Ever since at least the ninth century, the Chinese province of Zhejiang has been known for its fine celadon porcelain, with its wonderful shimmering surfaces in qing, magnificent shades of green.
The golden age of Chinese celadon lasted from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries, when it found its way into the imperial collections and was exported worldwide. This craftsmanship then declined, almost completely died out by the end of the nineteenth century, and was not successfully revived until the 1950s. Changes to the market economy in the 1990s forced porcelain artisans to reorient their work and, since then, they have been able to successfully align themselves, similar to the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage system, as Living State Treasures and masters, due to their unparalleled celadon glazes.
This exhibition with its accompanying publication provides an exciting social anthropological insight into the cultural history, technology and sociality of celadon production in the porcelain metropolis of Longquan from the ninth century to the present day in the People’s Republic of China.
