Second, the porcelain produced included objects both for daily use and purely aesthetic purposes, such as the eggshell porcelain of the Ming Dynasty. This porcelain is as thin as an eggshell, the actual body of the work barely visible beneath its transparent glaze. In the process of being fashioned, the body is scraped until it becomes eggshell thin, to the extent that it is possible, when held to the light, to discern the veins of a finger through its thin wall.

Third, the shapes and patterns for official porcelain wares were supplied by the imperial court, sometimes even the emperor himself. Artisans were merely required to follow these designs, rather than employ their own creativity. Consequently, although official porcelain wares were of an extraordinary workmanship, they lacked spontaneous artistic expression.

In 1709, Emperor Yongzheng of the Qing Dynasty ordered the replication of a five-colored porcelain jar from the Ming Dynasty with the instructions, "The original floral pattern is poor and should be made finer." In 1713, he wrote in the margin of a report from the porcelain making administration, "The chrysanthemum petals are too crude. They should appear to have a thousand layers." His son, Emperor Qianlong, showed an even more personal interest in porcelain making. During his lifetime, he wrote about 300 poems devoted to porcelain, many of which were inscribed on porcelain articles as decoration. He also designed his own porcelain brush pot.

The emperor generally had no time for affairs as trivial as porcelain making. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, it would be supervised by a special administration whose officials were well versed in the skill and had excellent artistic taste. They therefore played a significant role in the development of China's porcelain industry.

Though official kilns had their limitations, their endowed advantages enabled them to create numerous masterpieces, and their products represented the highest degree of excellence in the porcelain of that time. Unfortunately, many such works have disappeared. Those extant are very rare. Porcelain products from the Ru Kiln, for example, number fewer than 100.

Private Kilns: Undistinguished

Porcelain articles from official kilns had the monopoly on prestige and value over the dynasties, while those produced from private kilns were purely for utilitarian purposes. Even if they were broken, they would be mended until they eventually fell apart.

Today, when people discover and scrutinize those "pieces" and find artistic styles that are quite different from those of official kilns, they find it almost impossible to find any written record or comment on such porcelain. For instance, today the iron rust porcelain from the Cizhou Kiln of the Song Dynasty is as valuable as that from official kilns, but nothing has been discovered to have been written about it in Song Dynasty literature.

When kilns were first divided into the categories of official and private, their functions were less discrete. In the early Ming Dynasty, an official kiln might supplement its output by providing a private kiln with its designs and contracting work out to them, which suggests that the work produced by private kilns was of a similar quality to that of official ones. Sometimes, the two delineated kilns vied for the market, and in the mid-Ming Dynasty, in order to protect the image of imperial products in competition with the more experienced private kilns, the government began to intervene, and private kilns were gradually relegated to an inferior status.

In 1447, the government decreed, "Private production of yellow, purple, red, green, blue and white-blue porcelain in Raozhou Prefecture of Jiangxi shall be banned... Violators will be sliced to death and their family properties confiscated, and male family members exiled to the frontier." The Qing Dynasty specified that the use of dragon and phoenix patterns was exclusively for the imperial family and that any violation would carry the ultimate penalty.

In such a harsh social environment, private kilns had to find their own way of keeping in business. A few financially and technically strong kilns produced wares suitable for the higher social classes by simulating official products or duplicating the works of noted kilns of previous dynasties, but the majority produced goods for the daily use of the masses. Their products were durable with thick bodies and simple designs. However, the real value of private kiln porcelain lay in its painting, which had a decisive influence on traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy.

Official and Private Porcelain Kilns of Ancient China

Pioneers of Expressionism and Abstractionism

Traditional Chinese painting has experienced a course of development from a strictly meticulous style to one of spontaneous expression, and from concrete to abstract imagery. The emphasis in early Chinese paintings was on verisimilitude of image and detailed depiction. Artists serving the Song court paid attention even to the number of feathers they drew on a bird. Emperor Huizong not only advocated fine brushwork, but was also himself a meticulous-style painter. For a long time, this style dominated traditional Chinese paintings.

The appearance of spontaneous expression is generally associated with Wen Tong and Su Shi from the Song Dynasty. Wen excelled at ink paintings of bamboo and stressed that in order to paint bamboo, the painter must first have in his mind the image of it that reflects his artistic concept, before actually transferring this image to paper. Su Shi advocated "verisimilitude of spirit."

However, painted private kiln porcelain adopted a spontaneous style of expression about 200 or 300 years before Wen and Su were born. The Tongguan Kiln from the Tang Dynasty remained in production for over 300 years, but as a private kiln, no record of it has been found. Archaeologists began excavating its remains in 1979. There are remains of 19 kilns over a length of five kilometers along the bank of the Xiangjiang River, and the firing area is littered with numerous fragments of painted porcelain bearing motifs of human and animal figures, flowers, plants, mountains, clouds, rivers, lakes, and script patterns. These are largely in a style of spontaneous expression, with cursive and freehand brushstrokes. The figures display vivid expression, but lack verisimilitude. Wen and Su may have obtained their inspiration from such painted porcelain.

Official and Private Porcelain Kilns of Ancient China

Abstract painting on private kiln porcelain occurred much earlier than that on paper. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, certain less inhibited freehand-style porcelain painters ventured into an abstract style. Their unrestrained freestyle application of brushstrokes gradually developed into a consciously abstract style. This evolution can be attributed to three factors: 1) acceleration of the speed of production; 2) artists giving rein to their impressions and concept of life; and 3) progression of artistic taste.

The nature of folk porcelain required artisans to be both skillful and speedy. Year after year they painted the same patterns on greenware until they could execute them in whatever manner they felt inclined. This was the course of change from meticulousness to simplicity, when the emphasis switched from form to content, and from the concrete to the abstract. For example, in Playing Children, originally concrete figures of children were gradually simplified to the point where they were simply the visual rhythms between dots (heads) and curved lines (bodies).

Many porcelain paintings are based on the life experience of painters. Unlike court artists, these porcelain painters had very low social status, and their style was completely different from that of court artists. For example, a folk porcelain painter would depict a dragon in style completely removed from that of an official porcelain painter. The latter had to be executed painstakingly and meticulously, reflecting the supremacy and dignity of the dragon. For folk porcelain artisans, painting a dragon was a taboo, and those who dared were actually laying down a challenge to the supreme power of the emperor. However, with a few simple brushstrokes, they could outline a threatening dragon baring its fangs and brandishing its claws - an image in keeping with their artistic concept of the dragon. Due to limitations of aesthetic convictions within feudal society, folk paintings, including porcelain paintings, were disdained as too crude and vulgar to have any artistic value. James McNeill Whistler encountered this kind of prejudice. One of his paintings in this style displayed in 1878 was priced at 200 gold coins. One art critic commented that the painting could have taken no longer than two days as the method of its execution was merely that of brandishing paint before viewer's face. To this, Whistler answered that although it had been finished in two days, it nevertheless took a lifetime's cultivation. This answer could also apply to folk porcelain paintings.

Today, people have begun to re-examine the status and role of folk porcelain painting within the history of traditional Chinese painting and ceramics. After hundreds of years, these works have finally been accepted, not merely for their utility, but for their artistic value, and have become major collector's items.