PajMon Information Blog

Posts Tagged ‘jingdezhen’

Easily the Porcelain Capital of the World, Jingdezhen, China is a tiny town that has been producing some of the finest Chinese porcelain works ever seen. The items made here are so revered, in fact, a large number of them were made exclusively for the emperors and royal family members throughout China’s history.

This lesser-known history of making imperial porcelain finally set the town up to produce some of the most refined porcelain we celebrate to this day. And it is surely a history every fan of Jingdezhen porcelain should know.

The first royal kiln in Jingdezhen was in fact founded by a Mongol. The Mongol leader Kublai Khan ordered the first kiln in 1278. He found the porcelain made there had a while color unlike that found in any other kind of porcelain. It was white as snow.

After its founding, dynasty after dynasty continued to operate royals kilns in Jingdezhen. A huge number of porcelain was ordered from the small town, and at times they had trouble keeping up production.

The workload was so great, many emperors sent special envoys just to oversee the porcelain production. These envoys were trusted to send only the best pieces of porcelain to the capital.

The officials the emperor sent were also responsible for ensuring that no one else even touched the porcelain meant for the royal family. And no one else was to receive the products of the royal kilns. The only way to do this was to break all of the porcelain that would not be sent to the capital into tiny pieces. The pieces were then buried in a restricted area. Also, any potter caught revealing the secrets of the imperial kilns would be punished severely.

Making such great porcelain was never an easy task. Some emperors sent troops halfway across the world to find colors and other designs that became essential parts of royal Chinese porcelain.

As the dynasties came and went, one constant remained: the imperial porcelain kilns in Jingdezhen. The last of these kilns operated right up to the collapse of the last dynasty in 1911.