How It Is Made
Official materials record the working methods as carving and shaping combined — cutting away and building up the same clay body — and notes that in practice the methods below are usually woven together in one work.
1. Carving (kesu). With a knife or hard tool the worker cuts, scrapes, and engraves the leather-hard body into raised and sunk patterns — lettering, landscapes, figures, animals, flowers, or ornament — and hollows out solid clay where the form wants it. Cutting the line's surroundings away leaves the line itself standing in low relief.
2. Pinching (niansu). The work is shaped mainly by hand, kneading and pinching the clay, with little trimming. It is used for small clay sketches and for freer, broader pieces — ridge figures, flower ridges, miniature landscapes, and the flower ornaments of vessels — where the softness and rhythm of the clay are kept visible.
3. Appliqué (tiesu). Flowers and ornaments, pinched by hand or pressed from moulds, are stuck onto the body. Official materials record this as a speciality of the Shiwan ridge figures (wazhi gongzai) and flower ridges, and notes that from the early 1960s the makers reworked its forms and firing so the ridge figure moved from the roof ridge to the indoor table.
4. Pressed relief (nansu). Clay is rolled into bars or blocks and pressed with the fingers onto the surface to raise figures and scenery above the plane — official materials also calls it floating sculpture. Used on flowerpot walls, murals, and ridge work, it takes perspective like a half-raised painting of hills, birds, or figures, finished with inscription and seal.
5. Throwing (lasu). A clay ball set at the centre of the turning wheel is opened and drawn up between the hands into a round vessel, then sculpted further; thrown forms can also be joined to one another into new shapes.
6. Roll-building (juansu). Clay is rolled into slabs and wound into hollow cylindrical bodies — keeping the work hollow saves material and weight, dries faster, and cracks less in firing. It is a common method for fired originals, and the soft clay takes free, spontaneous forms.
7. Coil-building (pansu). Clay is rolled into ropes and coiled ring upon ring into the body, a method for straight-walled forms that keeps the soft rhythm of the coil visible in the finished surface.
Related Houses
- 新石湾美陶 (Xinshiwan Meitao) — Foshan New Shiwan Art Ceramic Factory
Co., Ltd., Foshan, Guangdong
Source: official materials published by Foshan New Shiwan Art Ceramic Factory Co., Ltd. Craft record from the house's own published record; condensed and translated, with no information added.