Chinese Porcelain Master (full program)

[Music] [Music] my name is Judy Fleming I'm a ceramic artist and I live in Oakland California so I've been doing ceramics for about 12 years I started in high school and community college right after high school and continue to do it because it was something that made me feel grounded and whole and I love giving gifts to people and I love making things for people that they can give and I also believe that ceramics connects us to our food as well just a handmade object to eat and drink with connects us to the things that we've made so it kind of enriches the process my passion and my love and it's something but I want to do forever I've never been to China before I'm really excited to go but I've always wanted to study from master ceramic artists and I've always wanted to learn more from different people that have different techniques I haven't been exposed to Chinese porcelain art very much and just been a dream of mine to also go to China and see what it's like there to learn about the clay there and to do more research and I'm also excited to eat some of the food and get to keep some of the environment there I'm going to Jing dodging and raunchy Provence I'm going to meet a ceramic porcelain master his name is Wang Jing Fung and I'm going for 12 days shinza Jen is the center of ceramic porcelain in China it's been around for over a thousand years I used to be kind of the mecca of production it's a place that still has a lot of that history but a lot of the industry has been dispersed around other parts of China and they're looking for kind of reviving Tremec porcelain their master quang ninh phones is a master ceramic artist and that he says reproductions of porcelain ceramics in the very old style so you take some of the old old works of the old dynasties and recreates them with the old style of porcelain and hand-painted porcelain as well he seems to be just part of the community and interested in reviving the porcelain ceramic there I'm like beyond excited about this trip to go to China I have no idea what's in store for me I'm not sure what to expect I'm really looking forward to learning more about ceramics and learning more about the craft and also to try to figure out some parts of my business that I want to create really looking forward to it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] today's my first day in Ginga Jen and I came to Wang Yong Chun exhibition hall this kind of beautiful garden and koi pond outside and I came in and I just got to see all this beautiful ceramics all this porcelain that has a lot of history behind it a lot of the work is replicas of old ceramics from the Ming Dynasty and the Ewing dynasty I think it's beautiful it's very large shape the paintings are nice the plants to remind me of like seaweed ouma's and fruit and all the details [Music] yeah this is a beautiful piece and yes really blown away by it I like the leaves and all the detail and how simple it is with the blue and a little koi fish I think it'd be really fun to try to recreate a piece like this go into the process of how it was originally made and to kind of relive that painting of such an ancient work of art and I got to finally meet master while young punks yeah that's me it yeah woman is happy enough it was a fungus as a young goat on exhibition general person went out in divinity is a time to sow into the community person basically he's a painter and he paints on these ceramic pieces and he told me about his work as a painter and a little bit about his history and I also showed me some of history amuk work figures such as a young lady - gulps do you gain some distortion master Fong told me that this is a copy from the Yuan Dynasty it is a very rare piece originally because of the characters that are in it and the characters tell a story and so if you look at it you can see different people horses of thinking that this one is about a woman who goes to the west so she will you sue pay your school phone your engineer and this one here is from the Ming Dynasty he said it's five different colors and each of the under glazes he formulated himself but you can see all the different colors and how they kind of bleed in different ways you ain't you wanna do a lot you need a Sri Lankan code and this one is from the Yuan Dynasty if also telling a story and has different characters as well they're symbols here that represent different religious things the ceramics here there are a lot of different styles different sizes some are very small we're big some of the old dynasty porcelain ceramics a lot of the other work here is just different designs different colors so some it's very basic some is very simple others are very very detailed with a lot of different colors in them so just a great variety after we got to see the exhibition room we went upstairs and he has a little workshop up there where his students come for also his workers and apprentices and they come and learn different techniques from him there in the room he was teaching a little lesson on how to draw and paint some of the ceramics and he had taken some of the old Dynasty ceramics and put them on the table for people to look at to see close up with designs and he talked about the paintings on them and how they are painted and so basically it's one color that they use and the thickness determines how dark it will be and he also told me a little bit about perspective and about drying and we did a little drawing on the board of a leaf and talked a little bit about the perspective of the leaf it's kind of like dancing so it's not going to look just straight or flat and that's your painters and that we should think about it in a more three-dimensional way so to put perspective on it shorter on one side and larger on the other side what and then I was surprised he had make it up and kind of do a little drawing [Music] I was interesting any helps correct my drawing as well but I could tell from that his talent and his passion for his work I got to see his little library where he has a lot of the old dynasty ceramics that he uses actually for examples of his own works and see kind of how it was done to see the techniques but to also see different designs that were made back then so the 14th 15th country from then on pretty amazing works and it's pretty great to see just the depth in the history behind all his classic porcelain work as a ceramic artist myself I'm constantly just being creative and creating new things and I'm very rarely thinking about my history and it's something that I really appreciate about reading master Fung's that his work is so steeped in his history and his lineage a special element that he brings to his work but I can tell creates that kind of passion for his work and it would be really great to take that element into more of what I'm doing you know instead of trying to create new things all the time and being contemporary trying to think more about the history behind it and how far it's come and you could even bring back some of those old techniques into present-day contemporary work as well [Music] [Music] we came here to the gallon clay mines to see how where some of the clay comes from the bus ride was really fun it took about an hour to get here from jingdezhen it's really beautiful scenery very tranquil a lot of the old steps that kind of wind around are going all over and I think they go to different sites the mining of clay began in reviewing dynasty it flourished in the Ming and Qing dynasties so this is an old relic site where they used to harvest some of the gallon clay you can see it's kind of a cave inside and they used to harvest it from the granite stone so Gallen clay is the weathering of the granite and it has a content of aluminum which helps to make larger pieces of porcelain objects kaolin clay was actually named dr. Gallin mountain and it's flourished from there to all over the world the volatile fungus to the holidays now I don't suit we call the city direction Master Huang just told me about this washing site so they would take some of the harvest from the mine nearby and they would sift it here in this big pool they would fill it with water after the clay was sifted and some of the sand was out of the clay it would float down into this lower pool after which it would dry a little and they would be able to use it in production so after going to the gallon clay ruins we then went to a museum right outside of Jing dodging and hooch in inside you walk in and there's kind of a workshop area where you get to see these figurines of different stages of the ceramic process [Music] so when you go in if you go to the left there is a big ancient relic ruin site there is where there's a big old tomb that dates back to the five dynasties where you can see different areas of the workshop space you can see kind of how large the workshop space was so and it's kind of partitioned off from old ceramic pieces that were once used and you can see sound lower with the older dynasties and then a little bit higher where the newer ones have been Ming Dynasty and then if you keep going inside you go to the actual kiln room the kiln itself has an ash pit and the kiln is shaped like a gourd where you can sense where is he would came in to stoke the kiln and then the larger part is where the ceramic pieces would go in also on that County conceição a tree was being uprooted underneath it and how it was harvested so there is much more to the kiln that we couldn't see but it was just very interesting to know how big and how he required back then then when you go back into the museum and you pass through to the right side you see more of the nature of the Song Dynasty as well as the UN dynasty was there as well and it had similar areas that were worked as the Ming Dynasty area but it seems to be a little bit more spread out and again had brick wall areas for different rooms where they would workshops making ceramic pieces and glazing ceramic pieces and the whole process the couch in kiln they oftentimes hired a lot of the blue and the white ceramics so inside the museum I was able to see a lot of those variations of ceramics but also to get an idea of what those old ceramics look like and another thing I was surprised to see with a lot of engravings and some of the works and a lot of the glazes themselves were kind of like a light almost like translucent blue colors a lot of them were pretty small some of them were jars and I had to what they were used for I didn't know that they were used for wine but they had a lid that was like a whole separate cup going into another jar also when you go right into the museum you get to see old mold stacked on top of each other sometimes in clay you get what's called reduction in oxidation so it's really hot and then has more oxidation on one side which gives it a different color from one side to the other but they wanted their ceramics to be really clean and have less effects from the elements and so they put them within these little molds to keep their glaze perfect today was such an amazing day I feel so inspired I have to see so many different things first we started with getting to see some of master Huang workshop first they were kneading the clay or what we call wedging the clay and then right next to him there was a wheel setup where person was throwing on the wheel and he was throwing these really large pots he had the speed turned up pretty fast for the duration that he was throwing he looked very very comfortable doing it he told me that he did it for six days a week for like six to eight hours a day so he must have just so much experience and had been doing it for around eight to ten years I think he said he started he was 14 years old we got to see a little bit of the trimming there were few trimming stations the first one he was trimming this big trash can I guess it was a commissioned piece he had never done it before it was his first time doing that particular design and I had to ask about it because he had some liquid clay that he was using which we call flip and he was using it to join two pieces together and he joined them together and then trimmed them after and that after that we went and saw the second trimmer and he was doing smaller pieces and he had these amazing tools that I'd never seen before so this tool is used for trimming outside but this one hasn't been sharpened yet well they have these ridges in it in order to make it faster when they trim and then this is a finished one and it's for trimming the inside and after I was really interested in the trimming tool he let me come in and trim one myself we went straight through into another room where they had the kiln room and they just happened to be unloading a kiln at that time they have three different kilns that they use that are probably running pretty constantly and the wear that he was taking out of this film had been sitting and cooling for 24 hours so by the time we got to see them they were just a little bit warm and the man who works there he takes the pieces out of the kiln and heats the inspector so he looks at all of the pieces and make sure that the glaze is okay that everything is even but nothing is cracked and they were beautifully done a lot of the pieces were not at all damaged they look totally pristine after that we got to see a little bit of the glaze room and this is a way that we do it also I've seen it done before in this way where they just have a room and it's a glaze booth for airbrushing so they take glaze and they put it in an airbrush can and are able to just lightly put the glaze on top of what they call under glaze so a lot of the pieces before they have the glaze on top have this detail under glaze work underneath and he had the booth there and he was going up and down with the glaze trying to get all the even glaze all around the piece you [Music] we went upstairs where there were many different people hands painting all these different pieces and it was really inspiring when you walk up into the room it's just so many different pieces were just lining the different areas and had many different people sitting and they were all very very focused and some people were working on brand-new pieces that were commissioned so they were working just freehand and then some people were working on those old like dynasty pieces they had to work very meticulously everything had to be perfect they were using patterns that were already printed for them and they were just painting on top so not only that but there are some people that were doing different techniques it's kind of a reductive way of squeezing so they put the glaze on and then take it away so make different patterns from the glaze that was on top and I was really impressed by the way that they painted their hands were so steady it seemed like they each had a lot of practice one lady I talked with she had been painting for 20 years a very long time and even before then she said she would always draw and paint and sometimes she goes home and also just drawings and paintings oh yeah they're artists and big part of their lives we got to see some of how flip casting was done when they make pieces that are replications from those dynasties they try to do it the exact same way as it was done back then and the UN dynasty is one where they used for casting so I got to watch someone wedge the clay and then use the mold and put the clay inside of the mole so he pushes it down inside evenly and he took some time to put the clay really nicely inside and kind of trim it away he was going [Music] and wait for that to dry and as the piece dries it will kind of shrink a little bit and they're able to just take off the other mold pieces and then you put stems together with the same slip as they used for when they were trimming the pieces and it should just be a beautiful shape this is a much faster way of making a piece actually in this way you can also get the same piece over and over and over again so it's very easy to make many that are just the exact things I [Music] was invited to lunch so I got to go to master Wong's house with his wife thank you and I got to learn how to make dumplings which was really fun it's fun to see in master Huang wife help me put the pork inside with the vegetables and close them up it was a great way to just experience being in the home and get to be invited and feel welcomes in the space so that was really special I'm to fix me pens mouth [Music] then we had lunch with master Quang and we got to eat some of the dumplings bye we got to make together it's good the dumpling is fresh mmm it's a little salty and it has some of the green onion inside which gives it a little bit more flavor it's very good we went to master Wong's gallery space so we got to see some of his work this is his works it's like his original paintings that which is kind of more his style and it was really great to see how his style was really free brushstrokes so I got to see these fish that look similar to me is like a mackerel fish but they're very common to this region one was a big painting of the different seasons and they're really big in size and a lot of detail work on them I got to see the fish on these big ceramic pots as well as some plum blossom trees that he had painted on different ceramics and he said that he likes to paint the blossoms on longer pieces that are more suitable for that length of the tree whereas for the fish he likes to paint on rounder surfaces such as round pots because he feels that the fish are kind of dancing on the pieces which I really like that feeling of the objects dancing in the perspective of that as well ya can see [Music] master weeks got to see his gallery space I feel very fortunate I also got to go and spend some time in his studio and watch him work [Music] he was very meditative and you could tell that he had done it for a very long time but it was something that he was very passionate about something he loved to do and all of us were just totally quiet when we watched him work [Music] [Music] we had me come over watched him paint the plum blossom tree he started with the branches but it was like a rough area that he painted and then I watched him continue that on to leave spaces out and it was a surprise to me when she started painting the actual blossoms it was like he knew exactly where the blossoms went where the layers were so it's just a great experience to see his process and how he painted in layers some things make look like they're farther away and some things look like they're closer up [Music] I didn't know he was going to give it to me but he offered me the ceramic piece that he made with me there and I feel very fortunate to get to receive such a gift and his honor for me to have something but he made and something that I saw him make Master Huang just gifted me this beautiful plate I saw his work in his gallery and commented that I really liked the plum blossom tree and so he said he painted this one especially for me before I left I had made him some things actually I made him more things but I just gave him a couple things because I tried to keep it basic and things that are said he could use I gave him a cup that I made and this is a design that I've made before it feels good in your hand to hold and I thought he could maybe use it for tea and then I also gave him a little incense holder where when you put the incense in the ashes from the incense falls into the incense holder so I hope you liked it [Applause] [Music] today we went to another area of master Wong's company we started on the first floor and we saw another area where he had some people working there on very very detailed painting of some pot of different traditional pot and they were using two paintbrushes one was for pushing the glaze in two different areas and one was for cleaning and doing different blending this area was more an area for filling in different areas that had already been outlined [Music] we went upstairs to the second floor and on the second floor there was another area where people were painting there was an intern who is there just practicing some horse paintings and I saw someone applying some decals on some of these big pots so decals are basically this little prints of images and he was pressing them down onto the pot and trying to make them exactly perfect and afterwards taking paint in the colors for those pieces we got to go to his Museum which was on the third level of that workshop building going in is just a beautiful display of all these beautiful pieces of art a lot of them are very very historical very important works of art that were brought back to this area some that had been auctioned at different places had ended up in Europe or ended up in different parts of China that are now part of his collection and one of the reasons why he keeps these pieces is to learn more about this crash it's his passion for ceramics but he's all this work here and he keeps building on it based on what Morton wants to learn so in addition to some of the older dynasty work he has some pieces of work of his own that is his very favorite pieces are the ones that keeps there he has some big pieces of the freshwater fish and some of his other works of art displayed in the museum and I personally love museums too I love looking at objects and I love getting to fit with objects and I feel like I learn a lot from the experience of getting to go to a museum and to see the history behind it he taught me a little bit about how to authenticate cousin any day then see what tends to melt down we make he first brought out one big piece that had been kind of cracked and put back together and it was from the wayne dynasty so he had the original and the replica version that was made with his company the blue and the white porcelain as far as painting itself were very similar but one way that you can find the differences is actual glaze so the original glaze is a little bit deeper in shade it's kind of a dark blue almost black and it was a little bit runny this place in particular versus the glaze on the replica had a little bit cleaner a little bit lighter tone than the original and you could also tell the difference of the firing so one was fired with the old wood kiln and one was fired with a new gas kiln and that's another way that you can tell is just from the remnants of the firing [Music] the second piece he showed with a plate that was worth about $130,000 there's a Tim de sheng gu's and it has more colors on it so it wasn't just the blue and the white colors it had five colors I believe and it was the eight treasures so it was kind of an old folklore tale it was made for the Emperor's dining piece there about a hundred of them made originally so they're very very valuable pieces and he showed me also on the bottom the different signatures who do we both do start building you could tell by also the brightness of the colors of the original had a much brighter tinge to it than the replication which is another way you can tell if it's real or fake this is synthetic contribution to the room consolation playfully jihad to the top seen that he showed me a little bit of his newer collections where he had some more contemporary pieces and he walked me through a little bit of the newer work so the newer work is new in the brushstrokes and the style but the content is still the same pieces that he had in particular there was one of the plum blossom which is a very old traditional object and the force as well you showed me in particular one large plate that had a horse running towards you and the brushstrokes he was saying is very difficult to paint this animal and to show it in motion with the brushstroke and to make it seem as though the horse moving towards you you showed me a piece that you really really like the janessa wah-fung philippe go talk to the girls alone you ancient clock we whoops his shot sounded quick he painted on it the same exact scene it was a war scene and he also said that the original sold for 40 million dollars so it's a very expensive piece as well and the replication itself is worth around 70 thousand US dollars [Music] we want a little field trip we got to go visit a kiln which is very close to his company actually and this kiln was under this little roof so this is one of four or five kilns in Chang vision it's called the Jen kiln which means town kiln and there used to be many more of these but this is one that's still in use and it's kind of has an egg shape but it's a wood-fired kiln so they would bring in pieces and they would kind of surround these in these stackable things that would protect them from the elements and put them inside the wood kiln they would seal it up and then just treat it with wood from the outside so it's a high fired kiln it gets to be very hot and it was only used to produce some of the best quality work and it would fire for at least 23 hours until it was finished I would love to fire something in a kiln like that [Music] [Music] so we came out here to the countryside it's about a half hour outside of Ginga Jen and this is where the porcelain stone is crushed into a finer powder to use for porcelain and essentially what it is is they harvest some of the porcelain stone from the mountain a man puts it through a machine to make the stone a little bit smaller and after that they put it into this area here and it's powered by this large waterwheel here that's where they diverge some of the river to power the wheels and it is controlling these bigger hammers that our Sun is actually crushing the porcelain stone into very fine powder after that they sift it with water right to get some more of the sand out of the porcelain stone into a product that they can use the porcelain stone is an element to the foresman clay that he uses here it was very very local very close to the workshop here [Music] [Music] today we went to the center of Ginga Jen where they have the market and a lot of different shops that sell different ceramic objects handmade by different artists in the city we saw so many different pieces of art some of them were the more traditional blue and white pieces and some were more contemporary designs there were some porcelain that had more focus on the glazes some cups that were smaller than each other to some see sets as well we got to see some jewelry I love this we looked at different stores and I got to pick out some things that I really really liked so I'm going to buy this little thing as a gift it's a hanging or matte ornamental piece it kind of looks like a wood-fired piece I like the little speckles that it has I had to test a lot of character but you can put plants inside and kind of hang it and I also bought a key set that had a little tea pot as well as two small cups and I just so impressed with a lot of stuff they had there but I really liked the glaze of these two pieces I just felt really giddy to see everything and to hold all the different objects it's overwhelming and I put a really good time to see all the different stores here [Music] we went to lunch together and we had lunch at this very good restaurant I have never been to a kitchen in China before so I had no idea that they use these big walks over these different fires and to see all the different foods that they use to prepare some of the meals as well as different vegetables that they use prepare in these giant wash I was really good to seeing it was really fast paced as well so those is a you know Tuesday little movie so this is a local dishes it was often prepared for the people who were stoking the kiln for firing they would prepare this dish of pork and noodles and it has also fermented black beans [Music] all sounds very decadent in the noodles [Music] but it's very very rich very flavorful the noodles take on a lot of v labor from the meat as well and it seems like it would be a very hearty dish to have before such a long firing process so that would be a good meal to have so it's Jim you Joe soon you will G this is the most famous dish in Ginga Jen it is a roasted chicken and interested with play around it I wrote for three hours like March [Music] yes very delicious very tender the chicken you can taste the lotus leaf as well which it was wrapped in you get a hint of that flavor we went to a museum here in jingdezhen in the center of the city and it was called the dragon pearl pavilion when you walk inside you first see these miniature sculptures it was made by a professor skier in Jing dejenne it took him four years to produce and it was these little miniature replicas of the old imperial court for how they made the ceramics how they made the porcelain so it had each of the stations for the porcelain makers as well as their living quarters not surprising that of the entire miniature replica was made from porcelain we're at the top of the dragon pearl pavilion in the centre of Jing Tian Jing de Jen is located in the Jiang Shi province which is in northeastern China it has a population of about 1.5 million people it's about two thousand square miles which is about ten times the size of the city of San Francisco Ginga Chen is known as the porcelain capital of the world because it has been producing pottery for over seventeen hundred years the city has a well-documented history that stretches back over two thousand years [Music] so on the top level of the Dragon curled civilian there was a piece from the Yuan Dynasty in the center of the pavilion and I asked why so many of the pieces had been broken and just kind of put together and the person there who was guiding me through told me that oftentimes the Emperor would order 10 pieces to be made and he would pick the one out of the ten that was the best piece and then they would break all the others so often in the archaeological sites they would find all the broken pieces of the same piece that he had ordered all in one place afterwards we went downstairs to the old kiln this is the site of Imperial counts that were used during the UN Ming and Qing dynasties many great porcelain pieces were fired out of these films the counts themselves were shaped similarly the queue seemed fun there were seven of them here they fired each about 300 small pieces in each kiln but many archaeologists have found some great works here that has uncovered some wonderful history of this region we came back to visit a master Huang in his studio here and they had just been unloading the kiln when I was in master Wong's studio he painted a plate for me and we're here at the kiln where it's been firing for 13 hours and we're going to see how it turned out ha [Music] Oh again thank you it's so beautiful I love how it turned out how you can see all the different brushstrokes that used and the flowers themselves he only use two colors but you can see how other colors came out from those two colors who screams together it turned out really nicely so this is very grateful thank you today we went first to a market lefthand market we saw a lot of people selling their work and most of the people selling were college-age students and yeah it was a younger class people and I'm sure a lot of them were selling their work to make money to go to school and I love that there's an avenue for that to happen they're not only selling things that are functional such as places and cups they're also selling story and sculpture and little trinkets little things but little gifts that you could buy for your friends or your family I really envision myself kind of being in a setting like this and it made me really want to spend more time in seing vision maybe in the future of coming back and getting to learn more from the people there and I felt kind of like a solution for the people that were selling hysteretic at this kind of market and I got to get a suit gift for my family I just out a small kind of like decorative bass as well as some small bowls they have a lot of nice details here very been very nicely made and has a nice lip as well and then I has a cute little painting inside of little fishermen and some trees I think it will be a nice gift from [Music] we're here in Caroline kins gallery where we get to see some of her prosperity series this piece behind me is a big piece that she made that has over 30,000 porcelain butterflies stone to it it's a very old traditional style made from a burlap sack and each one of the butterflies is hand-sewn each porcelain piece is also handmade and she used the village to create this piece so in the Western tradition they use more of a person creates a piece from beginning to end where here's someone will do the kneading of the clay or the wedging someone will assemble the pieces someone else will attach the pieces and it's a whole community or village that puts the peeps together we got to travel to the countryside just outside of Ginga Jen's there's an amazing residency a place where artists can come from around the world to learn about ceramic craft and it's called Sun Bao and here it's kind of a whimsical place and it's just like walls of porcelain and different sculpture and ceramics embedded into the walls just ceramics everywhere in new forms and sculptural pieces that I've never seen before the work here is inspiring to me because I see these new ways of interpreting ceramic work as avenues for making me work on my own and just getting to use that creative process to push new boundaries in different areas of work so how many artists come to the residency here or so depending you know we can host up to 20 artists at in one time and I was able to talk with the founder and director he came here in the late 90s to start the presidency and he first I just had this vision who makes this residency a place where people from around the world could come and learn about porcelain and to learn about the ceramic culture here so it's kind of bringing people back to the roof of porcelain of ceramics it made me feel that I want to be more involved in residences like this or just to be among artists more and this is an example of a really great place to do something like that and I was able to meet one ceramic artist from the Netherlands who is a sculptor her name is Tess Tia she's been coming here every year since 2010 she stays in jingdezhen and she comes here once a week to send out to the residency just you relax and be inspired and what she takes from jingdezhen is just the culture of the people and the food and everything the moment I set foot on the airport on the streamlet since I become a different person so that makes this ice invent totally new things for my work she comes here to learn and to bring back some of her drawings and the sculpture that she's made here to the Netherlands where she's from to share it with people it's something that her patrons loved so going abroad especially to this place I chose this place especially for my growth as an artist [Music] today we went to the Jing Kang village which is an area outside of Jing vision and a very historic ancient part of Qing vision as well where the song and Five Dynasties film cite the mountain is surrounded with these kilns that they had built into the mountains and as we walked in I really got a sense of the amount of clay and the richness of the soil on mountain the first type that we came to was online and the mine was where they harvested a certain type of clay that had sell it on in it which is a type of clay that has kind of a shadowy blue color when it's fired and before when they were talking about the kind of clay as being a blue like an imitation or fake Jade color and I had no idea what that meant until this trip when I saw the actual stone that makes this type of clay in a museum you would look at it and think that it was a blue glaze but on further inspection today I noticed that the clay body was actually a blue color after we saw the mine where the clay was from I got to walk a little bit more and we saw just these little pieces of ancient ceramics kind of littering the sides of the trail we still saw some old films that were still in use and these types of kilns were dug into the sides of the mountain and I think also the clay from the earth helps to insulate the kills as well Master Huang even took me up along the side of an ancient kiln to show me some areas where there was a lot of pieces of ancient pottery nice to do good clogging dinner acquiring a splendid yeah trying to do sausages he said it's a big pot but it looks like many different pieces kind of smelled this together it almost looks like just a stone but you can tell and you can see white ceramic this particular kiln is a dragon kill so it's a long shape and it's built into the mountain the back is a chimney area and it's very very well-preserved it's one of the best-preserved sites that we know of in this area so that we know - there are about 12 films in the area but there could still be more uncovered in this region a master huang came here after he graduated college to study about porcelain and ceramics he would come to this region to investigate and learn about the kilns and to also look at the actual broken pieces that are laden around this area it's not a protected site and master Huang is petitioning and helping to get it to be protected and preserved as a cultural historical site also as we were going we saw piles of ceramics leftover chards of ancient ceramics and pieces that were used in the kiln to protect the ceramics as they were firing to come out with that clean blue color and it was just mountains and mountains of old pieces of ancient ceramics and as we were stepping on them I was thinking like I felt humbled by the experience to be exploring such an ancient relic of culture here while we were trekking on the countryside we got to pick up different little pieces of the ancient pottery and this is an example of one and you can see some of the details and the clay body as well which is how I got to learn about the different clay bodies that they have but it was also just really fun to think that I could bring home something that was so ancient and something that has such unique history as well we came back into Ginga gen and we got to see a school the Ginga gen ceramic Institute where master Huang went to college from 1952 to 1966 and it was here that he got to lay his foundation for his work as an artist and he started as a porcelain sculptor here's the school where he studied and we got to see the very room where he worked as a student making sculpture [Music] Master Fung after graduating from the Ginga Chen ceramic Institute went into work at a museum the chainage and ceramics museum where he worked authenticated as well as replicating of some old ancient pieces master Hong works at the Museum for 28 years he also gained a community there within the ceramic community and continued to grow his craft [Music] today we went to a place called Yali which is about an hour outside of Ginga Jen just very very gorgeous it has a river and some waterfalls coming down off the mountain and very tranquil open space it was really nice a little break from the city we came to the ancient town which is nearby and we have to walk around the town a little and I had the chance to finally interview master Huang what does wind up I wish I was at home I would even come here cool he started to paint when he was in elementary school so at a very young age it was in high school that he began to appreciate more porcelain art and decided that he wanted to go to college for porcelain ceramic Sangam do you santoña pursuing what he took in his later time at the museum he met an art collector from Hong Kong who had actually been collecting his work for quite some time and he was really inspired by master Wong's work and offered to pay him twenty thousand US dollars to start his business to help him buy a kiln for his own work after he got the kiln in place he started his business in 1993 with 12 people and from there grew until what it is today which is a workshop of 300 people working for him in two different factories Shanaya you know simbaby continued for diesel young deluded i as a master Huang how indigent has changed in the past two decades and he said that it's changed a lot a lot of artists have been coming in to indigent from all over China and I assume all over the world as well as it's a world-renowned place but people are coming in with new styles and new materials and adding more of abstract art as well what is hotel absorbing he also has a room 4202 are IPOs in Europe yes indeed today sir master Huang I asked him if contemporary art has influenced his work and he said that his passion is in the ancient ceramics and the old style his method of painting is exactly the same as it was in ancient time but his subject matter is a little bit different to reflect more of the current time at the end of the trip I feel excited I feel excited about ceramics in general in just my life as an artist I would say this is a life-changing trip for me and this experience has been a chance for me to learn more about it and for me to gain more information which in turn is going to help me just have a better understanding for ceramics as a whole and the history and I think my approach is going to be totally different what it is at all I heard about or the goons are about hope you should talk to what he is saying Master Huang is 74 years old and he's been painting on ceramics for a very long time and what keeps him going is his love and passion for ceramics and it's something that he's done for so long and something that he studied and it's something that she's still very passionate about so much so that he feels that pain Ceramics is his life and porcelain is his life [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: d3prodalex

Views: 115,119

Rating: 4.8636675 out of 5

Keywords: china, porcelain, jingdezhen, huang yunpeng, ceramics

Id: r39FVwabqgg

Length: 58min 37sec (3517 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 23 2017