifted. Amid the exclamations of visitors, skilled technicians paint dragons and phoenixes. There is the celestial globe vase that won the gold medal at the 1915 Pacific International Exposition, and a large official lantern weighing more than a hundred jin and inlaid from dozens of fine white porcelain pieces. Of course, the most eye-catching are the chairman-use porcelains: including ashtrays, Victory Cups (teacups), brush holders, rice bowls, fish plates, serving pots, soup spoons, vegetable dishes, toothpick boxes, sanitary covered bowls, and so on; porcelain used in the premier's reception room: large blue-and-white plates and fruit plates; and national gift porcelain: including the four treasures of the study presented by our country to Emperor Hirohito of Japan, the coffee set for US President Clinton, and exquisite hanging plates presented to Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom and French President Chirac; porcelain for the United Nations building; and countries such as Congo, Sudan, Zaire, and Cape Verde even selected it as porcelain for presidential palaces and people's palaces; as well as state banquet tableware for the Great Hall of the People, porcelain used in Zhongnanhai, the Mao Zedong Memorial Hall, the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, Tiananmen Rostrum, and Beijing Hotel.
Dear friends, the ancients spoke of the nine-times-refined golden elixir, and the Monkey King in mythology also underwent earth-shattering transformation. Now, when you have personally seen these ancient and modern treasures in the Liling Ceramics Exhibition Hall and watched from beginning to end the complicated process of making top-grade porcelain, you cannot help but applaud their skill in turning stone into gold, and it is not hard to understand why Liling porcelain became national porcelain and is renowned at home and abroad!