Jingdezhen Imperial Kiln Museum is visionary of connecting people, time, and space through the historical exploration and contemporary application of once the world’s most important porcelain factory. Jingdezhen, known as the world’s capital city of ceramics, has been making the finest porcelains and offering jobs to more than 100,000 craftsmen with the single industry for over a thousand years. And if
Jingdezhen is compared to the crown of the ceramic industry, then the Imperial Kiln Factory was the pearl on this crown. Founded in 1369 AD, the Imperial Kiln Factory produced tons of porcelains for national ritual events and daily use of the royal families. In addition, the existence of the Imperial Kiln Factory facilitated the innovation of techniques, designs, and the training of craftsmen of the civilian kilns, and thus greatly promoted the popularity and markets of Jingdezhen porcelains.
Traditionally, Jingdezhen Imperial Kiln Museum is an archaeological site museum displaying the ruins, products, and history of the Imperial Kiln Factory. To begin with the plan of its new space, the museum has been dedicated, with the innovation of architecture, visiting experience, and Ceramic Gene Bank, to bringing history into the present and linking the space and heritage to its neighborhood and community.
The construction
Due to the huge scale and time length of its ceramic production, in the historical urban area centered around the National Archaeological Site Park of the Imperial Kiln Factory, Jingdezhen preserves vast amount and various types of alleys and kiln workshops from different periods. These buildings form an organic whole with unique layout, shape, color, and texture, which is not only a mark of historical vicissitudes, but also a contemporary cultural landscape. Among them, using recycled kiln bricks to build houses and all kinds of buildings is a significant character in Jingdezhen because brick kilns must be demolished every two or three years to keep a certain thermal performance of the kilns. Those bricks record warmth and are inseparable from the lifeblood of the city. In the past, the children would take a warm brick from the firing kilns to place in their schoolbags to keep themselves warm the whole day during freezing winter. In consequence, the plan of the Imperial Kiln Museum was aligned with the north-south street grid, with 8 unparalleled, liner, and arched brick vaults based on the traditional form of egg-shape kilns, embracing the open file of Imperial Kiln Ruins and surrounding neighborhood to welcome visitors from all entries of the city.
The visiting experience
The museum actively promotes the living protection and revitalization display of the Imperial Kiln site. On the basis of academic proofs and research, emphasis is placed on digital and trans-boundary expression, exploring the deep integration of culture and tourism, so as to revitalize the ancient Imperial Kiln culture in a more creative and imaginative way, and provide audiences with a new visiting experience.
In practice, the museum carries out the “borderless” concept and blends itself well into the lanes and alleys, and more importantly the people of the surrounding historical community.
Firstly, archaeological excavation sites, sorting rooms, restoration rooms, science and technology rooms, and specimen rooms of the museum can all be scheduled for visits. In year 2023, more than 2 million people visited the museum, and about 6% of the visitors had the chance of witnessing and even hand-on experience on how ceramic archaeology and restoration was conducted.
Secondly, exhibition content is extended and fully integrated into the national archaeological site park and the surrounding Taoyangli Historical District. The museum leads and invites various artists to participate in the planning and execution of supporting exhibition plans within the archaeological site and historical district. In addition, and for example, in collaboration with the Museum Guimet in France, the virtual device of the porcelain ceiling of the Santos Palace in Lisbon, Portugal is reasonably placed on the kiln site in the neighborhood which used to produce porcelains for export. The museum also invites neighborhood residents, archaeologists, ceramic craftsmen, etc. as joint curators and commentator writers.
Furthermore, it is important to the museum that the relevant community should not be limited to its space and national boundary. As a result, with the strong support of many peers, the museum initiated the Society of International Ceramic Studies in October 2023. This society has gathered scholars and curators from 89 well-known cultural and museum institutions and research institutes around the world, aiming to integrate porcelain collection, archaeology, and research resources, and jointly tell the story of porcelain. Backed up by such a customized and efficient network, the museum will have much better means to bring full access of relevant exhibit items and resources to its visitors.
The ceramic gene bank
Just like human being, the look, the color, the body of ceramics are also decided by “genes”, that is, the material and the way they were made of. Based on more than 20 million pieces of archaeological specimens unearthed in Jingdezhen over the past 40 years, the museum, with Jingdezhen Institute of Ceramic Archaeology as its sub-division, initiated the Jingdezhen Ancient Ceramic Gene Bank in June 2022. The Bank refers to the sum of all individual genes of ancient ceramics made in 9th-20th centuries in Jingdezhen area, including physical specimens and digital database.
When a specimen is made, core information on its archaeology, shape, decoration, body, glaze, color, pigment, and mark can be extracted by means of science and scientific testing equipments, as well as extended information such as relevant collections of other museums, similar findings from ancient shipwrecks and ruins, records from historical literature, and modern research. And based on the retrieved information, the museum has been building a knowledge-graph-based, orderly open database to share with the public.
The establishment of the Jingdezhen Ancient Ceramic Gene Bank is significantly promoting research on ancient society and history, identification of ancient ceramics, and restoration of ancient ceramic craftsmanship. In addition, contemporary cultural and tourism applications are made possible through plans of exhibition and development of creative products etc.