The Yanhuang Art Gallery has been turned into a dazzling world of porcelain as more than 2,000 pieces are placed in almost every corner of the exhibition hall.

The show's pieces value 30 million yuan (US$3.6 million) in total.

A small number, of the most valuable, are displayed in glass cases. As for the rest, visitors are able to touch the exquisite ceramics freely, feel the surface, or even hold them up to examine their complicated patterns.

Jointly organized by the China Ceramics Industry Association and the Jingdezhen municipal government, the exhibition serves to celebrate the millennium anniversary of the ancient Chinese porcelain capital.

Jingdezhen in east China's Jiangxi Province has a history of 1,700 years of porcelain making, since the Song Dynasty (960-1279).

While the oldest exhibits date back to the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), most of the works are made in the past century.

Contemporary fashion

Of the show pieces, contemporary ceramic pieces best demonstrate the current fashion and pursuit of the local artists and artisans.

These present-day works depart far from the tradition in design and technique. They also show more variation in confecting raw materials, coloring and appearance.

The "Night Owl," by Professor Zhou Guozhen from the Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute, is one of them.

The work looks like a dark brown sculpture of an owl, with visible lines on its rough surface. Instead of using the traditional method to paint the body, Zhou rolled and kneaded the clay in such ways to achieve the effect.

Another highlight of the show is a huge ceramic bowl. Like a bamboo hat, the bowl, is 57 centimeters in height and 116.3 centimeters in diameter. Its body is decorated with water lilies, nine dragons and a phoenix, all auspicious symbols in traditional Chinese culture.

Xiong Guohai, the artist, succeeded in building up the ceramic base after countless failures. The most difficult part of the job was to make 16 pieces of lotus leaves on the rim, which are as thin as 3 millimeters.

"Sometimes the clay body would crack when it dried, or collapse because the bottom couldn't bear it," Xiong said.

Born into a family of porcelain makers in Jingdezhen, Xiong learned base building in 1985, under his father Xiong Yougen's instruction.

He spent more than three years on the huge bowl.

He claims he and his family members now keep the procedure to construct the bowls a secret. He kept the bowl at home to protect it against counterfeits until this show.

Xiong runs a ceramics shop in Jingdezhen with his older brother and nephews.

The bowl, his only creation in the last three years, is on auction in Beijing at the end of January.

"I don't care that I didn't make money during this period," Xiong says. "Large-scale productions of plates, scoops and other ceramic dish wares could have brought me wealth. But I prefer creating artistic ceramics and improving my skills. I've quite enjoyed it."

Local artists and artisans work for perfection artistically and technologically, giving little thought to the higher costs that a satisfying work may demand.

Their techniques and artistic tastes are unquestionable, says Huang Maojun with the local press the Porcelain Capital Evening News. People hear about the thinnest, largest or the most sophisticated procedures at Jingdezhen, together with mountains of ceramic shards.

Glory vs challenges

The earliest ceramic kiln in Jingdezhen found so far dates back to the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), when the city was still a little village.

In the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907), the village got its name as Changnan. It reached its prime during the Song Dynasty, especially when Emperor Zhenzong renamed Changnan by his reigning title "Jingde" in 1004.

From that time on, ceramics made in Jingdezhen were designated as royal tributes. The productions were under close supervision and defective ones were destroyed and carefully buried, ensuring others had no access to the tributes or made copies.

The finished ceramic works are one in a million. Such a historical tradition still has a tremendous impact on most porcelain makers in Jingdezhen nowadays.

For quite a long period the city has enjoyed its worldwide attention and its monopoly of China's ceramic industry.

Yet over the years Jingdezhen has gradually lost its advantages. Great challenges have always pressured the porcelain capital, especially from several porcelain producing regions around the country.

For instance, porcelain from Chaozhou of South China's Guangdong Province stood out by an annual output value of 15.6 billion yuan (US$1.95 billion) last year, according to the Guangzhou-based Nanfang Daily.

In contrast, Jingdezhen maintains an annual output value of more than 6 billion yuan (US$750 million), estimates Dong Bo, with the Beijing office of the Jingdezhen municipal government.

This April, Chaozhou was awarded the "porcelain capital of China" by the China National Light Industry Council and the China Ceramic Industry Association.

Experts with the association are impressed by Chaozhou's efforts in improving the management and carrying out of systematic and technological reforms within the local porcelain producing enterprises.

People in Jingdezhen feel hurt by this. Though furious, they are beginning to look for where the problems lie.

"Wandering in Jingdezhen's ancient streets, you find lots of fine vases more than 5 meters high, standing outside almost every porcelain shop, lonely in the wind and rain," Huang Maojun said.

"It is a sign of superlative craftsmanship."

Critics doubt whether porcelain makers in Jingdezhen should devote so much enthusiasm into creating artistic porcelain, which is very time-consuming.

These include flower vases, musical instruments and fish tanks, which are usually seen as decorations. But for common people, they are luxury items too costly to take home.

Historically Jingdezhen gained its worldwide fame by producing and selling household ceramics. This can be testified by multitudes of china dish wares bearing complicated Arabian style decorations that archaeologists have excavated from ancient merchant ships sunken en route to the Middle East.

Now most crafts people in Jingdezhen take little interests in making household ceramics, which hardly carry any technological or cultural value for them.

The city suffered great losses when 10 of its State-owned ceramics plants were closed down one after another in the 1990's, after failures in the fierce market competition. While Jingdezhen's counterparts in Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces make fortunes through large-scale, intensively mechanized manufacturing of household ceramics, such as dish wares and bathroom ware.

Despite worries of losing market share, quite a number of leading local artists and artisans say people should not judge Jingdezhen's success or failure by its market share.

Zhou Guozhen emphasized that new ideas are important in art and designs for porcelain. "The 21st century is the century for design. Jingdezhen should stick to its tradition and make what it excels, which is art porcelain, especially for decoration."

(China Daily December 15, 2004)