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March 2, 2015

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All fired up to restore classic porcelain

THE flask has a round rim, a fine straight neck, sloping shoulders and a phoenix head sculpture at the place of one handle. On its round flat body are intricate patterns painted in a blue derived from cobalt.

The vase made in the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) is on display at the Capital Museum in Beijing at an exhibition featuring artwork of Qinghua — known as “blue and white” in the West and undoubtedly the most influential and widely imitated of all Chinese ceramics.

It’s hard to imagine that when archeologists excavated this flask at a site in southern Beijing in the 1970s, it was smashed into 48 shards. The flask had sat in the museum’s warehouse for several decades until in 2003 when ceramics restoration specialist Jiang Daoyin made this treasure see the light of day.

“We (restoration specialists) are like doctors to ceramics,” Jiang, a Shanghai native, tells Shanghai Daily. “Holding scalpels as well, we are trying to make the relics return in good condition again with minimal injury.”

Restoration is an art of exact precision. Broken pieces unearthed from excavation sites need to be cleaned and then joined together. Missing parts have to be made that resemble the original as closely as possible.

The specialists need to have a vivid knowledge of China’s ceramics history, including all of their features in different periods, so they can paint original colors and patterns onto the ceramic with detailed research.

Meanwhile, restoration principles have to be followed. The whole process must be reversible so future generations have chances to restore it better. This is accomplished by using glue that can be removed with relative ease.

Traditionally, craftsman passed down their skills within the household to sons — never to daughters or sons-in-law. Practitioners were highly conservative and the essence of restoration skills was strictly kept. Though things changed after the “cultural revolution” (1966-76), not many craftsmen mastering this skill were willing to teach in the museums.

Jiang is now one of China’s top ceramic restoration experts. He has worked on more than 600 pieces in a career spanning over 30 years. He started out in a Peking Opera house in stage design after graduating from Shanghai. In 1973, the government assigned young Jiang to work at the Shanghai Museum specializing in ceramics restoration.

“Luckily my mentors taught me a lot,” he says. And he was dedicated.

“I had to be smart to learn the tricks of the skills. This meant waiting until my master wasn’t around to look at his books, or remembering a chemical by its smell to reproduce later,” he recalls.

When the blue-and-white flask arrived in Jiang’s hands, it was roughly joined and the gaps where parts were missing were filled with plaster. Its lid, ears and rings were missing.

“I didn’t realize how seriously the vase was destroyed until I cleaned it up. I saw all the pieces — a few of the biggest ones were of the same size as a palm while the others were quite small, some the same size as beans,” he recalls, adding that one-third of this flask was missing.

As the most renowned ceramics in China, Qinghua are of greatest value. A Yuan Dynasty blue-and-white jar is the most expensive ceramic ever sold at auction. One reached a “hammer price” of 14 million pounds (US$21.4 million) at a Christie’s auction in London in 2005, which according to the exchange rate of that day could purchase two tons of gold.

Reportedly during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) a great amount of Yuan Dynasty blue-and-white porcelain wares were destroyed for allegedly showing objection to its reign. Thus, Yuan Qinghua is a real prize due to its rarity, in addition to its exquisite production.

Jiang attempted to find the measurements of a similar flask at the Palace Museum in Beijing but did not get authorization. So he had to estimate the measurements by sight. He then drafted some plans and made the missing pieces in Jingdezhen.

Jingdezhen, which lies in Jiangxi Province, is China’s porcelain capital where the only traditional wooden-burning kiln in the country still lies.

“There is no way you can make the missing part in other areas in China, let alone in electronic kilns,” says Jiang. “The quality of the porcelain is different if it is made somewhere else.”

However, Jiang didn’t succeed the first time, as the parts didn’t fit to the flask. Undaunted, he returned to Beijing, where his perseverance finally won over the curator of the museum. He was allowed to photograph the flask for an accurate measurement.

He went back to Jingdezhen and found a kiln of the Yongle reign (1403-24). He carefully painted the remade missing parts, matching the brownish-green or inflated spots of the original.

“When you are making the missing parts and repairing the relics, you have to make sure it looks close to the antique ones. It’s like if you are healing an 80-year-old patient you can’t make him look like 18 years old after the whole process,” he says.

If there is a spot or even a flaw on the original, then the craftsman has to make sure it appears on the restored one as well.

Jiang took two years to complete the entire process. “Seeing it being appreciated by the visitors makes it all worthwhile,” he says.

“My responsibility is to return these works to their original beauty for future generations,” Jiang adds.

Included in the long list of antiques he has restored, a Ming Dynasty duck-shaped porcelain incense burner now on display in the Shanghai Museum is another “inexplicable wonderful experience” for the artist.

The incense burner in earth tone was smashed into 46 pieces when it left the imperial kiln in Jingdezhen. The pieces were buried for more than 500 years until they arrived at Jiang’s work table.

The burner was made for the emperor, but tradition dictated that only one or two best burners would be presented to him. The rest were smashed as soon as they left the kiln in order to assure the emperor’s item would be rare and customized.

The smallest shard of this burner was about the size of a fingernail.

“The most amazing and tricky part of ceramics is that there are so many factors that can unexpectedly affect how it turns out from the kiln,” Jiang says.

“Making the missing parts and matching the color for this incense burner was particularly difficult. The signature spinach green of the that period can only be achieved at 1,300 degrees Celsius; 200 degrees lower and it turns apple green,” he explains. “But you can’t settle the temperature and fire it in a modern electric kiln because a charcoal kiln yields a different effect. In the old days, temperature was judged by eyes.”

Jiang made a three-dimensional model based on the shapes and curves of the fragments and a vast number of parts in various sizes to make sure the restoration turned out just right.

After a year, Jiang was able to see his work: When incense burns inside the duck’s belly, smoke curls from its mouth.

“Tenacity and patience are the core qualities of a restorer,” he says.

Just as doctors will encounter patients with terminal diseases, not all ceramics can be repaired, according to Jiang. Cracked glaze, which is a natural crack phenomenon belonging to the cover coat of the porcelain, is a problem that is still unsolved.

“Now we don’t have the technique to restore cracked glaze porcelain,” says Jiang. “Restoring 80 percent of the object is the best result.”

Other methods of repairing ceramics

Kintsukuroi

A slim golden line flows along the crack of a black-glazed porcelain cup looking like a flash of lightening in dark night. The cup is broken and then fixed with lacquer dusted with powdered gold.

The restoring skill of ceramics — deliberately leaving smashing cracks of the ceramics — is called Kintsukuroi. The philosophy of this technique embraces the flaws and imperfections. It treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object rather than something to disguise.

The sophisticated techniques using lacquer were first developed in the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BC), and it became a highly artistic craft. The skill was later developed by Japanese and lacquer was used as the main material of fixing ceramics.

In addition to lacquer, the adhesive in repairing and attaching fragments of ceramics includes glutinous rice flour and egg white. The adhesive is usually mixed with gold, silver or platinum.

Missing parts of the porcelain ware can be replaced with gold lacquer compound, as well.

Staple repair

The other way to repair ceramic pieces is to drill small holes on either side of a crack and use metal staples bent to hold the pieces together. Compared with other ways of restoring ceramics, staple repair is firmer.

At the Tokyo National Museum, one of the featured antiques is a celadon glazed tea bowl made in China’s Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) in Longquan Kiln in southwestern Zhejiang Province.

The tea bowl was the favorite in a collection of a shogun in Japan, but since it had been circulated in Japan for a long time, the bottom of the bowl was damaged. The shogun sent the tea bowl back to China for repair, and when it was returned the crack was bridged with staples.

Since the shape of the staples looks like a leech, it is called “Bakohan” (leech in Japanese).




 

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