Taking the Mountain to Mao

In Jingdezhen, the Porcelain capital of the world. Even the traffic lights are Oriental Blue and White

Stuff is made in sections and joined bone dry.

I hate photographs with people in them but this is me being a matchbox. The tall pieces behind me have seperate necks like the shape of the smaller one which are joined after firing.

We are staying in the Pottery Workshop ( not the big pot factory in the pix though) and Richard and I are very keen to come here next year to make an exhibition to freight back home. The city is full of small backstreet family businesses. Just arounnd the corner is a Revolutionary Ceramics Factory.

And over the alley from where we sleep, is this gem of a workshop.

The Mao-maker

Too many Maos and too small a suitcase,

Jxxx

Another Opening, Another Show

Happy and sad feelings this morning.

Yesterday was very emotional as the culmination of our residency was marked with the opening of our museum.

Fireworks of course.

The Australasians

I did the display with Jan Nealie , also pictured is Mr Fu one of the big bosses. He was very pleased with what we did. Especially the AutoCAD plans we presented.

Cheryl Lucas

Richard Parker

Mark Mitchell

Chris Weaver

Moyra Elliot


My installation.

I am most pleased with the last pieces I made, the Stacks of brick bowls. They were made from variations of the standard brick clay which has so many additives. They were then once fired in the brick tunnel kiln and bound togfether like the stacks of bricks are. Most exciting.

We leave here in about an hour for the Han tombs on the way to the Airport to Nanchang. Then a 3 hr bus ride to Jingdezhen. The landscape is through a lake district so it should be wonderfully picturesque.

Don't know what the internet situation will be until we get there. Will try to update, but this may be the last post until 6 June.

Jxx

Epiphany

This will sound very wanky, but I had a major realisation the other night at the banquet welcoming Janet here. And I spoke about it. The copius previous toasts lubricated the idea, but the emotion behind it was truely heartfelt and genuine.

It had just occurred to me, the big lightbulb going off in my head, of the life changing enormity of the situation I was involved in. I was here in China, in a major historical pottery area, making pots with ancient Chinese clay, using techniques from 4000BC. I was playing my small part of the continuum of ceramic history of The Middle Kingdom. That is a huge concept for a little NZ boy to take in. Don't know where the six degrees of seperation fit in or how much luck had to do with me being here. But I was actually here and actually doing it.

Pretty special time here.

This is the first layout of my installation. The grey pieces are the brick clays, with an 1170 degrees C black glaze used as an oxide wash, which stains the clay a kind of burgundy colour.
The agate ware is grey clay and porcelain clay glazed with lead-based Tang Green glaze.
I wanted to reference the brick and tile factory as well as the historical museum collections we have seen. I am chuffed really.


The factory workers seem to respond to it all too with great interest. Much picking up and muttering about techniques and they give thumbs up to me which is a relief because we have really invaded their space and work time and they only get paid for what they make rather than the time spent here.
We are going to have a morning tea with lots of sweet cakes etc for them.

Jxx

Buried-army-land

Must be really getting old when I start beginning reminiscences with "I remember when..."

But I do remember vividly the first time I saw the Terracotta Buried Army in 1986. The sheer scale was totally unexpected.

The second time in 1996 was impressive because there were two new pits with even more impressive architecture and the new 360 degree cinema experience, telling the story of the discovery and history and making methods of the warriors.

This time however on our overnight class trip to Xi'an, I found it was a great disappointment because it has become a theme park.

As you leave you are forced to run the gauntlet down a newly constructed street of shops all selling the same reproduction rubbish no-one wants. As so often happens here you flee the barrage of shop assistants rather than stop to look. If only they would realise they would get more sales from Westerners if they got out of your face. I guess the hard sell hassle works every so often, so it pays off.

The most tragic this time was the 360 degree cinema. It obviously hasn't been maintained in eleven years. The film is so scratched and faded into pinks and greens, some projectors are out of focus while others have very varying light levels. Also they never shut off a session so the doors are being continually opened and closed or worse held permanently open by tour guides. They should learn professionalism and showmanship from other theme parks. A sad wasted opportunity, but no-one seemed to care. It's what you can get away with I guess. But now with DVD and projection state of the art I reckon it is time to get out those original negatives and revisit a great idea in a more acceptable form.

On the plus side the grounds are well maintained and the traffic flow worked so you never felt you were swimming in people. The walk uphill from the parking lot through a green parklike area was pleasant but too long at 20 mins in the heat (37 degrees). You could have taken large golf cart type transport, but his kind of defeated the purpose.

However the warriors remain untarnished as an experience. They have sat out much and continue to do so unphased. Although I reckon there were more uncovered the first time I was here, they are still an unbelievable piece of conceptual art. China is a big country and the visions are big pictures of big ideas like the Great Wall, The Chendu Irrigation Project, Tiananmen Square. So you can imagine the Emperor one day saying he would build a monument of thousands of lifesize reproductions of his soldiers and conceal them under ground for no-one to see. And the people did it.

Still one of the wonders of the world that any degree of gross commercialisation can't detract from.

Jxx

The Last Arch

Our museum is almost complete, well the last arch is being constructed.

Also the outside skin is covering over the whole structure.

The inside form is quite awe-inspiring.

The scale inside is deceptive and the feeling is epic and timeless. Such a beautiful series of complex curves.

A person is about as high as the small rectangular brick insert to the bottom right

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, firings are happening.

We are all exhausted, but feeling great and looking forward to a night stay in Xi'an Sunday/Monday to see the tombs and the buried warriors (yet again) and a night antique market.

Genuine Antique in China really means made a long time ago, like yesterday,

Jxx

Sino-irony

In China, not,
Jxx

Like a thief in the night

No posts for over a week alas. Have had trouble connecting only to that site. I think it might have been some sort of local blacklisting of blogspot.com, but it all seems to have started again OK.

Good news and bad news.

Some of the Tang Lead green bottles shown in an earlier post have been admired so much by the workers, they have been souvenired while we were sleeping. A great compliment I guess from a ceramic factory, but I hope more don't disappear otherwise my display will be definitely minimal. We have also all had tools taken, also for souvenirs I guess, but yesterday Chris Staley had his watch taken from his workspace. The place is teeming with visitors wanting to have a go on a wheel, so it is like a trade show at times. Anyway the appropriate people were told. There had been a big group of highschool teenagers there in the morning. Then by magic at happy hour it was "found" in the recreation area.

I don't think it is dishonesty so much as curiosity. I had a pair of scissors walk as well.

Latest firing is ontrack, because using a high temp black glaze as one would use an oxide wash, has paid off and the insipid grey clay now looks animated.

Had our first day off last Thursday and went on a class trip to Chen Lu, a traditional mountain pottery area. First stop was a ceramic museum.

The Australasians

Chen Lu was medieval and picturesquely quaint in a third world industrial revolution kind of way.

Very much a working pottery town with heaps of coal and most buildings made of brick and retaining walls made from old saggars. The coal smoke haze was all pervading, as it is in most places we have been. Occasionally you can see stars at night

It rained all day for the first time since we arrived and the coolness was welcome. You quickly forget the smell of rain on dirt.

There was a feeding frenzy of potters in the seconds yard of a Sung and Ming repro factory. Small children would have been trampled to death.

Back at the tile factory, the wood kiln firing started last night at 10pm complete with cold beer and the ubiquitous string of double-happys for good luck.

Jxx

Three Steps Leaping Forward

I just love being here in China in Fuping, the people are great. Feels like a second home. Really happy times. Lots of Only in China Moments that Rosemarie and I first discovered in 1986. You have to laugh and there is plenty of that. Chinese plumbing rules you daily life. Water availablity is so random, especially hot. You beging to assimilate how life is for the majority of Chinese, who live in this largely rural country. No bank will change $US in Fuping. They are all Agricultural and Industrial banks, not Bank of China. Won't accept any of our cards at their ATMs. Mr Xu, the owner of the complex, has a drinking buddy who is the head of Bank of China, so he will exchange cash. Only in China.

All starting to come together now workwise. The factory folk seem to like us and come watch us working. (Wonder what the factory will start making when we have left?) They think NZers are so polite. Guess we are more suited to solving our own problems by ourselves and certainly doing every part of the process without an assistant's help. Interesting to see other ways of working. The Black (read Manganese) clay fires a dark pinky grey, which is fine. I was just so relieved to get anything out whole after my three disastrous test firings.

Basically with the firings it has been established that in the factory they bisque fire to 1170 oC and then glaze to 950 oC for the low-fire lead Tang glazes. Clay is still a little porous, so glazing is easy. Have done tests with manganese dioxide and a 1170 oC black they raw fire after elaborate sgraffitto (no masks or extractors, just puffing the dry glaze away with a rubber slip trailer bulb.) Dickensian.

I used the tests like trad oxide washes. I plan to see if they will enhance/enliven the grey brick clay, which looks a bit dull and dead. However I also like the idea of being in a brick factory and only using the clay exactly the same as the factory: Unadorned as a brick and not mucked around with and cosmeticly surgeryised, like a potter would after the fact? Dilemma.

Am building up a body of work based on my interpretations of classical Chinese forms within my own language and methods of working which was my original intention. Need to keep my focus.

Agate, piercings, curved bottle forms etc were all there in antuity in the Shanghai Museum. The pieces also start to reference the heavy bronze items as well. Not intentionally I believe, but I like what is happening.

Lots of great Australians and a special American, Elaine, who is just like us. Full to bursting dining room. Happy hour out by the vineyard has extended to three round tables pushed together. Drinking so much Chinese beer, because it is cold (mostly it is) and it is a bug free liquid. Blokey huh?

Never thought I would say it, but you can very quickly get over a fascination with Chinese food. Three meals a day of basically the same thing and nothing washed in water. Zilch fresh fruit buy still a scurvy free zone. Would really like a tea with real milk and a fresh lettuce salad out of the garden. A few have been really sick and glad of a clean bathroom a few steps away. Touch wood and fingers crossed.

Weather really starting to heat up. Was 37 oC the other day. Went for a walk after dinner last night and it was mild and magical. The complex is lit at night with lots of green and yellow lights on the trees and buildings. It looks like an exotic resort by night. You don't see the persistent dust which permeates everything, including us. The dust is always from the wind bourne loess, but mainly from the factory who have never heard of OSH. No protection anywhere. No guards around belts and pulleys or safety mechanisms on any of the tile rams etc. Certainly no extractor fans or vacuum cleaners. You trudge around in the dust and the lead like the workers. Evidently the expected life span is 40. Figures. The best shower of the day is the 5pm one after work, to decontaminise, lucky and fortunate us. Not so for the workers, where they live. But the oddest thing is that they work all day in good clothes and never seem to get dirty. Black is especially popular to wear to make bricks and tiles. There is a pride and a dignity there. They don't seem to wear jeans? Just tailored trousers for everyone. Dresses scarce.

In comparison we are slobs covered in clay in casual work clothes : shorts, jeans, track pants and jandals.

Jxx

Falling from heights

Riding high on what I have been doing and then bought down to earth with a crunch as the bisque pieces came out of the kiln, warped as hell.

Tiles can be stacked very differently to ceramics.

Big Lesson.

Glazed some more test pots to be fired with the low temp lead black.

Low fire lead kiln had had a disaster with factory ware and was being cleaned out.

Then followed my disaster as they fired the kiln 100 degrees to hot for the glaze they gave me.

We seem to have had a lot of trouble sorting out the rules of firing. Everyday they seem different. The workers are great but they have no vested interest in what we are doing.

Now we are beginning to fire in seperate kilns not involved in the brick and tile production line. This is more hopeful.

This one loaded this morning is in the glaze lab.

Fingers crossed,

Jxx

We are in a ceramic factory after all

Started using an interesting grey brick clay called Black Clay because of the wet state colour.

Got some plates jiggered by a young factory guy and have been turning them. Very interesting, the sand and grog tear and leave a texture. I plan to once fire them to 1190 centigrade. Using ridges and holes to create the textures.

Also historic moment, me returning to colour. Glazing with the Tang Green (Lethally toxic raw lead based)

And the fired pieces

Off for a banquet lunch to farewell the Americans,

Jxx

Turning point

This amazing man threw me some large bowls on a constant speed wheel and then I have started turning them with ridges

Starting to let go my own imposed restrictions and embracing what the factory has to offer. The clay is brown and heavily grogged, so the grooves are rough. I hope to glaze these with the Tang Lead Green. Beautifully ancient, lethally toxic, but not exactly a bowl for marinading fish,

Jxx