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WonderPorcelain industry fact

Jingdezhen, in China's Jiangxi province, has been one of the world's great porcelain centres for centuries. Song Yingxing's 1637 encyclopaedia says a single piece passed through “seventy-two hands” before it was finished, and that even this left out the finer details.

Tiangong Kaiwu, 1637

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The story behind the card

Kaolin, the white clay that porcelain needs, is named after Gaoling, a village near Jingdezhen where it was dug for the city's kilns. The town took its present name in 1004 from the Jingde reign of a Song emperor, and from 1369 the Ming court ran imperial kilns there. Song Yingxing's Tiangong Kaiwu, often translated as The Exploitation of the Works of Nature, described the farming and crafts of his day. His “seventy-two hands” reflects how finely the work was divided among specialists who prepared the clay, shaped, painted, glazed and fired each piece. Blue-and-white ware from Jingdezhen was exported across Asia and to Europe, and inspired Iznik tiles and Delft pottery. Topkapı Palace in Istanbul holds more than ten thousand pieces of Chinese porcelain, many of them from Jingdezhen.

Türkçe oku
Çin'in Jiangxi eyaletindeki Jingdezhen, yüzyıllardır dünyanın önde gelen porselen merkezlerinden biridir. Song Yingxing 1637'de yazdığı ansiklopedide, tek bir parçanın bitene kadar “yetmiş iki elden” geçtiğini, bu sayının bile ince işlerin hepsini kapsamadığını söyler.
Tiangong Kaiwu, 1637

Porselenin olmazsa olmazı olan beyaz kil kaolin, adını Jingdezhen yakınlarındaki Gaoling köyünden alır; kentin fırınları için kil burada çıkarılırdı. Kent bugünkü adını 1004'te bir Song imparatorunun Jingde dönemi adından aldı; 1369'dan itibaren de Ming sarayı burada imparatorluk fırınları işletti. Song Yingxing'in Tiangong Kaiwu adlı eseri, döneminin tarım ve zanaat yöntemlerini anlatır. Yazarın sözünü ettiği “yetmiş iki el”, işin ne kadar ince bölündüğünü gösterir: kili hazırlayan, biçim veren, desen çizen, sırlayan ve fırınlayan ayrı ayrı ustalardı. Jingdezhen'in mavi-beyaz porseleni Asya'nın dört bir yanına ve Avrupa'ya satıldı; İznik çinilerine ve Delft seramiklerine ilham verdi. İstanbul'daki Topkapı Sarayı, çoğu Jingdezhen yapımı olan on binden fazla Çin porseleni barındırır.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Jingdezhen porcelain
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