Millennial Porcelain Capital, Colorful Liling (Part 3): Liling Ceramic Museum (Continued)

Liling's ceramic production has a history of nearly two thousand years. During the Eastern Han Dynasty, there were large-scale workshops engaged in pottery production in the suburbs near Liling County (now Xinyang Nan Bamboo Mountain, Wangping, Hetang and other villages). The production of celadon began during the Song and Yuan dynasties. In 1908, Liling created and invented the famous underglaze polychrome porcelain, which is made by first painting patterns on the semi-finished product, then applying glaze and firing it in a high-temperature kiln. After firing, the pattern is covered by a layer of transparent glaze, making it appear crystal clear and bright. It combines the beauty of the body, glaze, craftsmanship, shape, and color decoration, possessing high aesthetic value and cultural significance. The underglaze polychrome porcelain won the gold medal at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, USA, which took Liling ceramics to the pinnacle of art and industrial development. The production process of underglaze polychrome porcelain is extremely tedious and complex, and very difficult. First, top-quality porcelain clay is selected for the embryo, and processes such as sedimentation, slag filtration, and iron absorption are carried out before shaping to ensure that the porcelain clay is free of other impurities. Shaping requires the porcelain body to be polished very thin and smooth. The pigments used for porcelain painting come from glaze materials, rare earths, and colored metal minerals, some of which contain precious metals like gold, making them very valuable. Polychrome porcelain is not only beautiful and generous but also has the advantages of being abrasion-resistant, acid and alkali-resistant, lead-free, and never fading. Due to the environmentally friendly and lustrous characteristics of underglaze polychrome porcelain, since 1958, Liling ceramics have been selected as the daily-use porcelain, state banquet porcelain, display porcelain, and gift porcelain for Mao Zedong and other party and national leaders, becoming the prestigious 'national porcelain' and 'red official kiln'. Liling's Qunli Porcelain Factory has repeatedly made daily-use porcelain for Chairman Mao, which is also known as 'Mao porcelain'. 'Mao porcelain' represents the ultimate in underglaze polychrome porcelain and also represents the highest level of Liling's porcelain-making industry at that time. Since then, Liling has also made special porcelain for many leaders at home and abroad, further enhancing the reputation of Liling ceramics around the world. 'Wan Zi Qian Hong' Tableware (Picture 9): Hall 118 of the Great Hall of the People, which was Chairman Mao Zedong's favorite hall, where he worked, held meetings, received foreign guests, and rested all year round. The black ground full-flower Chinese tableware used in the hall was finely crafted in Liling. The painting adopts Liling's traditional underglaze color porcelain hand-painted Fen Shui decoration technique, ingeniously blending various precious flowers, with each containing elements of the other, some budding and some passionately blooming, competing in beauty, giving a sense of a splendid and luxurious floral tapestry, reflecting the prosperous scene of the harmonious coexistence of China's multi-ethnic family. 'Dan Feng Chao Yang' Tableware (Picture 10): Put into use in 2001, it is the first time since the founding of the People's Republic of China that the Great Hall of the People has officially used special tableware with a dedicated design for a state banquet. Due to the special nature of the state banquet, the design of this set of porcelain uses the national flower peony and the Chinese auspicious totem phoenix as decorative elements, and since the phoenixes all fly towards the national emblem, it is named 'Dan Feng Chao Yang'. 'Sheng Shi Fang Hua' Tableware (Picture 11): Put into use in 2018, it uses the national flower peony as the design material, and is exquisitely crafted using traditional entwined branch decoration techniques and Liling's pure hand-painting skills. The tableware pattern design is ingenious and continuous, with bright and gorgeous color matching, possessing a very strong Chinese cultural characteristic without losing a modern fashion sense. Liling Ceramic Museum