Xinshiwan Meitao 新石湾美陶

The House

Shiwan, in Foshan, has worked pottery for millennia: official materials record impressed pottery about five thousand years old, carbon-dated after excavation in 1977, and modelled tomb figures of the Eastern Han. From the Tang and Song the town shipped household ware overseas along the sea routes — a Northern Song source quoted in the official materials describe export ships from Guangzhou whose cargo was mostly pottery, packed large into small with no space to spare. In the Ming, production reached its height and divided into five branches: figure sculpture, animal sculpture, vessel forms, garden ceramics, and micro-sculpture.

By the late 1940s the Shiwan trade was organized in twenty-six guild rows, and the curio row — the Shiwan figurines — had become the town's representative product. In March 1956 the town government combined its pottery groups into the joint public-private Shiwan Art Ceramic Factory, with 482 workers; in 1958 the ceramic-carving workshop of the Guangzhou People's Art Society and the Shiwan craft production cooperative were merged into it, and it became the state-run Shiwan Art Ceramic Factory. The merge brought the town's senior hands together, among them Liu Chuan, whom official materials pair with Tianjin's Clay Figure Zhang as the two masters of Chinese pottery art, Liu of the south and Zhang of the north.

From the works came, over the following decades, eight masters of the China Arts and Crafts Master rank — Liu Chuan, Zhuang Jia, Liu Zemian, Mei Wending, Liao Hongbiao, Zeng Liang, Huang Songjian, and Liu Bing — together with two China Ceramic Art Masters and sixteen provincial ceramic masters. The house has worked under two brand names, Hongshi ("Red Lion") from 1956 and Meitao ("Art Ceramics") after it. Official materials record the Meitao brand winning the national gold quality award three times, the house placing first overall in the 1984 national trade quality appraisal, and figure groups from the Eighteen Luohans onwards taking China Arts and Crafts Hundred Flowers gold awards. Shiwan pottery sculpture was inscribed on the national intangible cultural heritage list in 2006, and the house was named a China Time-honored Brand in 2011.

What They Make

Shiwan figurines and art pottery in the five recorded branches — figure sculpture, animal sculpture, vessel forms, garden and architectural ceramics, and micro-sculpture — worked by hand. The hand methods are set out on the Shiwan ceramic sculpture craft page.

Timeline

Passing It On

The works have carried the Shiwan lineages forward: Liu Zemian (born 1937) and Liu Bing (born 1939) are recorded as fourth-generation members of the Liu Shengji pottery family, and Liu Jianfen (born 1963) and Liu Xueling (born 1965) as members of its fifth generation and inheritors of the craft at Foshan's municipal level. Official materials count the house's masters across the generations as eight at the national arts-and-crafts rank and eighteen at national ceramic and provincial rank.

Source: official materials published by Foshan New Shiwan Art Ceramic Factory Co., Ltd. Translated and condensed from the house's own record; no information has been added.

Historical facts on this page come from Official materials published by Foshan New Shiwan Art Ceramic Factory Co., Ltd. Designation recorded 2011-01-26. This page is editorial content; it is not a product listing and nothing here is an offer for sale.

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