Jimu news reporter Xu Ying
Correspondent Ding Yan
In 1974, cultural cadres from the Wuchang County (now Jiangxia District, Wuhan City) Cultural Center and the Echeng County (now Ezhou City) Museum in Hubei Province discovered the ruins of ancient porcelain kilns in both places. This is the "Husi kiln site" that fills the gap in the history of ancient porcelain kilns in Hubei.
On the first working day after the New Year's Day holiday in 2022, on January 4, the "Song Kiln Relics and Lakes Si Fenghua - Exhibition of Cultural Relics and Specimens Excavated from the Wuhan Lake Si Kiln Site Group" opened at the Wuhan Museum and held a press conference. This is the first time in the 48 years since the discovery of Husi Kiln that cultural relics and specimens have been displayed to the public, including the collections of many museums and folk collection institutions such as Wuhan Museum, Wuhan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, Hubei Provincial Museum, Wuhan Jiangxia District Museum, Jinxiu Mountain Villa Culture and Art Village, Wuhan Great Song Wuchang Kiln Research Institute, etc. Wang Ruihua, director of the Wuhan Museum, said happily, "If you never forget it, there will be an echo." If you work hard for a long time, you will reap the rewards. ”
Piece by piece of cultural relics has a strong atmosphere of life
The Jimu News reporter saw at the scene that the exhibition hall not only displayed the restoration scene of the Husi kiln, the fine porcelain of the Husi kiln with good quality, but also displayed the specimens of the Husi kiln.
The exhibition is divided into four units: "Pearl Reproduction", "Craftsman craftsman", "Xiaojia Jasper" and "Replay of Zhuhua", exhibiting 329 cultural relics and specimens (sets), including 9 national first-class cultural relics (sets), detailing the discovery process and archaeological work of the Husi porcelain kiln site group, the Song Dynasty ceramic firing process, the characteristics of Husi kiln products, and the protection and utilization of the Husi kiln site group in recent years. For the first time, the Husi Kiln Site Group, a kiln site group with local characteristics in Wuhan, was sorted out and displayed in detail, showing the appearance of the Song Dynasty porcelain handicraft industry in Wuhan and the wisdom and creativity of the Song Dynasty porcelain craftsmen.
Xu Zhibin, deputy director of the Wuhan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, pointed to a Song Dynasty shadow cucumber ridge porcelain pot unearthed from Xinzhou Bapu and said, "This is still dug up by my own hands." He remembers that in 1989, a batch of Husi kiln artifacts were excavated from the tomb of Xinzhou Bapu, with pots and bowls.
There is also a national first-class cultural relics blue glazed melon ridge porcelain holding pot, which is a representative work of Husi kiln. This jug was unearthed from a Northern Song Dynasty tomb at Baiquan Farm in Wuhan's Dongxihu District. The whole body is glazed with a mellow glaze and a regular shape. It is both a practical wine container and a beautiful decoration.
A piece of "shadow blue glazed porcelain pillow" excavated in Husi Town, Jiangxia District in 1996 allows the audience to feel the unique "human fireworks" given to porcelain by porcelain craftsmen in the Song Dynasty. This porcelain pillow is in the shape of a pavilion, the roof is a pillow surface, and the windows on the walls are tightly closed. Inside the pavilion, there are two people playing against each other, two people watching the battle, surrounded by green trees outside the pavilion, and the artistic conception is elegant and pleasant. The porcelain pillow shape is unique, the texture is delicate, and the carving, plastic, skeletonization and other processes are integrated, which is a fine product in the Husi kiln porcelain. According to reports, this cultural relic was collected by several archaeologists, and finally found that it was a cultural relic. Such an artifact has never been seen in published archaeological data.
Husi kiln breaks the saying that "Baiyun Yellow Crane no porcelain kiln"
According to the press conference, the Husi kiln flourished in the middle and late Northern Song Dynasty. The Song Dynasty was the era of the great development of Chinese porcelain, porcelain became the main daily necessities of society, the kiln sites of the production of Song porcelain were all over the country, the scale of production continued to expand, and the porcelain industry with different characteristics developed unprecedentedly. However, there are few records of the development of porcelain making in Wuhan in the classics, so that there is a saying that "Baiyun Yellow Crane has no porcelain kiln". Until 1974, archaeologists found the Site of Husi Porcelain Kiln in Xiaci Bay, Jiangxiahusi Commune, Wuhan, which opened up the true face of the history of porcelain firing in Wuhan more than 1,000 years ago and filled the gap in the history of ancient porcelain in Wuhan.
Located in the rolling hills along Liangzi Lake and Axe Lake in Jiangxia District, Wuhan, the Husi Kiln Site Group is densely distributed along the lake with an area of 1.7 million square meters in the area along the lake, which is about 40 kilometers long from north to south and about 30 kilometers wide from east to west. Husi kiln was originally founded in the late Tang Dynasty and continued until the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, with the Song Dynasty dominating. The kiln site group is large in scale, numerous and densely distributed, and is the most representative folk porcelain kiln site group in Hubei Province. The existence and development of its porcelain industry provides a concrete example for the southward shift of the economic center of gravity in the two Song Dynasties, and also provides rich, sufficient, informative and typical physical examples and scientific basis for studying the cultural accumulation level, kiln structure and construction method, porcelain firing process, and types of celadon and blue-and-white porcelain in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. A large number of celadon and blue and white porcelain have been excavated from the kiln site group, with rich types, diverse shapes and exquisite ornamentation, reflecting the high level of porcelain making technology and unique artistic aesthetic characteristics at that time. On June 25, 2001, the "Husi Kiln Site Group" was announced by the State Council as the fifth batch of national key cultural relics protection units.
Due to historical reasons, the cultural relics excavated from Husi Kiln are collected in hubei provincial museums, wuhan museums, wuhan cultural relics and archaeology research institutes, Jiangxia district museums and other cultural institutions, and there are also a small number of private collections. The Wuhan Museum will display the fine works unearthed from the Husi kiln in the form of an exhibition for the first time, which not only allows the citizens of Wuhan to fully understand the historical development of the porcelain industry in Wuhan, but also a panoramic review and prospect of the archaeological excavation and protection achievements of the Husi kiln.
The exhibition will last until May 2022, and the public can get close to Husi Kiln and feel the unique charm of Wuhan's local historical development.