Chinese ceramics are one of the most significant forms of Chinese art and ceramics globally. They range from construction materials such as bricks and tiles, to hand-built pottery vessels fired in bonfires or kilns, to the sophisticated Chinese porcelain wares made for the imperial court and for export.
The oldest known pottery in the world was made during the Paleolithic at Xianrendong Cave, Jiangxi Province, China. Chinese ceramics show a continuous development since pre-dynastic times. Porcelain was a Chinese invention and is so identified with China that it is still called "china" in everyday English usage.
Most later Chinese ceramics, even of the finest quality, were made on an industrial scale, thus few names of individual potters were recorded. Many of the most important kiln workshops were owned by or reserved for the emperor, and large quantities of Chinese export porcelain were exported as diplomatic gifts or for trade from an early date, initially to East Asia and the Islamic world, and then from around the 16th century to Europe. Chinese ceramics have had an enormous influence on other ceramic traditions in these areas.
Increasingly over their long history, Chinese ceramics can be classified between those made for the imperial court to use or distribute, those made for a discriminating Chinese market, and those for popular Chinese markets or for export. Some types of wares were also made only or mainly for special uses such as burial in tombs, or for use on altars.
Terminology and categories The earliest Chinese pottery was earthenware, which continued in production for utilitarian uses throughout Chinese history, but was increasingly less used for fine wares. Stoneware, fired at higher temperatures, and naturally impervious to water, was developed very early and continued to be used for fine pottery in many areas at most periods; the tea bowls in Jian ware and Jizhou ware made during the Song dynasty are examples.
Porcelain, on a Western definition, is "a collective term comprising all ceramic ware that is white and translucent, no matter what ingredients are used to make it or to what use it is put".An Introduction To The Technology Of Pottery. 2nd edition. Paul Rado. Pergamon Press, Institute of Ceramics. 1988. The Chinese tradition recognizes two primary categories of ceramics: high-fired ( ) and low-fired ( ),Pierson, Stacey, (1996). Earth, Fire and Water: Chinese Ceramic Technology. Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, University of London. . so doing without the intermediate category of stoneware, which in Chinese tradition is mostly grouped with (and translated as) porcelain. Terms such as "" or "near-porcelain" may be used for stonewares with porcelain-like characteristics.Valenstein, 22, 59–60, 72 The Erya defined porcelain () as "fine, compact pottery ()".Bushell, S. W. (1977) Chinese Pottery and Porcelain. Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur. .
Chinese pottery can also be classified as being either northern or southern. China comprises two separate and geologically different land masses, brought together by continental drift and forming a junction that lies between the Yellow and Yangtze rivers, sometimes known as the Nanshan-Qinling divide. The contrasting geology of the north and south led to differences in the raw materials available for making ceramics; in particular the north lacks petunse or "porcelain stone", needed for porcelain on the strict definition. Ware-types can be from very widespread kiln-sites in either north or south China, but the two can nearly always be distinguished, and influences across this divide may affect shape and decoration, but will be based on very different clay bodies, with fundamental effects. The kiln types were also different, and in the north the fuel was usually coal, as opposed to wood in the south, which often affects the wares. Southern materials have high silica, low alumina and high potassium oxide, the reverse of northern materials in each case. The northern materials are often very suitable for stoneware, while in the south there are also areas highly suitable for porcelain.Korean art from the Gompertz and other collections in the Fitzwilliam Museum, ed. Yong-i Yun, Regina Krahl (chapter by Nigel Wood), p. 13
Materials Chinese porcelain is mainly made by a combination of the following materials: Kaolin – essential ingredient composed largely of the clay mineral kaolinite. Porcelain stone – decomposed micaceous or feldspar rocks, historically also known as petunse. Feldspar QuartzKerr, Rose and Wood, Nigel (2004). Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 5, Part XII: Ceramic Technology. Cambridge University Press. .
Technical developments
In the context of Chinese ceramics, the term porcelain lacks a universally accepted definition (see above). This in turn has led to confusion about when the first Chinese porcelain was made. Claims have been made for the late Eastern Han dynasty (100–200 AD), the Three Kingdoms period (220–280 AD), the Six Dynasties period (220–589 AD), and the Tang dynasty (618–906 AD).
Kiln technology has always been a key factor in the development of Chinese pottery. The Chinese developed effective kilns capable of firing at around before 2000 BC. These were updraft kilns, often built below ground. Two main types of kilns were developed by about 200 AD and remained in use until modern times. These are the dragon kiln of hilly southern China, usually fuelled by wood, long and thin and running up a slope, and the horseshoe-shaped mantou kiln of the north Chinese plains, smaller and more compact. Both could reliably produce the temperatures of up to or more needed for porcelain. In the late Ming, the egg-shaped kiln (zhenyao) was developed at Jingdezhen, but mainly used there. This was something of a compromise between the other types, and offered locations in the firing chamber with a range of firing conditions.Rawson, 364, 369–370; Vainker, 222–223
History Important specific types of pottery, many coming from more than one period, are dealt with individually in sections lower down.
Neolithic
Pottery dating from 20,000 years ago was found at the Xianrendong Cave site in Jiangxi province,"Harvard, BU researchers find evidence of 20,000-year-old pottery" . Boston.com, reporting Science paper."Remnants of an Ancient Kitchen Are Found in China". The New York Times. making it among the earliest pottery yet found. Another reported find is from 17,000 to 18,000 years ago in the Yuchanyan Cave in southern China."Chinese pottery may be earliest discovered." Associated Press. 2009-06-01, reporting on paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
By the Middle and Late Neolithic (about 5000 to 1500 BCE) most of the larger archaeological cultures in China were farmers producing a variety of attractive and often large vessels, often boldly painted, or decorated by cutting or impressing. Decoration is abstract or of stylized animals – fish are a speciality at the river settlement of Banpo. The distinctive Majiayao pottery, with orange bodies and black paint, is characterised by fine paste textures, thin walls, and polished surfaces; the almost complete lack of defects in excavated pots suggests a high level of quality control during production. The Majiayao and other phases of the Yangshao culture are well-represented in Western museums,Vainker, 15–20 with Banshan pots as the most widely recognized type of Neolithic Chinese pottery in the West. Banshan urns are characterized by a short, narrow neck atop a wide-shouldered vessel tapering to an often very narrow base; there are usually two ring handles attached to the middle of the vessel, and the ornament is slip-painted in purplish black and plum-red pigments. The designs frequently comprise four large roundels, linked by strongly curved lines or loops.Distinct from Central China ceramic tradition developed in the modern eastern coastal provinces of Shandong, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang, with principal cultures like Dawenkou, Longshan, Majiabang, Songze, and Hemudu. The most significant technological aspect of ceramics in the region was the development of the fast wheel in the Dawenkou culture shortly after c. 3000 bce. East coast produced the most technologically advanced ceramics in Neolithic China and is best known for thin-walled, wheel-thrown, intricately shaped black pottery vessels that frequently had a burnished surface.
The early Dawenkou vessels are made of red clay less carefully prepared than the fine Yangshao versions, but their forms are clearly articulated. They include the ceramic prototype of later bronze ding. Trilobed ewer known as gui (see illustration), which was also ancestor to a bronze vessel, date from the mid- to late Dawenkou period. The stems and high feet of the raised Dawenkou vessels are often decorated with pierced openwork, a feature also of some black pottery of Longshan culture (see illustration). Smooth surface of black pottery is occasionally incised but never painted, giving it a metallic appearance. The white- or yellow-bodied wares that appeared towards the very end of the Dawenkou phase were further developed in the Longshan period, and many white wares either anticipate the bronze forms of the Shang era or have features such as rivets that suggest imitation of metalworking techniques, probably of contemporary copper wares, of which no examples have yet been discovered. All this heralded the transition from a lithic to a metallic culture and white wares are distant ancestors of much later white porcelain. Finds of vessels are mostly in burials; sometimes they hold the remains. One exceptional ritual site, Niuheliang in the far north, produced numerous human figurines, some about half life-size.Vainker, 20–21
Bronze Age
Early Bronze Age was characterized by a growing skill in the firing and decoration of earthenware and improvements in technology as the widespread use of cast bronze encouraged developments in the handling of clays and in kiln control. In addition, the use of the potter's wheel became common during the Shang and early Zhou period. All of this led to the development in the 13th century BCE, in the form of stoneware, of the first high-fired (cí 瓷) pottery. It was "an entirely new type of ceramic that was not known anywhere else in the world". Furnace-like kilns needed for stoneware could not suitably be placed in residential areas, which led to the beginning of the practice of setting up larger pottery-working areas close to the natural resources of clay, fuel, and water.
The technology for producing high-fired pottery did not develop uniformly over China. The potters of the south could fire ceramics up to 1200 °C, at which point the clay material fused, and first stoneware appeared in today Zhejiang/Jiangsu. At the same time, southern potters lacked skills in forming ceramic vessels of all kinds and in using various clays and they didn't use any true glaze. Northern China present a different chronology in the production of high-fired wares, probably due to establishment of strong political and economic center by the Shang dynasty. Many different types of earthenware were produced, although its clay were unsuited to firing to stoneware temperatures. A very fine white clay, with some kaolinite, was used to produce a white pottery. Low iron content of kaolinite means that pottery does not change color due to changes in the iron element and thus remains white. The firing temperature was usually around 1,000 °C, not high enough to realize full sintering and produce porcelain, but it was the first step in this direction. White pottery, already known in neolithic period, peaked in Shang era, but became rare during the reign of Western Zhou, perhaps due to the increased production of imprinted hard pottery and proto-porcelain.