Tongguan Kiln
Tongguan Kiln
Dear friends:
Hello, everyone! Porcelain is a great invention that Chinese people can be proud of. Although many people today no longer know about Tongguan Kiln, as one of the five famous kilns of the Tang Dynasty, Tongguan Kiln enjoyed great prestige in its day.
Changsha's "Tongguan Kiln" is named after its kiln site in Tongguan, Changsha. What Tongguan was called in history is not clearly recorded in historical texts. But it is certainly true that since the Three Kingdoms period, it has always been called Tongguan. Speaking of Tongguan, it really has an interesting origin. Legend has it that when Liu Bei adopted Zhuge Liang's plan to base himself in Jingzhou and seek the throne in Xichuan, his army marched south with irresistible force, and victories came thick and fast. Zhao Yun took Guiyang, Zhang Fei took Wuling, and in Hunan only Changsha remained unconquered. Guan Yu, who was guarding Jingzhou, was so anxious that he repeatedly sent letters requesting to take Changsha. Once approved, Guan Yu quickly led a force and brought his adoptive mother and family members straight to Changsha. When the troops arrived more than 20 kilometers outside Changsha, his adoptive mother, already in her seventies, could no longer endure the hardships of the journey, caught a cold, and passed away. Guan Yu was overcome with grief. As a loyal and righteous man who had studied the Spring and Autumn Annals, Guan Yu shared a deep bond with his adoptive mother, and though she was only his adoptive mother, he served her as his own. He thus made a bronze coffin and built an earthen tomb for an elaborate burial. After burying his adoptive mother, the troops advanced toward Changsha by both water and land along the Laodao River. Guan Yu was in a daze along the way, and when a wave struck, his Green Dragon Crescent Blade fell into the water. Perhaps because "dragons" have a habit of swimming upstream, the soldiers searched for a long time but could not find it. In the end, Zhou Cang groped upstream for several li before retrieving the precious blade. Thus, the river was called Laodao River (Retrieve-the-Blade River), the place where the blade fell was called Luodao Zui (Blade-Fall Mouth), the place where it was retrieved was called Laodaohe Town, and the place where Guan Yu buried his adoptive mother was therefore called "Tongguan" (Bronze Coffin). Later, because "guan" (official) and "guan" (coffin) are homophones, and "coffin" is inauspicious, the place has since been called "Tongguan."
Who would have thought that five hundred years later, this place would become a famous porcelain capital, influencing the world past and present. Tongguan became renowned at home and abroad for its porcelain. Today, many cities abroad have "Chinatowns," foreigners call Chinese people "Tang people," and call China the "Land of Porcelain." So where did these age-old names originate, and when? This is because during the High Tang period, Chinese porcelain, along with silk and tea, was sold overseas in great quantities. Foreigners first came to know China through its exquisite porcelain, and so even China's national name became "CHINA," meaning porcelain. In Korea, Japan, India, and countries and regions in Southeast Asia and West Asia, and even in South Africa, North Africa, and some European countries, large quantities of Chinese Tang Dynasty porcelain have been unearthed. Besides celadon and white porcelain, these include many brilliantly colored and exquisitely beautiful painted porcelains. However, in Chinese historical records, Tang Dynasty porcelain was still dominated by monochrome glazes, with the two glaze colors of celadon and white holding the leading position. These were the famous "Southern Celadon and Northern White" wares of the time—that is, the south was represented by Yue kiln celadon that was "jade-like," resembling jade; the north was represented by Xing kiln white porcelain that was "silver-like" and "ice-like," resembling silver and ice. There is simply no record of painted porcelain at all.
Historical documents record that China's earliest painted porcelain began in the Song Dynasty, but the painted porcelain unearthed in those overseas regions is unquestionably from China's Tang Dynasty. So where exactly is the source of Chinese painted porcelain? This mystery perplexed experts studying Chinese ceramic history for many years, until after the founding of the People's Republic, when Mr. Feng Xianming, a Chinese ancient ceramics expert, and Hunan's archaeological workers solved the riddle. It turned out that the source of Chinese painted porcelain was right at Wazhaping in Tongguan. Because it was a wharf where ceramics were piled in those days, the ground here was covered with ceramic shards, which could be picked up everywhere, hence the name Wazhaping (Tile-Shard Flat). Because Wazhaping is in Tongguan Town, it is called "Tongguan Kiln," and because Tongguan belongs to Changsha, it is also called "Changsha Kiln."
Wazhaping is located in Tongguan Town, Wangcheng County, more than 20 kilometers from Changsha, bordered by the Xiang River to the west. In those days, the ceramics of Tongguan Kiln were transported from here north down to Dongting Lake, then to the prosperous Yangzhou, and through foreign trade ports such as Ningbo and other coastal cities, sold far to overseas markets. As early as the Tang Dynasty, Changsha Tongguan Kiln opened a channel for Hunan commerce to reach overseas markets and became one of the three major export porcelain centers of Tang Dynasty China. That is why so many Changsha Tongguan Kiln ceramics remain in the Middle East, North Africa, and various Southeast Asian countries.
Tongguan Kiln's products were mainly sold to the various countries of the Dashi in the Western Regions. The so-called "Dashi" was originally the name of a Persian tribe; from the Tang Dynasty onward, the Arab Empire was called "Dashi." The Dashi absorbed the advanced cultures of Greece, Byzantium, Persia, India, and others, forming a multi-ethnic "Arab culture." Tongguan Kiln was able to sell far overseas because its products were "well-suited to the market." One of its major innovations was mainly the introduction of Arab culture, creating many new products. It fired porcelains with distinctly Central Asian and West Asian styles and nomadic ethnic characteristics. For example, among the underglaze painted figures there are "foreign maidens" and "exotic couples"; among the molded appliqué figures there are knights, Hu people playing flutes, and dancers; among plants there are "grapevine patterns," "palm trees," "sago palms," "date palms," and so on; among animals there are "makara" and specially decorated lions. "Makara" is a Sanskrit transliteration, sometimes written as "Magara," regarded as the essence of rivers and the source of life. There are also abstract geometric patterns, giving a sense of freedom and joy, of striving upward, and of latent beauty, which the Arabs found very appealing. On porcelain sold to India and Southeast Asia, however, lotus decorative patterns related to Buddhism predominated.
Molded appliqué was a major achievement of Tongguan Kiln in decorative art. Those Tongguan Kiln wares sold overseas were decorated with molded appliqué patterns of exotic character, crossing the seas and spreading across Asia and as far as Africa, becoming envoys of Tang Dynasty Chinese commerce and culture. They opened a maritime ceramic route leading to South Asia and North Africa. They made significant contributions to cultural exchange between China and the West, to the prosperity of the Tang Dynasty economy, to the opening of overseas markets, and to enhancing the fame of "Tang people" and the "Land of Porcelain."
The ceramics produced by Tongguan Kiln were not only exquisite in shape, evenly moist in glaze, refined in painting, and harmonious in color, but also had two major original creations in China's ceramic history: First, it is the birthplace of Chinese underglaze color. Ceramic experts have repeatedly demonstrated that the underglaze color technique was already applied at Tongguan Kiln in the mid-Tang period, overturning the claim that underglaze color began in the Song Dynasty and pushing back the history of this technique in Chinese ceramics by more than 400 years. Second, the invention of underglaze color at Changsha Tongguan Kiln broke through the single-tone palette of the white porcelain of the time, enriched the decorative art of porcelain, and also incorporated traditional Chinese calligraphy, painting, sculpture, poetry, and proverbs into ceramic decoration.
During the Tang Dynasty, porcelain was mainly monochrome-glazed, with the two glaze colors of celadon and white in the leading position, and decorative styles were still in an early stage. But at this time, Changsha Kiln had already gone far beyond the general rules of the day in decorative methods, breaking through the traditional monochrome glaze and firing celadon with brown and green colors. More than a thousand years ago, being able to use three different metals to fire three different colors of patterns was nothing less than an epoch-making achievement, and what was especially remarkable was that these brown and green colors were all underglaze colors.
Underglaze brown and green color is the most beautiful type at Changsha Kiln, and also the most difficult to master in the firing process. To fire it well, one must simultaneously and skillfully control the changes of three metals. Yet such complex chemical changes and firing techniques were actually fully mastered by the ancient Tongguan Kiln craftsmen, who fired bright brown and green colors that matched the yellow glaze extremely harmoniously. It was not only widely loved for its brilliant and rich colors, but also sold far overseas through the Maritime Silk Road, strengthening trade exchanges. The emergence of underglaze color opened the way for using painting techniques to beautify porcelain and enriched the decorative art of Tang Dynasty porcelain, making it an epoch-making milestone in Chinese ceramic history.
In March 1983, a national-treasure-level Changsha Kiln "Celadon-Glazed Brown-Colored Green Lotus Pot" was excavated at Wazhaping. Looking quietly at this pot is like appreciating an ancient painting. The pot has a short neck, a large rolled-lip mouth, a barrel-like belly, and two ear handles decorated with two incised bow-string lines. The decoration consists of two flowers and two leaves, all done freely by the craftsman's hand. Painting freely on the pot belly is an artistic characteristic of Changsha Tongguan Kiln porcelain painting. With just a few strokes, the craftsmen suddenly added much poetic and pictorial charm. Those casual strokes flashing in underglaze color, after being scorched by the kiln fire, became brilliant rosy clouds and flowing waves, forever remaining on the pot bodies and jar bellies, natural and magnificent. Even more distinctive is that flower-and-bird outlines were carved on the porcelain body, then filled with color and glazed, keeping carving, painting, and kiln craftsmanship integrated throughout. Ceramic experts call it "a monument in ceramic history."
Tongguan Kiln blended rich folk customs into its porcelain clay. It not only fired large quantities of practical household utensils, but also produced large numbers of lifelike porcelain animal toys of beasts and birds. It was not only famous for patterns such as cloud and water-wave designs or small round spots on the vessel body, but also excelled at painting flower-and-bird patterns in brown and green colors on the body and writing poems and prose on the body. This was another original creation of Tongguan Kiln. It innovatively covered pot bellies or jar bodies with Tang people's phrases and lines of poetry, forming an artistic feature among ancient Chinese porcelain, making Changsha Tongguan Kiln even richer in the development history of Huxiang culture and constituting a three-dimensional dictionary of Tang Dynasty calligraphy art and poetic aesthetics. It not only achieved the decorative purpose of the time, but also left later generations a precious cultural heritage. On the several hundred discovered vessels, more than 60 poems of various kinds were inscribed. Apart from three poems by famous Tang poets, such as the early Tang poet Wei Chengqing's five-character quatrain "Ode to Geese in the South" — "A thousand li I return, in late autumn the geese fly north. I know not in what year or month I may return together with you" — the rest were mostly created by the potters themselves or were popular street songs of the time. The folk customs of Tang Dynasty Tanzhou are fully reflected in these porcelain poems. These porcelain poems are not found in the Complete Tang Poems, which is known for collecting poems comprehensively, so they are especially precious and can supplement what is missing from the Complete Tang Poems. The themes of the porcelain pot poems are quite broad, including study and conduct in society, morality and ethics, frontier warfare, commercial travel, love and longing, and improvised expressions of feeling.
Therefore, the Changsha Tongguan Kiln porcelain we see today, apart from appliqué-colored glazed Hu figurines of music and dance and brown-green painted patterns, consists otherwise of writing and poetry. The writing includes brown-colored inscriptions such as "The Bian family's small-mouth wares are famous throughout the world" and "The Zheng family's small-mouth wares are number one in the world." These were famous workshops at Changsha Tongguan Kiln at the time. Because their porcelain was beautifully fired, they wrote promotional phrases such as "famous throughout the world" and "number one in the world." These are China's earliest advertisements.
But what appeared in large numbers and uniquely reflected the human culture of Changsha Tongguan Kiln were still those brown-inscribed short poems on the vessels, either plain and easy to understand, or proverbs and maxims. Though only a few words, they set people thinking. For example: "Once parted, I travel a thousand li; when I return, there is no set time. In the month, thirty days; no night passes without longing." "I only grieve that the calling birds part; I regret that the ancients are many. After you leave, look at the bright moon; the scenery passes everywhere." "I have a square-inch heart; no one can share it in speech. I send the wind to blow away the clouds and speak to the moon at the edge of heaven." The above lines are very likely describing a traveler parting from a traveler, or were given to a traveler by someone else, and there are also verses of a longing wife thinking of one far away, entrusting her feelings to the moon. Those reflecting frontier warfare include: "Three battles a day, yet no reward or punishment. The general sits on horseback; the soldiers sleep in the snow." "Since entering the Xinfeng market, I only smell the old wine's fragrance. Holding my lute, I get drunk; all day I lie in the winding waters." Those reflecting travelers and wanderers include: "Day after day I think of the road ahead; morning after morning I part from my host. On and on over mountains and rivers; everywhere the birds sing anew." "Small waters connect to the great river; deep in the mountains there are many birds. If the host treats the guest well, even a winding road is worth traveling." "Night after night I hang the long hook; morning after morning I gaze at the Chu tower. Pitiful is the lonely moonlit night, ever shining on the traveler's sorrow." Some poems are extremely beautiful, such as "Birds fly near and far over level beams; people follow the flowing water east and west. White clouds for a thousand li, ten thousand li; the bright moon before and behind the stream." It is simply a faint landscape painting, so elegant in tone and so beautiful in wording. Another vessel is inscribed with: "A man, a true man, why need he live in his native place! Every household has the bright moon; where is the gold?" The poetic meaning encourages men to set their aspirations on the four quarters of the world. Then look at the five-character poem on a melon-ribbed pot with spring as its theme: "Spring water fills the spring pool; in springtime spring grass grows. Spring people drink spring wine; spring birds stir spring life." This poem imperceptibly brings you into a beautiful natural scene full of spring, making you think of the murmuring stream, the tender green fragrant grass, the warm sunlight, the pleasing birdsong, and that mellow fine wine. These are cultural representations not recorded in books but truly preserved, reflecting people's life, culture, and psychology—another "Collection of Tang Poems."
In 1983, the cultural relics and archaeology department of Changsha conducted archaeological excavation of an ancient dragon kiln site, unearthed a large number of ceramic treasures, including bowls, plates, cups, basins, pots, bottles, jars, pillows, lamps, inkstones, paperweights, and various small sculpted toys. Local farmers also picked up a pottery mold for casting Kaiyuan Tongbao coins, and objects with absolute dates were discovered, such as a jar-ear ceramic mold from the third year of Yuanhe (808) and a small porcelain pot from the second year of Taihe (828), confirming that Tongguan Kiln has a history of more than 1,200 years. Tongguan Kiln began in the mid-Tang, flourished in the late Tang, and declined in the Five Dynasties. Because the Huang Chao Rebellion cut off the export route, and because of a shortage of porcelain clay and certain difficulties in fuel supply, the kiln site gradually moved north to Tongguan Town, and Wazhaping finally became a historical relic. On January 24, 1988, the State Council announced the Tongguan Kiln site as a Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level.
To have experienced glory and then decline is, after all, a kind of regret. Changsha Tongguan Kiln left a stretch of ruins at Wazhaping, while from the Qing Dynasty to the present, the ceramic industry of Tongguan Town has flourished again for several hundred years. Especially during the Kangxi reign of the Qing Dynasty, Tongguan Town formed a ten-li pottery city and became one of China's five great pottery capitals. Today, the more than 400 kinds of ceramic products produced in Tongguan, such as hotel ware, Chinese and Western tableware, tea sets, and coffee sets, are still sold to dozens of countries and regions thanks to their various advantages.
In those years, the song "Liuyang River" dyed the Xiang River green, reddened Dongting Lake, and was sung throughout the north and south of the motherland. Just when people were about to turn it into a memory, Song Zuying's "Singing Liuyang River Again" rekindled the passion of hundreds of millions. Yes, in the long river of history, the existence of Changsha Tongguan Kiln was but a spray of waves, but the kiln fire of a thousand years has been passed down from generation to generation. The Changsha Tongguan Kiln, once brilliant a thousand years ago, burst forth anew after long accumulation. Hunan native Mr. Hu Tianfei, through 20 years of painstaking effort, on the basis of summarizing predecessors' experience, broke through traditional ceramic craft thinking, researched a unique base glaze formula, and developed a grand red porcelain symbolizing good fortune, celebration, nobility, and elegance, and most loved by Chinese people, pioneering world colored glaze, especially red glaze, and solving an age-old difficult problem in world ceramic history. It ended the history of Chinese porcelain having no standard red glaze and filled a gap in world ceramic history.
Since more than 1,000 years ago, when Changsha Tongguan Kiln fired the world's earliest copper-red-glazed ewer, it opened the prelude to red porcelain in the world and also opened the heavy curtain on the red dream in ceramic history. Thereafter, for a thousand years, through the efforts of porcelain makers of successive dynasties, red porcelains such as Song Jun ware, Yuan and Ming underglaze red, and Qing "Lang red" were fired. None of these were anything but red dreams created by generations of porcelain workers in pursuit of the dream. Although these products once surprised the world, in the end, because these red glazes could not withstand high temperatures, these red dreams all carried innate defects. They were either red tending toward purple, or red tending toward pale, and most were low-temperature glazes. Even more regrettable, these red-glazed porcelains were ultimately not the grand red most cherished by Chinese people, and so true red porcelain was never fired.
In the 20th century, ceramic experts from China, Germany, France, Japan, and other countries devoted all their efforts to developing high-temperature-resistant grand red porcelain glaze, but without substantive breakthrough. In 1983, the Hunan Provincial Science and Technology Commission established a project and formed a research group to "overcome the difficulty of firing grand red porcelain at high temperature," with Mr. Hu Tianfei as group leader. After years of effort and countless hardships, the world problem was finally solved in the early 21st century. The successful development of China Red is a great contribution of the Chinese nation to the world. It marks the world's entry into the era of red porcelain and is an epoch-making milestone in world ceramic history. China Red porcelain is bright and lustrous, with a color as vivid red as China's national flag and national emblem, and is extremely exquisite. It is the first choice as a high-grade gift for foreign heads of state and dignitaries of various countries, and also a treasure sought after by collectors.
Therefore, from the very day of its birth, China Red porcelain has been deeply loved for its rich naturalness, brilliant gorgeousness, elegant nobility, dignified simplicity, and strong sense of translucency. So why is China Red porcelain so favored by people? What is the difference between it and ancient red porcelain? If one opens China's ceramic history of several thousand years, it is not hard to find that among the many colorful porcelains, only grand red glaze porcelain with the same color as the national flag and national emblem was absent. This is not because our ancestors were unwilling to stamp red on porcelain, but because backward productivity and production methods made it very difficult or even impossible for them to do so. Because grand red glaze material cannot withstand high temperatures, the red color decomposes at a firing temperature of about 800 degrees, so this also became an age-old difficult problem in China's ceramic history. Therefore, those red porcelains of the past could only be brownish red, date red, and so on, all fired once in the kiln; China Red porcelain, however, adopts a unique grand red pigment-wrapping process, combines modern high-tech means, uses specially made dedicated kiln equipment, and is fired multiple times at a high temperature above 1,200 degrees. The fired China Red porcelain has uniform glaze thickness, even color development, brilliant color, high gloss, and a strong glassy texture.
China is a world-famous ancient ceramic country. From the primitive celadon of the Shang and Zhou eras to the blue-and-white and polychrome wares of the Ming and Qing periods, ceramics presented a splendid and glorious scene, with all kinds of ceramic artworks shining brilliantly. And the birth of China Red porcelain finally fulfilled the Chinese people's thousand-year red dream.