China
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| Shanghai on a good night | ||||||
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| My attempt at making Yixing teapot didn't lead very far | ||||||
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| The zen like tranquility at Sanbao | ||||||
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| The world's first MSG firing - orchestrated by Peter Lange | ||||||
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| The 'we have brown down' firing at Zibo | ||||||
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| Thanks to Creative NZ for their generous grant to make this whole trip possible |
I went to China recently to see for myself what all the fuss was about and because a pottery friend I had met in Japan invited me to a ceramic forum there. I love to travel and had never been to China before, I was going with colleague and friend Peter Lange and Creative NZ had generously decided to support my travel grant so there was every incentive to spend a month exploring a slice of Chinese ceramics.
We departed on October 11th at midnight, a party made up of Peter Lange (chief translator and knowledgeable about all things Sino related), Trien Steverlynck (owner of a very useful Chinese telephone and keen explorer) and myself. First port of call was Shanghai, a city whose’ architects try and out do each other with their impressive, if slightly surreal creations. It was lucky that one of Peter’s contacts could meet us off the plane and navigate us to our hotel and along the way we picked up another potter from Australia, Vipoo Srivilasa (who it turns out we had met in Gulgong a few years earlier). A day of banquets, galleries, wine, shopping and partying followed, we ended up in a bizarre downtown New York inspired warehouse bar and a party laid on for our benefit.
Next day and we were off to Yixing, home of the funky brown teapots. Again another contact of Peters’ allowed us into the workshops to see some of the processes employed in making these exquisite pots. All that’s needed is a small table, a spinner, handful of tools and that amazing clay and before you know it a whole city has grown up making thousands of teapots every week to be sold in a thousand shops in Yixing.
Back in Shanghai we finally get to see the bund light up at night (you can almost hear the extra power stations being fired up just for all those extra lights) and sip cocktails in the 87th floor of the Hyatt whilst being entertained by a magician’s card tricks.
Then it’s a short flight to Jingdezhen, the home of imperial porcelain. We are again met at the airport and whisked through city streets to the outskirts and a place called Sanbao. Run by charismatic potter Jackson Lee and sister Wendy, Sanbao is a haven from the pollution and rush that characterises much of China. It is set up a beautiful wooded valley with a stream that runs though the complex. All the buildings are modest in scale, built of traditional materials and styles and even after staying there 10 days we still weren’t sure we’d found every room in the place.
Sanbao hosts a range of guests throughout the year as a residential workshop. The payment covers your room (I was sharing with Peter) food (absolutely the best food in Jingdezhen was served in the restaurant we ate at every day) and studio. It took a little time to settle in and explore but soon we were all busy in the studio becoming frustrated with this porcelain clay that we’d travelled so far to use. It made all our New Zealand clays seem so perfect in comparison, the Chinese porcelain cracked as soon as you looked at it, was floppy when wet, then intransigent when hard, flaked when turned and handles would misbehave overnight. The stoneware clay was a much easier proposition.
During our stay we were all whisked off to downtown Jingdezhen curtesy of the local government as honoured guests for the International Ceramics Fair held every year to promote the art of Chinese porcelain to the world. This bunfight involved a fair amount of incomprehension on the part of the honoured guests, but excellent hospitality and firework displays that rattled your teeth. The huge exhibition hall full of blue and white decorated porcelain and bone china ad nauseam had me wanting to import the famed running of the bulls in Pamplona to cull some of the excess.
Back in the tranquillity of Sanbao Peter came up with the slightly suspect idea of building a small gas fired brick salt kiln but use MSG (mono sodium glutamate, a flavour enhancer used extensively in Chinese cooking) instead of salt – all this on the hope that what’s printed on the label in China has some bearing on its contents. We cobbled this haphazard construction together in a couple of hours, to the amazement of the other potters, and loaded it with an odd collection of pots. Then we sourced the gas in huge tanks – unfortunately these big tanks only let out LPG as a liquid not the gas, which slowed us down until eventually finding the right tank. We had cones for 1280 degrees but after 8 hours were convinced that they were faulty and decided to start biffing in 2.4kg of MSG (which looks like a small rice grain) in a world first attempt at using a new material to salt a kiln. The vapour wasn’t much, just an occasional white vapour (that didn’t give you an instant MSG migraine) and the draw tiles showed a great deal of promise. The next day and we were into that kiln; the top shelf was OK, lightly salted and some nice pieces, further down the lack of temperature did mean dryer surfaces and unmelted glazes.
Then our time was over at Sanbao, so Peter and I flew to Beijing and then caught a quick train to Zibo and the start of the International Ceramic Art Forum. Which was held in the Li Ziyuan Art Center on the outskirts of a city well known for its petro-chemical industries. We were in a concrete jungle and at times the air was turbid enough to suck with a straw. The 20 or so other International guest were a varied lot that over the next 3 weeks we would get to know quite well. They hailed from Peru, Argentina, Chile, India, Greece, Turkey, Australia, Russia, America, Korea and China.
The point to this forum was for us to make work and exchange ideas through our work practice. We were confronted with 3 different clays and no idea how they would perform. But that didn’t hold us back and we got stuck into making stuff we knew using a range of equipment scattered through a warmly heated shed. It was soon obvious that only one clay behaved well, all the others were of suspect colour and even worse shrinkage, rending cracks in the most unlikely places. The only interruptions were the delicious meals served in the hotel next door and occasional Baijiu sessions. This evil liquor and the boorish manner of drinking it were a slight on otherwise an amazing time.
After 4 days of making in the studio we were into firing mode, so pots were bisqued and then loaded into a well-designed 60-cuft downdraft wood kiln. A roster was drawn up and after 41 hours of careful stoking we had reached top temperature of 1260, which was the recommended top temperature that the clays could handle.
We were taken on a field trip whilst the kiln cooled and got to see a bit of the countryside and the local ceramic museum. In that museum was the reason that Zibo has any kind of ceramic reputation; it transpires that potters here are extremely good and chipping glaze off pots. They utilise the tiniest of diamond chisels and patiently chip away a design that is then inked or stained with colour. It can look just like a brush stroke, or even a 3D photograph, all etched onto white porcelain or celadon ware.
The firing was unloaded the next day at 7pm and the tide of brown pots flooding out of the kiln (which was still over 150 degrees and the unloaders required fans to keep them cool) was unnerving. The glazes seemed to make the pots worse in some cases, and the chocolate colour that permeated every object whether a pot or a sculpture caused the eye to leap onto any point of difference. I had managed to scrounge a little white slip from a smashed pot and that had helped out some of my pieces, but Peter’s work was a symphony of brown clay accented by a brown glaze. At least the exhibition that the best of the work was destined for in Qingdao would have a colour theme if nothing else.
At this point another feature of the event took place – the presentation of the papers. Every participant had submitted an article and these had been published into a book, now we were to summarise these and add more images. This involved a lot of translation and the stoic fortitude of the audience to sit through 12 slide shows a day in 2 languages without a single snore was remarkable.
Peter had been trying to organise a few bricks and some glue for a brick sculpture – no mean feat when working through a translator and miraculously on the day before we were to leave they turned up. So Peter and I set about gluing a brick zipper to the wall of the garage. It certainly drew the favourable attention of Li Ziyuan and was the first piece in his new sculpture garden.
The selected work was packed, we packed and after a 6-hour bus trip ended up in Qingdao as honoured guests of the Qingdao Technical College. Our hotel was close to the Art Gallery in the old German quarter and we got to explore this seaside city at out leisure. Our commitments were mainly to setting up and then the opening of the exhibition, leaving lots of time for foot massage and shopping for brushes.
These events are curious beasts; the friendships and connections made are the most important outcome. Influences on your own work, or possible new directions are to be applauded if they happen. The hospitality of our hosts was exemplary with a translator on hand to sort out all our incomprehension at what was happening and when. The Zibo event together with a previous 2008 precursor has spawned an international association called International Ceramic Artists Association. What happens now is up to the enthusiasm and relevance of this group of potters.
