As the blank drawing machine rotates, a piece of clay changes in the hand: one moment it goes up, the other time it goes down, and it is expected to become the desired shape.
Most of these scenes are found in pottery museums, and such pottery museums are not uncommon in the vicinity of shopping malls or tourist attractions.
For many years, these storefronts have attracted customers to experience the joy of "playing in the mud" and have become a way of relaxation that has been passed down from generation to generation.
In the past two years, Jingdezhen has become a popular new tourist destination for young people, and most of them have decided to go to the "porcelain capital" to learn art after experiencing the pottery shops in their respective cities.
In the end, what is the magic of small pottery that attracts generations of young people.
01 Young people are fascinated by "shallow taste" pottery
flock to the "porcelain capital" to learn art
Adia's pottery journey began at a pottery shop in a shopping mall in Beijing.
In 2020, a friend asked her to experience pottery together, and the three friends stayed in the store for about 3 hours, and although the process was always accompanied by failure, Adia fell in love with the atmosphere of making pottery at one time.
After returning home, Adia began to search the Internet for teaching** on drawing blanks (a part of pottery making) and watched a lot of hand-kneading pottery**.
Every day after that, Adia almost had to brush this kind of ** for a long time after coming home from work, and she felt that it was a pleasure to watch the constantly rotating soil in the hands of bloggers slowly take shape.
During the National Day holiday in 2023, Adia, who planned to travel, thought of Jingdezhen, the "porcelain capital", and she made a strategy online, found a pottery studio, signed up for a 9-day course in advance, and officially started a journey of learning art.
Jingdezhen pottery related sharing.
Arriving in Jingdezhen, Adia finds herself unlocking a new world.
Here, there are many different ways to form pottery, such as drawing, hand-kneading or clay tablet molding, as well as different glazes and different firing methods.
Each of these works can be combined with each other to have a different effect, and the potters here are perfectly able to create their own crafts with their own ideas.
Ever since she got into pottery, Adia has enjoyed chatting with people who make pottery, and she said that she was originally an "i-person", but because of pottery, she has increased her desire to communicate with others.
She feels that the people who make pottery are very creative and have their own ideas, and communicating with them enriches her spiritual world.
In Adia's view, pottery is like an outlet to convey ideas, and you can realize the ideas in your mind from scratch in pottery.
During the nine days in Jingdezhen, Adia started classes at 10 a.m. every day, and spent the whole day in the studio, completing the tasks assigned by the teacher, and even lunch and dinner were hastily solved in the studio. Almost except for sleeping, she spends all time in the studio with mud.
As a novice, Adia feels that the most difficult and basic content is the "centering" work of the blank drawing process. For such a basic content alone, Adia practiced for three or four days. But she was not discouraged and continued to hone her skills from failure. How much water to use and how much force to use must be achieved through a lot of practice after the teacher's guidance.
Pulling the blank over and over again, pulling is a day, adia is tired and has a sore back, especially the two arms are sore, and every time I return to the hotel, I fall asleep.
I don't even have time to go around, so I plan to go again (Jingdezhen) when I have the chance. Adia said.
Adia is making pottery.
Xiao Pan also took advantage of the holiday to go to Jingdezhen in 2023, and in addition to the 7-day experience class, she did a good walk in Jingdezhen.
She found that each merchant in Jingdezhen sells ceramics with its own style, and is quite creative: "I saw all kinds of strange-shaped cups and different styles of jewelry, as if there must be something different (from others) to sell." ”
Xiao Pan, who also came to Jingdezhen to learn art, originally only signed up for the study of blank drawing, but later she found that in order to burn more creative works, the hand kneading ring is also very important, so she changed to the hand kneading course.
In the first three or four days of the course, Xiao Pan and his classmates felt bored and hard, they tried to put down their pottery and go shopping several times, but then they encouraged each other to persevere, passed the stage of pinching shapes, and stayed up to the stage of coloring, and everyone was interested again.
Throughout the course, Xiao Pan made more than 20 finished products, and her favorite is a colorful cup she made, which is inspired by the sun.
Xiao Pan's most satisfying cup.
Wen Zixi went to Jingdezhen to learn pottery after resigning, and every day from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., which became the rhythm of her life during that time. Over the course of 20 days, she made more than 70 works.
At that time, after a few days of study, I was already able to do a good job of drawing blanks, but I didn't expect it to be more difficult to repair blanks. Wen Zixi recalled that one day she repaired seven or eight blanks, and her mentality was a little fried. Later, she learned that the most important thing in repairing billets is to calm down and need to slow down. "But I'm a very hot-tempered person, so I have to control my emotions to fix it. ”
During that time in Jingdezhen, Wen Zixi's most satisfying work was a clay sculpture made by herself, which she felt was her original IP, and she added elements of trendy toys to the clay sculpture.
After Wen Zixi's work was burned, her friends liked it very much, and she herself was most satisfied with this work.
Wen Xizi's proud work.
02 It is the interaction between couples
It is also a good parent-child activity
Like AIDA, almost all young people who go to Jingdezhen to learn art start their craft from a small pottery shop in the city.
Many of these pottery shops are hidden in shopping malls, including R&F City, Joy City, and Wanda Plaza in Beijing.
They generally occupy a small area, the environment is quiet and pleasant, the furnishings are simple and warm, and most of them are decorated with small pottery items that customers have not had time to pick up after they have finished them.
Search result of Pottery Experience Center.
In a pottery shop in Beijing's Chaoyang Joy City, although it is not a day off, there are still young people "playing in the mud" in the shop.
A couple uses their break time to make pottery. The girl who is drawing the blank is quite proficient in terms of technique, she said that she likes the feeling of being quiet and focused on doing one thing, and this time she is bringing her boyfriend to experience it, and wants to make a vase together as a souvenir.
Parents with children, young people with their other half, this kind of "person-to-person" is the main way of customers in the pottery shop.
Just after the winter vacation, 8-year-old Hop Hop came to the mall with his father to "play in the mud". The hands are drenched with water, soaking a cloud of dirt, and as the billet machine begins to rotate under your feet, the dirt becomes cylindrical with the curled palms.
This was the first time Hopping and his father had done pottery, and they decided to make a pottery for their mother as a birthday present.
Since it was the first time to play, the clerk taught them how to pull the blank by hand.
It may seem like a simple step, but it's not easy. The soil should be set in the center of the blank drawing machine, repeatedly lifted and lowered in the hand several times, after the basic forming, it is necessary to open a hole on the top, and then with the rotation of the blank drawing machine, the hole is getting bigger and bigger, forming a cup and bowl shape, and then the thickness of the cup wall can be slowly adjusted.
For the first time, Hop and his father leaked the hole, so they had to pile up the dirt together and reshape it; The second time, although the hole was opened, the edge of the cup wall was uneven, and the clerk said that the center of the soil was not set and deviated; The third time, I finally got some appearance, but because there was too much water in my hands, the soil was too thin, and with the centrifugal force of the rotation of the blank machine, the cup was thrown into a plate.
After more than an hour, the father and son had less and less mud in their hands, and the cups became smaller and smaller.
Finally, after seven or eight attempts, a roughly formed cup appeared. The clerk helped to trim it and make the shape of the cup more regular.
Then, wait for the soil to dry completely, and after four or five days, you can glaze and paint. After painting, they need to be fired, and they have to wait two or three weeks before they get the final product.
Hop the cup that Daddy finished together.
This parent-child experience cost more than 200 yuan, and in the end I could only get a small cup. Although the value of the items alone is not high, the experience of the father and son is very good.
After the blank was drawn, the hands of the jumping father and son were covered in mud. Somehow, mud was rubbed on his face and hat. Hopping is glad that she can make a gift for her mother, and she is looking forward to the glaze in five days.
It's a rare parent-child experience for Hopping Dad. In addition to playing video games, this is the second thing that father and son can focus on together for more than an hour.
Since it was a weekday morning, there were not many customers in the pottery shop, but in the process of making the hopping father and son, it still attracted some passers-by to stop **.
A little girl about the same age as Hop Hop surrounded Hop and asked, "What are you doing?" After saying that, she also pestered her mother to "play with mud".
The clerk said that on weekdays or weekends, there will be slightly more customers coming to the store, while on weekends the afternoon or evening customers will be relatively concentrated, and there is even a queue to arrive at the store.
Many people consider pottery as a form of leisure.
03 The store has a small profit and a small customer flow
There will always be new people who fall in love with pottery
When he was in Jingdezhen, Wen Zixi was learning pottery while making future plans.
Because she came to Jingdezhen after quitting her job, she once planned to go home and open a pottery shop after learning pottery. Most of her classmates who studied pottery together also came to Jingdezhen with this idea.
However, Wen Zixi eventually calmed down and gave up the idea of opening a pottery shop.
She had calculated the costs and opened a pottery shop with a small margin, which was not as profitable as working in Beijing, and she was worried that it would be difficult for her to persevere with enthusiasm alone.
However, Wen Zixi did not completely give up the idea of opening a shop, she buried this seed in her heart, thinking that she might have the opportunity to open a small pottery shop in the future.
According to the data on Dianping, there are hundreds of pottery shops in Beijing, some of which are small shops specializing in pottery, and many of which are pottery courses set up in some handicraft workshops or children's art training institutions.
Online posts about pottery making.
Taking the current pottery shops in Beijing as an example, many of them have been in operation for more than ten years, and some have been in business for three or four years.
Although these pottery shops are very persistent, and they have not collapsed even under the impact of the epidemic for three years, it is difficult to have more room for expansion when looking at the entire market.
Opening a pottery shop is just like this craft, it takes time to build, but you can't expand much. A shopkeeper who runs a pottery shop near the Drum Tower said that in the past few years, many pottery shops were opened around the Drum Tower, but they have all closed down one after another, and now there are still a few old shops left.
Because the old store has a relatively stable channel, it can reduce the cost as much as possible. For example, the cost of soil in a pottery shop is actually very low, but because of its weight, the cost of shipping is very high; There are also many people who like pottery will do a good job of drawing blanks at home, and then find a pottery shop to burn, if the store has a relatively stable kiln factory channel, it can also be an income.
There is no shortage of customers when the pottery shop is opened in the business district or around the scenic spot, some of them are stable enthusiasts, and some of them are new experiencers every day.
And some of the experiencers will become enthusiasts, and this base is stable and large enough. One is to control costs, and the other is to have a stable source of customers, which is a common feature of some pottery shops that can be opened for many years in one go.
According to the owner of a pottery shop on the north side of Nanluoguxiang, he has been in the business for seven or eight years. used to be in the alley, but after the renovation and demolition of the wall and the hole, his shop moved to the side of the street.
Although the rent is somewhat, fortunately, it is relatively close to Nanluoguxiang and Drum Tower, there are more tourists, and the income can be basically maintained.
The boss also said that there have always been many tourists who like pottery, and many young people are shopping here and want to try it in the store, and some of them will like pottery after trying, not only will they come back again, but some will also introduce friends to play. Therefore, there are actually quite a few repeat customers in the pottery shop.
A pottery shop in Nanluoguxiang, Beijing.
According to a pottery shop owner who has nearly 10 years of experience in opening a shop in Beijing, the owners of pottery shops that can survive are generally pottery enthusiasts, and they open shops more out of genuine love for pottery.
The boss also said that according to his understanding, there are pottery shops around the business districts and scenic spots in Beijing, and the ** who come and go is the main source of these pottery shops, and some of these individual customers will be converted into pottery lovers and come to the store to do pottery from time to time.
The most interesting thing is that many parents bring their children to experience pottery, and in the end, parents prefer pottery more than their children.
There are also some pottery enthusiasts who will buy a blank drawing machine at home, practice it repeatedly at home, and then take the drawn blank to the pottery shop to fire.
04 Enjoy the quiet rhythm
Generations of people have loved pottery shops
As for why young people like to make pottery, the owner of a pottery shop that has been in the Drum Tower for 7 years said the key - "meditation". He said that one of the customers in his shop was a foreign friend who worked as a translator and was also a fan of pottery.
According to foreign friends, he often feels irritable because of the pressure of work, and he can't calm down even when he is running, and there are always a lot of messy things in his head, and only doing pottery can make him devote himself to it for hours.
Adia, who studied pottery in Jingdezhen, also agrees with this. She believes that pottery has become a hot topic in recent years, because in the fast-paced state of life, people's work pressure and life pressure have increased, pottery can soothe anxiety and anxiety, is a rare thing that can make people do it calmly.
Adia posted her feelings on the Internet, she said that pottery can make people feel life, such as when you want to keep improving, especially when you pursue perfection, it is often easier to make mistakes, but if you stop in time, you may get a perfect work. Through this point, Adia realized that "enough is enough".
Xiao Pan feels that making pottery can give her more sense of achievement, "The clay itself is a gray and ugly thing, and through pottery processing can make it look good and valuable, this process is a test of patience, but patience alone is not enough, it also requires creativity." ”
Daniel Zhang, the owner of a pottery shop who opened a mom-and-pop shop in Gulou, feels that the reason why the pottery shop has always been alive for more than a decade can be traced back to the fact that people can't forget the joy of "playing with mud" and "doing handicrafts".
He used to work in a kiln factory, but later quit his job to open a pottery shop in his hometown, and then opened a pottery shop in Beijing. He has met many people who play pottery, and both men and women, young and old, say that the feeling of kneading and kneading mud with both hands is very pleasant.
A pottery shop in Nanluoguxiang, Beijing.
Daniel Zhang found that this happiness can be passed down from generation to generation. Many children are brought into contact with pottery by their parents, and many of these parents have had the experience of playing pottery when they were young, and they want their children to experience the joy of "playing with mud".
Parents will hold a humble cup or bowl at home and say to their children, "This was made by Mommy and Dad when I was a child." "And children will feel amazing when they see something like this, and they want to make one themselves.
Just as he was talking, a little girl came to Daniel Zhang's shop. The child's grandmother said that her granddaughter broke a bowl a few days ago, and it didn't match another bowl, and when she saw the pottery works in the store, she wanted to make a small bowl to match and make up for ......her regrets
Written by |Beijing Youth Daily reporter Zhang Ziyuan intern Bai Yueyao.
Co-ordination |Lin Yan, Zhang Bin.
* |Photo provided by the interviewee, screenshot of the network.