Jingfa 京珐牌
Jingfa is the brand of the Beijing Enamel Factory, a cloisonné enamel (jingtailan) workshop formed in Beijing in 1956 by merging 42 private enamelling workshops with craftsmen who had worked for the imperial court. It produces cloisonné in six stages — design, body-making, wire-bending, enamelling and firing, grinding, and gilding. In 2006 the cloisonné technique was inscribed on China's first national list of intangible cultural heritage.
Archive record
China Time-honored Brand Digital Museum, Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM)
- Founded
- 1956
- Origin
- Beijing Beijing, China
- Category
- 金属工艺
- Status
- Beijing Time-honored Brand
- Designated
- 2014 Ministry of Commerce
The Archive
The House
The present factory was formed in 1956, when 42 private Beijing enamelling workshops — among them Dexingcheng, Dechang, Yangtianli, Jingtaicheng, and Mingshuncheng — were merged together with craftsmen from the workshop that had produced enamels for the imperial palace. It was renamed the state-run Beijing Enamel Factory in 1958, and restructured as a limited company in 2002. The house's museum, opened in 2012, is described as the first museum in China devoted to cloisonné.
The archive records the craft's deeper lineage separately: cloisonné reached China in the 13th century, carried by craftsmen brought west during the Mongol campaigns, and was at first known by names meaning "foreign vessel." It took hold in China during the Ming dynasty, and the name jingtailan comes from the Jingtai reign, when the blue glazes used as grounds were developed. Under the Qing it was produced at scale for the court. By the 1940s, the archive records, only about 60 craftsmen remained.
The factory has worked to standardize the craft: in 1963 it compiled the first written operating procedures and quality standards for cloisonné; in 1996 it drafted the national industry standard for cloisonné craft products, issued that June.
The archive states that from its founding until the early 1990s nearly all of the factory's cloisonné was exported, sold to more than 100 countries and territories, and that it accounted for over 70 percent of China's total cloisonné exports.
What They Make
Cloisonné enamel (Jingtai Lan): thin flat copper wires are bent into patterns and fixed to a copper body, the cells are filled with coloured enamel paste, and the piece is fired, ground smooth, and gilded.
The archive describes six stages — design, body-making (the body is hammered in parts and welded, a vase being made as neck, belly, and base); wire-bending, worked with tweezers; enamelling and firing, repeated three or four times; grinding, by hand for irregular pieces; and gilding.
Beyond vessels and display pieces, the archive records later extensions into interior and exterior architectural decoration and urban landscape work.
Timeline
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1956 | Factory formed from 42 private enamelling workshops; state-run from 1958 |
| 1963 | First written operating procedures and quality standards for cloisonné compiled |
| 1981 | Trademark registered as Jingfa |
| 1996 | National industry standard for cloisonné craft products issued |
| 2006 | Named a China Time-honored Brand by the Ministry of Commerce; cloisonné technique inscribed on China's first national intangible cultural heritage list |
| 2011 | Designated a national production-based protection base for intangible cultural heritage |
| 2012 | Museum of cloisonné art opened in Beijing |
| 2014 | Recognized as a Beijing Time-honored Brand by the Beijing association for time-honored brands |
| 2016 | Assessed as "China's No. 1 cloisonné house" by the China General Chamber of Commerce and the China Time-honored Brand Working Committee |
| 2019 | Listed as a national key cultural export enterprise |
Passing It On
The archive does not give a generational line. It states that the company has trained national- and municipal-level craft masters, senior craft artists, engineers, and senior technicians, and that it holds a large share of the cloisonné industry's national-level masters and senior technicians.
Source: China Time-honored Brand Digital Museum, Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), Beijing. Translated and condensed from the official Chinese archive; no information has been added. Statements of scale and standing are reproduced as recorded by the source.
Sources
Historical facts on this page are compiled from China Time-honored Brand Digital Museum, Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM). Designation recorded 2014. This page is editorial content; it is not a product listing and nothing here is an offer for sale.
Independence. Time-Honored Goods is an independent multi-brand store. We are not the official site of Jingfa, and we do not speak for the house. See Independence & Sourcing.