design porcelain in contemporary China
In 2012, arriving in Jingdezhen, the famous Chinese porcelain city, was quite a stunning experience, as every corner was used for production, as it had been since the emperor’s era. The old, abandoned, massive factories from the Mao period were now occupied by small, family-run factories, and the different areas were distinct from each other due to their various production techniques and different typologies.
ACTION. The concept for the CHINaWARE project was developed through exploration and observation of everyday life and the playful exploration of local variables. This approach aimed to create a project structure that could be tailored to the specific needs of the context. The visible overproduction of pieces in Jingdehzen and the incredible freedom of being able to explore the small Chinese factories led to the decision not to produce new pieces and instead to use archetypes of porcelain pieces. Through formal material combinations that represent and reflect delicate issues about contemporary China, questions about profound socio-cultural as well as environmental changes and the use of raw materials or foreign policy were addressed throughout chinese porcelain objects. The contrast between Chinese traditions and contemporaneity is explored through narratives of awareness in contemporary Chinese porcelain design.
#1 BARBOWLS
Barbowls is a representation of the image of new China. The world’s factory copying and producing cheap Western models attained major positions in western strategic companies, like EDP- Electricity of Portugal, and finances European sovereign debt from a persistent financial crisis. This object became a functional reinterpretation of ordinary barbells composed by eight chinese traditional cups of tea and four small glasses filled with lead spheres from hunting cartridges.
#2 IMPERIAL MARKER
#2 IMPERIAL MARKER SET
Contemporary societies tend to extinguish the ancestral knowledge. They are not compatible with technological and cultural changes that impose different production rhythms and knowledge, leading to the extinction or musealization of traditional masters, techniques and materials. This stands for the masters and the manufacturing techniques of Jingdezhen. Imperial Marker comes from the desire to work with the delicate chinese porcelain traditional painting. But with no time to learn and improve the technique I decided to try blue felt markers commonly used to mark production defects during production process. It seemed a solution for an apparently insolvable problem. Imperial Marker revealed an unexpected effect, similar to an original blue cobalt glaze of imperial China.
#3 PLEASURE CUPS
Chinese erotic figures, rare to find nowadays, were part of the chinese sexual education. They were secretly placed by the mother of the bride in the bridal dowry. PLEASURE CUPS is a series of small erotic objects consisting of cups of porcelain and animal brushes used in traditional chinese calligraphy. Cat, horse, bear, billy goat and rooster are textures for games of pleasure.
#4 CLASSBOWLS
Chinas’s rapid development and social transformation has imposed changes in the use of everyday objects. The emerging middle class ceased to lead the cup to the mouth and to push the rice with the chopsticks. In the upper classes the cup remains on top of the table. Only the working and agricultural lower classes kept the popular way of eating. ClassBowls is a representation of the differences between social classes of contemporary China. The porcelain cups have different heights defined by the different lengths of the bamboo chopsticks.
#6 DRAGON MARKER
Poster exhibition at Museu do Oriente