Jingdezhen Ancient Kiln (景德镇古窑)

A man sitting on a plank at a large low wheel set into the floor, legs out and clay drying on his shins, a cone of clay turning on the wheel head and five freshly thrown bowls standing in a row on a board beside him, with three framed certificates on the whitewashed wall behind

Jiangxi · Where the Word China Comes From

Jingdezhen Ancient Kiln (景德镇古窑)

A working demonstration of how porcelain was made in the city that supplied it to the world for a thousand years. The steps are performed in order by recognised craftsmen, and the thing to watch for is how finely the work is divided.

Quick Facts

The Short Version

What it is	A park of reconstructed workshops and kilns where the pre-industrial porcelain process is carried out step by step
Where	Jingdezhen, northeastern Jiangxi, between the Poyang plain and the hills
Why the city matters	Porcelain has been made here for around a thousand years, supplied the imperial court, and was exported across Asia and Europe
The English word	Porcelain is called china in English because of where it came from
What you watch	Clay worked on a pole-turned wheel, bowls thrown off a cone, bodies trimmed, ware dried in the open, decoration painted, glaze dipped
The people	Wall certificates identify the craft as designated intangible heritage and the demonstrators as recognised holders of it
The city today	A modern ceramics industry, a large tourist retail trade, and an art scene of studio potters from all over the world
Time needed	Half a day for the park. Two days to see the city’s kiln sites and studios

Why Go

A Trade Divided Into Dozens of Jobs

1. Watch the division of labour, not the pots

The instinct in a pottery is to watch the wheel. Do that here and the point goes past. What made this city able to supply the world was not that its potters were better with their hands than potters elsewhere. It was that the work had been split into a very large number of separate jobs, each done by a different person, all day, for a lifetime.

The pictures below follow that division. One man sits at a low wheel and throws bowls off a cone of clay, one after another, and does nothing else. Another sits at a bench with a steel tool and trims the outside of bodies that somebody else threw. A third turns a large basin on a wheel driven by a wooden pole. Ware goes out into the yard to dry on trestles. Somebody paints, somebody else dips in glaze. Nobody in these photographs is making a pot from beginning to end.

The clearest piece of evidence for how far this went is the one image here that looks like a mistake. It shows a blacksmith at a forge with an assistant working the bellows, and it is a reconstruction of a shop that made one product: the steel knives potters used for trimming. A trade that supports a specialist supplier of a single tool used in a single step is a trade organised like an industry, several centuries before the word existed.

2. Europe spent a hundred years trying to work this out

Chinese porcelain reached Europe from the sixteenth century and was treated roughly the way one might treat a material from another planet: hard, white, translucent, ringing when struck, and impossible to reproduce. European potters could make earthenware and they could paint it white and blue in imitation, which is what Delft is, but they could not make the body. Courts spent money on the attempt for generations.

Part of how the puzzle was eventually solved was straightforward industrial intelligence. A French Jesuit stationed in this city in the early eighteenth century wrote long letters home describing exactly what he saw in the workshops: the two raw materials and where they were dug, how they were prepared, how the bodies were formed and fired, how the work was divided. Those letters circulated in Europe among people trying to solve the problem. The steps in the photographs on this page are the steps he was describing.

That is the reason this park is worth an afternoon even for a visitor with no interest in ceramics. The everyday English word for the material is the name of the country it came from, and the reason is a process that was carried out here, in sheds like these, by people doing one job each.

An older man in white seated on a plank, gripping a long wooden pole with one hand and steadying the rim of a large unfired basin with the other, with big white unfired bowls and jars standing on a bench beside him, in an open brick and timber shed with an interpretive panel on the wall behind — Large open forms are turned on a wheel driven by a pole rather than by a foot treadle. The vessel and the tool are both bigger than they look in a photograph.

A man at a bench in a timber-framed brick workshop bending close to a small unfired vessel and cutting its outside with a narrow steel tool, with finished white unfired vases standing beside him, a very large one at the edge of the frame, and other workers at benches behind — Trimming, which is the step foreign visitors never expect. The thrown body is left thick, dried to leather hardness, and then cut down to its final wall by somebody who does only this.

Rows of unfired white vases, bowls and dishes drying outdoors on long timber trestle tables, the vases still showing spiral throwing rings and standing on plaster discs, with a line of clay cylinders on the ground, a tile-roofed open shed behind and a whitewashed wall with three openwork ceramic lattice windows — The yard between the making and the firing. The spiral ridges on the vases are the marks of the wheel, and they will be trimmed or glazed away.

A woman in a striped knitted hat and a patterned jacket leaning over a glazed white vase held in her lap, drawing on it with a fine brush under a desk lamp, with palette dishes of pink and orange colour, jars of medium and a bundle of brushes on the bench, and shelves of white and blue-and-white ware behind — Decoration is its own trade again. The colours in the dishes are pink and orange and the design already on the vase is red, brown and grey, so this is not the blue-and-white the city is famous for; that is on the shelves behind her.

An older man seated beside a large stone vat of milky glaze, holding a long-handled tool with a bowl on the end of it over a wooden tub, with about a dozen freshly glazed white bowls standing upside down along a rail beside him and racks of ware in the shed behind — Glazing, done by dipping. The glaze goes on as a thin wet skin that dries matt and chalky, and it only becomes glass in the kiln.

A reconstruction with two life-size figures: a man in an apron holding a hammer over an anvil on a stump, a brick forge with glowing coals in its arched mouth, a second figure working a box bellows behind it, an interpretive panel on the wall and a rope barrier in front — A shop that made trimming knives for potters, and nothing else. This is the clearest evidence on the site of how far the division of labour went.

A red-fronted shop on a paved street corner with more than a hundred bright red vases of several shapes set out on the pavement, most decorated with gold and white flowers, one cobalt blue vase and a yellow pair among them, red lanterns overhead and the window packed with stacked white bowls and boxed sets — The city today. The demonstration park is upstream of this, and this is where most of the money in Jingdezhen porcelain now changes hands.

The catch. This is a demonstration park rather than a factory, so the pace is set by visitors and some of the stations are staffed only at certain hours. Explanation is almost entirely in Chinese. The real modern industry is in the city outside and is not part of the ticket, and the retail around the site is relentless. Anyone hoping to see a kiln actually firing should ask in advance, because the wood kilns are lit on a schedule rather than daily.

Orientation

The Park, Then the City

The park is a laid-out circuit of workshops, kilns and display halls, and it is walked in roughly the order of the process, which is the sensible way to do it. Demonstrations run at each station and the wood-fired kilns are lit on a schedule rather than continuously.

The city outside is the other half and is not ticketed. There is a museum on the imperial kiln site, a district of studios and workshops where potters from around the world now work, and streets of retail that run from the very cheap to the very serious. A visitor who only does the park has seen the method and none of the living trade.

Practical

Things Worth Knowing

Walk it in process order

The park is arranged that way and it turns a set of demonstrations into an argument.

Ask when the kiln is being fired

The wood kilns are lit on a schedule. If the timing works it is the best thing on the site.

Leave time for the studio district

The contemporary workshops in the city are where the craft is alive rather than demonstrated.

Buy at the end, not the start

Prices and quality vary enormously between the park shops, the street trade and the studios.

Timing

When to Go

Season	The case for	The catch
March to May	Mild and green, and the surrounding country is at its best	Damp. Jiangxi spring is wet and the drying yards work slowly
September and October	Dry, comfortable, and the easiest time to walk the city as well as the park	The first week of October is a national holiday
June to August	Everything open and the kilns on their fullest schedule	Hot and humid, and the workshops are uncomfortable
November to February	Quiet and cheap, with the workshops at their least crowded	Cold and grey, and some outdoor stations are thinly staffed

Context

Two Materials and a Thousand Years

Porcelain needs two things that rarely occur together: a white clay that stays white when fired, and a rock that melts at kiln temperature and turns the body glassy and translucent. This corner of Jiangxi has both within carting distance, along with hills of pine for fuel and a river to move heavy fragile cargo. That combination, rather than any secret, is why the industry settled here and stayed.

From the Song onward the city grew into something closer to an industrial district than a craft town, with workshops specialised by product and by step, an imperial operation producing for the court, and a vast export trade. Porcelain went out along the coast to Southeast Asia, India and the Middle East for centuries before Europe saw any, and the shapes and patterns were adjusted to whatever the buyer wanted, including European coats of arms ordered by post.

The trade eventually turned. European factories learned to make the body, industrial production undercut the hand process, and the twentieth century was hard on the city. What exists now is three layers at once: a modern ceramics industry, this park keeping the old method visible, and a studio scene that has drawn potters from around the world to work in the one place where every material, tool and skill is still available within a few streets.

Nearby

Other Stops on the Same Trip

Spot · about 150 km east

Mount Sanqing (三清山)

Granite pinnacles and cliff walkways, on the way toward Zhejiang.

Two days.

Spot · about 180 km west

Mount Lu (庐山)

The mountain with a town on top of it, above the Yangtze.

Two days.

Spot · about 180 km southwest

Mount Longhu (龙虎山)

Red sandstone hills and the seat of a Daoist lineage.

Two days.

Where to Base

Jingdezhen (景德镇)

Jingdezhen is a mid-sized city that has been doing one thing for a very long time, and it shows: kiln sites in the middle of town, a district of studios and galleries, markets for raw materials and tools, and more shops selling ceramics than any city needs. It has high-speed rail and an airport.

Two nights is the right length. One day for the park and the imperial kiln museum, one for the studio district and the weekend market, which is where the current generation of potters sells directly.

Experiences

What You Can Actually Do Here

On site · half day

The process in order

The workshops walked in the sequence of the work, from the clay to the glaze, with the kiln if the schedule allows.

Park ticket.

On site · half day

The imperial kiln site

The excavated official kilns in the city centre and the museum attached to them.

Separate ticket.

Guided · 4 days

Porcelain, then and now

The park, the imperial site and the contemporary studio district, with introductions to potters working now.

We arrange this. See experiences.

Go and watch the hands, but count the people. The thing that made this city supply the world was that a pot passed through a dozen pairs of them, each doing one job, and the proof of how far that went is a reconstructed shop on the site that existed to make one kind of knife. Then go into the city, because the park shows the method and the studios show the trade still working.

Jiangxi, for the Material

Most itineraries treat this city as a souvenir stop, which gets the method and misses the living trade. Tell us your dates and our local team will time the park against the kiln schedule, get you into working studios, and put the imperial kiln site in between.

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