Red Net Moment News reporter Yan Hong Hu FangCorrespondent Zhang Dan reports from Zhuzhou.
White porcelain, painted with color.
During the rainy season, the air is filled with moisture and the scent of ink. At the Ding Kiln Art Center in Liling, Hunan Province, Ding Xiaoni uses a brush to color the water on the plain embryo teacup, and the "Eight Great Achievements of Emperor Yan" underglaze colorful tea set series is her latest work.
Ding Xiaoni. White as jade, bright as a mirror, thin as paper, sound like chime. In a word, it shows the natural beauty of Liling porcelain. Lici has attracted generations of people to be fascinated, and Ding Xiaoni, born in the 90s, is one of them.
Ding Xiaoni was born in Liling, the porcelain capital, grew up in a ceramic family, and at the age of 12, she learned from her grandfather Ding Huahan, and it became her life path to be accompanied by ceramics. It's just that this road, unlike her ancestors and fathers, has made her break out of her own world, created the original underglaze colorful "boneless figure method", and became the representative inheritor of Zhuzhou City, the national intangible cultural heritage project Liling underglaze colorful firing technology.
Return to the path of inheritance
As a post-90s generation, Ding Xiaoni, who graduated from college, always wanted to fly out of Liling. In 2013, she opened her own studio in Zhuzhou, and often went out to paint wall paintings when she was customizing ceramics privately.
After 3 years of struggle, at the age of 24, she got the first pot of gold in her career, and Ding Xiaoni is very comfortable with such a life. However, a turning point in the road has crept in.
Ding Xiaoni's maternal grandfather, Ding Huahan, was one of the "four elders" who restored and inherited the Liling underglaze colorful craft, and was a master of Chinese ceramic art. He is famous for creating the first "color matching method" in the creation of porcelain, and his design of the blue begonia Chinese tableware has won the national gold medal twice.
In his decades of creative career, Ding Huahan has preserved a large number of design manuscripts, drawings and historical documents, which are of great value for the study of the history of Liling underglaze multicolored porcelain. Knowing this situation, Ding Xiaoni decided to invest in the establishment of the Ding Huahan Ceramics Museum with her father.
Go out to shoot, collect information, organize and revise. In two years, she has sorted out 430 design manuscripts, 182 ceramic works, and 127 documents. Under the deduction of time, Ding Xiaoni's underglaze colorful firing skills in Liling became clearer and clearer, and she gradually became obsessed with it. She stumbled upon a "canna" vase manuscript, which, according to Ding Huahan, was collected by the Forbidden City in Beijing at the end of the 50s. In order to record in detail her grandfather's underglaze colorful "color matching method", Ding Xiaoni decided to restore the "canna" thin tire vase and reproduce the beauty of intangible cultural heritage skills.
A restored "canna" thin-tire vase.
Explore the traditional thin tire process and study the traditional pigment formula. In 2016, with the opening of the Ding Huahan Ceramics Museum, the "Canna" thin tire vase told the world about the modern development of Liling porcelain with its elegant and beautiful posture.
After the opening of the museum, Ding Xiaoni made a choice about her life path, resolutely ended her freelance work with a generous remuneration, and embarked on the road of inheriting the underglaze colorful firing skills. Ding Xiaoni knows the hardships of the road well, and the craftsman spirit of "choosing one thing for a lifetime" has also taken root in her heart.
In 2021, Ding Xiaoni was awarded the representative inheritor of Zhuzhou City, a national intangible cultural heritage project Liling underglaze colorful firing skills. Ding Xiaoni said frankly that the national inheritor is her goal.
Innovative techniques in inheritance
Porcelain plates, teapots, vases. On the first floor of the Ding Yao Art Center, more than 30 pieces of Ding Xiaoni's works are displayed, and the figures on each work are light and lifelike.
Ding Xiaoni is good at drawing characters, and under the cultivation of her father since she was a child, she has a solid foundation in character sketching. After entering Zhengzhou University of Light Industry, he was influenced by modern art, and liked exaggeration, deformation and other techniques, and the characters he painted were full of movement and tension. How to integrate yourself into the technique of underglaze multicolored porcelain? Ding Xiaoni took the subject matter as the starting point and explored a new way to express the colorful figure painting under the glaze.
Liling's traditional underglaze colorful figure paintings often use "color lines" to outline the outline. When Ding Xiaoni was learning her grandfather's "color matching method", she found that painted flowers often used "ink lines" to outline the outline, because after the ink lines were fired, the lines were white, and the three-dimensional sense of flowers was very strong. Through her attempts, Ding Xiaoni changed the "color line" outline of traditional figure painting to "ink line" outline, and the fired porcelain picture presented the "boneless" effect in Chinese painting.
How can the characters present a sense of space without lines? Ding Xiaoni uses the depth of the color block and the contrast between virtual and real to express the relationship between objects and images, and at the same time uses the color matching method in the "color matching method" to enrich the color effect of the characters. With the innovation and integration of a variety of techniques, Ding Xiaoni pioneered the underglaze colorful "boneless figure method", forming her own unique ceramic skill style.
Ding Xiaoni believes that stories are the soul of ceramics, and we must make ceramics with stories.
Underglaze colorful "Eight Achievements of Emperor Yan" wine jar.
In terms of character conception, Ding Xiaoni has developed a series of products around historical and cultural stories, such as the "Eight Achievements of Emperor Yan" wine jar, "The Legend of the Red Whisk Girl" tea jar, etc., which fully reflect the regional characteristics and local features. Because of its fresh and elegant creative style, Ding Xiaoni's underglaze "Eight Immortals Across the Sea" vase created in 2022 won the Hundred Crane New Talent Award in the second "Hundred Crane Cup" National Arts and Crafts Design Innovation Competition.
Starting in 2022, Ding Xiaoni's underglaze colorful "boneless figure method" skills have become more and more mature, and her works have their own independent style. Behind the ease of play is unremitting thinking and innovation every day. In the creation of "Wu Song Fighting the Tiger Porcelain Plate Painting", Ding Xiaoni used the decorative technique of full flowers, blending New Year paintings and modernist styles to form a plate painting with great decorative beauty. In 2023, the work will not only win awards in the national cultural and creative competition, but also be permanently collected by the Jingdezhen Intangible Cultural Heritage Museum.
Let more people "see" intangible cultural heritage
Since childhood, coupled with a lifetime of companionship, ceramics are like something flowing in the blood for Ding Xiaoni, needless to say.
How to pass on the love and let more people know about Liling underglaze colorful porcelain? In 2023, Ding Xiaoni will join forces with Zhuzhou Special Education School to establish the Zhuzhou Special Education School Intangible Cultural Heritage Inheritance Base, which not only explains the development history and skills of Liling underglaze colorful porcelain to students, but also uses the school's original kiln and other venues to guide students to make cultural and creative products.
Carry out intangible cultural heritage experience activities.
In addition, in order to make teaching intuitive, Ding Xiaoni organizes students to visit Ding Kiln Workshop, Ding Huahan Ceramics Museum, Qunli Porcelain Factory, etc. in Liling every semester to learn more about the production process of Liling underglaze colorful porcelain.
Let the children have a skill and have the direction of entrepreneurship is Ding Xiaoni's most simple idea.
The inheritance of intangible cultural heritage should not only be offline, but also online, so that more people can "see" intangible cultural heritage, understand intangible cultural heritage, and feel the beauty of intangible cultural heritage.
As a "trendy" area for young people, Ding Xiaoni opened a WeChat public account of Ding Yao as early as 2016 to tell the history and culture of ceramics and harvest a batch of "li-porcelain" powder. Not only that, this year she will also set up a live broadcast room in Zhuzhou Special Education School, which will broadcast the porcelain-making process and children's cultural and creative products live.
The live broadcast allows more people to ** intangible cultural heritage, and it can also make children's cultural and creative works produce economic benefits. Ding Xiaoni believes that this is to insert the wings of "digital economy" for intangible cultural heritage.
Innovation in inheritance is not only Ding Xiaoni's entrepreneurial experience, but also the future development direction of Liling porcelain. As the inheritor, she hopes to take on the important task of telling the story of Lici to the world and letting Lici enter people's homes.
After an experience, she discovered the meaning of non-genetic inheritance, and she "took over" the "seeds" of her father's generation. In the future development, Ding Xiaoni will continue the craftsmanship concept of her ancestors and fathers, and create the Ding Xiaoni brand based on practicality and economy, so as to make ceramic products with stories.