Link only available on sub pages

In East Asia, the technique of porcelain production was known many centuries before it was discovered in Europe. In northern China, porcelain was made as early as the seventh century, and from around the tenth century in southern China. The material of true porcelain is characteristically dense, white and transparent. Even in those early years, Jingdezhen in the south of China was one key production site, and most of the Chinese porcelain on show here came from that city.

In contrast, Japan only began making porcelain much later. The formulas for mixing porcelain and its production techniques only reached Japan from Korea in the early seventeenth century. The town of Arita on Kyushu, the most southerly main island, became the centre of Japanese porcelain.

Kaolin – a whitish clay – is the main material needed to make porcelain. Both in China and Japan, producing porcelain required highly-specialised craft skills. The division of labour was evident in the entire process from specialists mining the necessary clays and minerals to artisans creating a raw paste from kaolin, feldspar and quartz, modellers responsible for the designs, and skilled porcelain painters applying the colours. The porcelain was fired at up to 1400 degrees Celsius in the traditional, large ‘dragon kilns’, built on the slope of a hill – a job that needed other experienced specialists. In this context, a wide variety of designs developed, together with diverse glazing techniques and decorative styles. In painting porcelain too, the magic word was specialisation. The high-quality pieces were worked on by a number of painters, each with their own expertise in single motifs, from birds to flowers.