Chao news client Yan Dongliang.
The hilly area in the south of the Yangtze River and Zhejiang, now known as Wuzhou in ancient Jinhua, has a history of more than 2,200 years. Wuzhou, the legend is in "the place where Venus and Wu actresses compete for China", hence the name.
The Wuzhou kiln, named after Wuzhou, is scattered like stars in the rich countryside of clay, which is unique and brilliant in the history of Chinese folk kilns.
More than 600 Wuzhou kiln sites in central Zhejiang have been discovered and protected since the fifties of the last century.
There is a remote village called Tiedian in Wucheng District, Jinhua, where She people moved to make a living by making iron. Who would have thought that on a small hillside with lush pine forests and barren smoke and grass, there would be cracked spouts, deformed three-legged tripods, stacked bowls, and ancient porcelain glowing brown in the sun.
The kiln fire of Wuzhou Iron Shop continued to burn until the Yuan Dynasty, and then it was extinguished for some reason, and now it has become a national key cultural relics protection unit, and there is an endless stream of visitors.
Gaoyi remains on the left bank of the Puyang River in Baima Town, Pujiang County, Tangshanbei Village, Huangzhai Town, Chishan Laolongtou, Xingu Township, Lanxi, and the southern slope of Wazao Mountain, Xili Village, Wuyi County, ......These ancient kiln sites are like the coordinates of time, reporting the 2,700-year history of Wuzhou kiln merchants Zhou Xing, Tang and Song Sheng, Ming and Qing dynasties to future generations, and opening the door to dialogue with Wuzhou kiln ceramics for future generations.
One afternoon in October 2022, in the Wuyi Wuzhou Kiln Exhibition Hall, which was named "Wuzhou Leader" in the Wuyi County Museum, I looked at a wonderful Wuyao ceramic cultural relics for a long time.
The soft light caressed it, and the blue-brown glaze shimmered with a beam. It seems to be a new porcelain object that has just been extinguished from a Wuzhou kiln, clear and transparent, and natural beauty.
This national first-class cultural relic is the "treasure of the town hall" of the county museum, and the cultural relics experts have given it a beautiful name - "the five-tube bottle of the Three Kingdoms blue glaze figurines".
Wuyi is worthy of being the central kiln of Wuzhou kiln, and Zhu Boqian and Wang Qiying, famous domestic ceramic identification and cultural relics experts, unanimously believe that it is a typical artifact of Wuzhou kiln, which is unique.
As an ancient burial artifact, it and another "Three Kingdoms Blue Glaze Female Warriors Five-Tube Bottle" have been sleeping quietly in the ancient tomb of the Three Kingdoms in the coffin mountain of Lutan Town, Wuyi County for more than 1,700 years.
During the Three Kingdoms period, the Wuzhou kiln sculpture art has formed its own unique style. These two bottles, which have five nozzles, were "borrowed" to the Shanghai Museum for 27 years as a fine piece of plastic porcelain.
Now one of the five-tube bottles of the Three Kingdoms blue glaze figurines has returned to its hometown, which is a feast for me, the citizens and foreign visitors.
Facing it, I heard the green glaze that would play music.
In the face of it, my eyes conjured up a Gu Wu master craftsman, concentrating and holding his breath in the creative state, in the transformation of the techniques of placing, molding, carving, stacking, and hollowing, he achieved two national treasures that caused a sensation in later generations.
How much effort and wisdom should this cost the master?How many mornings, dusks, and afternoons should be used?
Some experts told me that the Wuzhou kiln can fire such exquisite porcelain, thanks to the fact that the Wuzhou kiln is mostly a "dragon kiln". Sitting in the north and facing south, adding firewood in many places, the kiln fire is heated layer by layer, and a kiln porcelain often has to go through half a month of calcination.
Pottery making is a sloppy thing, and it depends on God's blessing. The potters can only choose the dry weather after autumn to start firing. Before the kiln is fired and opened, the potters must religiously light incense and make offerings to the kiln god, hoping that the blood and sweat of the year will not be wasted.
In the long years, Wuzhou kiln has learned from others and has its own school. The daily-use porcelain and ornamental porcelain fired by Wu kiln are not only exported to the whole country, but also sold all over the world.
The history records that a big businessman in the capital of the Yuan Dynasty received a large foreign trade order, which contained a considerable number of Chinese ceramics. After he searched all over the country, Wuzhou ceramics became one of his choices. The kiln fire is blazing, and all workers are sweating. Half a year later, these batch of Wu kiln ceramics with fine workmanship, colorful and different shapes were loaded onto the merchant ships going to sea.
I don't know if it was a sudden storm or a pirate encounter, and the merchant ship sank deep to the bottom of the sea. In 1976, a salvage in the waters of Xin'an, South Korea, brought to light the more than 10,000 pieces of ceramics from China in the Yuan Dynasty shipwreck.
Three-legged water bowls, wangzi, flower pots, among which more than 150 exquisite nameless opalescent glazes have not been seen in modern excavated ancient kiln sites.
Where did this mysterious batch of ancient porcelain come from?The Chinese archaeological community has fallen into a long silence.
There will be those who have a discerning eye. In 1983, Mr. Feng Xianming, a ceramic appraisal expert of the Palace Museum, saw them when he visited Japan and confirmed that they were Wuzhou kiln porcelain, produced in Jinhua Tiedian kiln, which caused a sensation in China's archaeological and ceramic research circles.
On July 5, 2023, in the Wuzhou kiln pottery production room of Jinhua Vocational and Technical College in Zhejiang Province, college students from Taiwan Province and local college students experienced the intangible cultural heritage skills - Wuzhou kiln pottery production process. cfp。
There is no shortage of archaeological experts and people of insight in Jinhua and cultural circles, Mr. Gongchang after the actual site investigation in Jinhua and the vast historical materials verification, in 1988 compiled and published the book "Wuzhou Ancient Porcelain". The book says that not far from Wuyi County is Longquan County, and the "ancestor" of Longquan porcelain and Wuyi porcelain is Jun kiln. Mr. Zhou Guoliang benchmarked the development history of Chinese ceramics, combined with the archaeological discoveries in the territory, and systematically sorted out the development of Wuzhou kiln culture ......
A group of Jinhua village sages, experts and scholars, collectors have worked tirelessly to explore and open the mystery of Wuzhou kiln, and they are worthy of being the great heroes of welding the historical fault of Wuzhou kiln.
On a winter morning in 2018, I went to visit the Wuzhou Kiln Historical and Cultural Exhibition Hall located in the Jingyuan Garden of Wuyi County Hot Spring Resort.
Cooked water, known as Shuxi and Wuchuan in ancient times, is the mother river of Wuyi culture. From the beginning of the Three Kingdoms to the Song and Yuan dynasties, dragon kilns were scattered on both sides of the water, and more than 140 long dragon kilns for firing celadon were built along the hillside. This kind of unique kiln that appeared in the Jiangnan area of the Shang Dynasty was built according to the slope, from bottom to top, and it was like a dragon lying down, so it got its name.
Man and fire form a symbiotic relationship, and fire brings people surprise and loss.
With the advent of modern craftsmanship, this relationship became increasingly rare and thin, and many craftsmen abandoned the traditional dragon kiln. The modern kiln has stable air pressure and temperature standards, and the fuel is purer, and the fired porcelain has reached a high level of standardization and industrialization.
The celadon fired in Wuyi has strong porcelain and green enamel. In the late Tang Dynasty, the five dynasties had fired tribute porcelain for Wu Yue Qian's family, and the famous Wu kiln pearlescent celadon "Tianmu Tea Cup" was exported to Japan and Southeast Asia from Wuzhou.
In Wuyi Wuzhou Kiln Ceramics Research Institute, I had a long talk with the founder, Zhejiang Arts and Crafts Master, Zhejiang Province intangible cultural heritage representative inheritor Mr. Shao Wenli, he told me that Wuzhou kiln belongs to the celadon department, there is the pottery of the thick, the porcelain is warm, and the Wuzhou kiln has five major pioneers in the 2700-year history.
The first cosmetic soil process, this is because the iron content in Jinhua area is high, which is not good for celadon hair color, the ancients invented the use of white porcelain clay to coat a layer on the blank first, so that the porcelain hair color is more beautiful and exquisite.
Wuzhou kiln pioneered the multi-glaze combination process, breaking the firing method of celadon single glaze decoration, which is a unique invention;Pioneered the composting process;Pioneered the kiln transformation process;From the Jin Dynasty, the first point brown color process.
Speaking of these, Shao Wenli's eyes flashed with pride and confidence.
My master, Chen Xinhua, is a master of Chinese ceramic art and the title of master of Chinese arts and crafts. He is the representative inheritor of the national project of Wuzhou kiln, and has a high prestige at home and abroad. The other is Mr. Fang Yijin, who has carried out ten years of successful exploration in the development of Wuzhou kiln fire industry. ”
The historical inheritance of Wuzhou kiln fire for more than 2,700 years relies on the persistence of modern craftsmen who are also full of wisdom. History is a river that will not be broken, Wuzhou millennium kiln fire has been almost annihilated after Xingli, and now it is listed as a representative project of national intangible cultural heritage protection, which is the dream pursuit of generations of outstanding craftsmen in Jinhua.
In the 30 years of his life, Chen Xinhua did not spend it in comfort, let alone retreat before failure and setback. He is a leader in the Wu kiln porcelain world who has devoted himself to cultivation to find the lost civilization.
In 1973, a seminar on Wuzhou kiln, several ancient Wuzhou kiln works, that glance was deeply attracted, so that the young man who was still an apprentice in Jinhua pottery factory has been associated with Wuhuo since then.
In the autumn of that year, he personally lit the first furnace fire of the Wuzhou kiln in the new era. This was the first attempt after the extinguishing of the Wuzhou kiln in the Ming and Qing dynasties. "Please kiln god", pasted a couplet written by himself on the kiln. Beads of sweat beaded on his forehead, and his heart hung all the time.
The success of the attempt made him overjoyed. He sent the second furnace of 58 works to the first ceramic fair in China.
His works incorporate modern and vivid art elements, which not only lose the traditional Wuzhou kiln shape, but also give innovation in the sense of inheritance. Zhang Xuewen, a famous domestic ceramic artist, inscribed eight characters for him on the spot, "Wu kiln is reborn, and there are successors", which gave him great praise and encouragement.
Looking back at ancient China, the mainstream aesthetic vision of society often followed the royal family.
The emperor of the Tang Dynasty loved the opalescent glaze of the Wuzhou kiln;The emperors of the Southern Song Dynasty liked the plum green glaze of the Longquan kiln;The court of the Yuan Dynasty took a fancy to the blue and white porcelain and colorful porcelain of Jingdezhen.
Emperor Qianlong was a complete literati, and he loved the art of porcelain, calligraphy and painting. He wrote more than 40,000 poems in his lifetime, including hundreds of porcelain poems
Antique and elegant and pleasant, the Song Dynasty named pottery is a treasure. The quality of Yun pearl can be used as a reference, and the pattern of flowers and birds is expressive. Qinglai picked up the bright moon in his palm, and inscribed the poem to prove the old cause. Tens of millions of cherry blossoms, full of amber for the brilliance. ”
An ancient plate was depicted by the emperor Lao'er as elegant, beautiful, smart and radiant.
Chen Xinhua was bent on reviving this skill and regaining the reputation of the Tang Dynasty. In order to let the Wuzhou ceramics that have been lost for thousands of years regain the long-standing and myriad glaze colors, in order to find the secret recipe for connecting history in the pieces of broken porcelain buried deep in the soil, and in order to let the traditional aesthetics and Chinese aesthetics with a thick background and ingenuity enter modern life in a poetic form. Chen Xinhua and his apprentices persevered on the road of passing on the torch.
Choose one thing for a lifetime, and the sky will pay off. Chen Xinhua worked hard silently and finally ushered in the first bumper harvest in 2006.
His carefully selected three works were combined into "Ancient Wu Legacy Rhyme", which won the crown ...... the 7th China Arts and Crafts Masters and Arts and Crafts FairBehind the flowers and applause, is his dedication and original intention.
In the past 8 years in Wuyi, Shao Wenli has trained more than 500 middle and senior talents, and has made great contributions to the kiln fire in Wuzhou.
Lei Guoqiang, a Wuzhou celadon research expert from Wuyi, and the Wuzhou Celadon Culture and Art Museum, which was built in cooperation with Jinhua Vocational and Technical University, have been tentatively scheduled to open in the first half of 2024. This is another cultural highland and another cultural brand on the land of Jinhua.
A seat of green clothes is like a crystal jade, and the sky is clear like a green peak after the rain. "The ancient kiln burns a new fire, and the Wu Tao is elegant.
People remembered the names of Chen Xinhua, Shao Wenli, Lei Guoqiang, Fang Yijin, Hu Hanjin, Chen Heng, Lu Yongming, Gu Tongxin, and Wu Lixin, and also remembered the Wuzhou kiln fire that has not been extinguished for thousands of years.
About author:Yan Dongliang is a member of the Chinese Prose Literature Association and a member of the Zhejiang Writers Association. He has published many essay collections such as "Pomegranate Red" and "Time Negative".
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