True replicas: its all in the trimming...

Jingdezhen is famous for it's super thin refined porcelain. This is why it was so much wanted and desired all around the world. Why the emperial kilns where in Jingdezhen for the exclusive production for the bowls, dishes and objects for the emperor in the forbidden city. I alway asumed that this insane thinness was achieved by throwing. But its not. its all in the trimming! Trimming is the process after the throwing, when the pots are placed on a spinning wheel and trimmed with special tools till they are so thin that the are almost translucent and as smouth as a shell...This same process is now being used to make my true replicas.

True replicas: Throwing replicas

In Jingdezhen the porcelain clay is shaped by throwing on a wheel. That’s how they did it ages ago and how they still do it, nothing changed. The well kneaded clay is thrown hard onto the centre of the bat. Like a ballet the craftsman in now forming the clay into a bowl. Ones the wheel was made spinning by turning a long stick, now electric wheels are used. This craftsman I visited made me one Ming bowl in one cigarette, including the calculations compensating for the shrinkage of the clay after firering. Looking at the pictures of the original and with thousands of similar bowls in 'the memory of his hands' he shaped my replicas in know time. History and heritage are so alive here it sometimes almost make me cry...and here they don't care, its just what they do...

 

Now at the Beijing Design Week: work in progress of True Replicas