Domestic documentaries have indeed made a name for themselves in recent years, especially in the field of traditional culture, and there are many excellent works.
No, I dug up a must-see treasure high-scoring documentary "I Am Your Porcelain".
As we all know, in English, "porcelain (China)" and "China" are the same word, which shows that China is a veritable homeland of porcelain.
More than 1,000 years before Europe mastered porcelain-making techniques, China was able to produce quite fine porcelain.
Chinese porcelain was once a high-end luxury item exported overseas.
The treasure documentary "I Am Your Porcelain" helps everyone easily fill in the blind spots of knowledge in porcelain, and improve the aesthetics while increasing knowledge.
Let modern people appreciate the traditional aesthetics and craftsmanship spirit through the beautiful Chinese porcelain.
It is highly recommended for those who are going to Jingdezhen to watch this documentary before going to avoid stepping on the pit.
I'm your porcelain
Played by: Ken Zi
Starring: Yu Entai / Li Yugang / Luo Tianyi
Genre: Documentary / Historical
Country/Region of Production: Chinese mainland
Language: Mandarin Chinese
Premiere: 2022-06-11 (Chinese mainland)
Number of episodes: 5
Episode duration: 30 minutes
"I Am Your Porcelain" invited Yu Entai to serve as the voice-over, and in the mischievous narration of "Lu Xiucai", a porcelain painting scroll spanning thousands of years slowly unfolded.
Different from the seriousness and dryness of traditional documentaries, the overall style of "I Am Your Porcelain" is witty and humorous, and it can be included in the ranks of electronic mustard.
Porcelain has the meaning of "good friend, good buddy" in Beijing dialect.
Porcelain, like our old friend, is a daily dealing, but also the artistic crystallization of traditional Chinese aesthetics and craftsman spirit.
It looks ordinary, but it is very mysterious, coming from mud and fire, but it is as clean as jade.
It's time to get to know this porcelain again.
"I Am Your Porcelain" has a total of five episodes: "Pure Color Dazzling", "Blue and White of the World", "Colorful Blend", "Fighting for Beauty" and "The World of Porcelain".
Take you to Jingdezhen, the thousand-year-old porcelain capital, and enter the dazzling world of porcelain, which may subvert your perception of porcelain.
Brush it all in one go, and you'll be addicted.
When it comes to Chinese porcelain, you can't fail to mention Jingdezhen.
If China is the representative of the world's porcelain, then Jingdezhen porcelain is the representative of Chinese porcelain.
Jingdezhen began producing ceramics as early as the Han Dynasty.
The emperors of all dynasties appointed Jingdezhen to supervise the production of porcelain for the court.
Song Zhenzong named this dream-making city with his own era name: Jingde.
Director Guan Zijian, who has been rooted in Jingdezhen for eight years, specializes in shooting porcelain, and is a senior "Jingpiao".
In 2017, he filmed another high-scoring documentary "Handmade China", which laid the foundation for the creation of this documentary.
Jingdezhen is a fourth-tier city, which should be a place of population outflow, but Jingdezhen is a city of population inflow.
There are even many foreigners who come here to make ceramics and settle in Jingdezhen as "Jingpiao".
Artisans and ceramics give this town a special meaning.
"I Am Your Porcelain" takes the audience through the streets and alleys of Jingdezhen, visiting those craftsmen who hide the dragon and crouching tiger, including the inheritors of ceramic families, entrepreneurs who explore new technologies, and inspirational stories of becoming bosses from apprentices......
In each short story, the history of different genres of porcelain is introduced.
From simple monochrome glaze, to blue and white, pastel, bucket color......
What flows on the porcelain is the history of color breaking free from the shackles.
The development of mainland porcelain has gone through a process from simple to complex.
From monochrome to multi-colored, from unglazed to glazed, from underglaze to overglaze,
It has gradually developed into a complex process of underglaze and overglaze co-painting.
"I Am Your Porcelain" begins with an introduction to the aesthetics of the early days of porcelain: monochrome glaze.
I have to be impressed by the aesthetics of the ancients, and the dazzling array of colors, from simple and elegant to bright and generous, is eye-opening.
Monochrome glaze is a solid color porcelain without any pattern on the surface.
In ancient times, the glaze color was colored with natural minerals, so the color was natural and simple, bright and vulgar.
The earliest porcelain in China, celadon, is a monochrome glaze.
The plain blue-gray and blue-gray, full of luxury, do not lose the popular Morandi color.
Each color of the monochrome glaze represents the preference of an emperor.
Emperor Xuande liked green, so he had green glaze.
Emperor Kangxi likes red, so he has Lang red and eggplant purple.
Whatever color the emperor likes, Jingdezhen is what color.
"The plain embryo outlines the blue and white brushstrokes", a song by Jay Lun makes the blue and white porcelain popular all over the country.
Blue and white porcelain, also known as white ground blue and white porcelain, often referred to as blue and white, is one of the four traditional famous porcelains in Jingdezhen.
Appeared in the Tang Dynasty, matured in the Yuan Dynasty, and became one of the mainstream porcelain products in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Blue and white porcelain is made of cobalt ore containing cobalt oxide as raw material, and the decoration is depicted on the ceramic body.
It is then covered with a layer of transparent glaze and fired at high temperature.
After firing, the cobalt material presents a unique blue-blue pattern, which is the blue and white porcelain we are familiar with.
The film interviews several blue and white porcelain craftsmen with different styles.
Some take the traditional route, and some use modern techniques to innovate.
For example, Yu Shan, who learned Kangxi's blue and white painting method, restored the seventy-two processes of Jingdezhen porcelain burning, and he was a traditional blue and white porcelain craftsman.
There are also artists who collect antique blue and white porcelain pieces and find inspiration from the creations of the ancients.
His integration of ink into the creation of blue and white porcelain is refreshing.
There is also Luo Xiaocong, a professor at the University of Ceramics who combines printmaking with blue and white porcelain.
The ingenious creation of blue and white porcelain prints has brought this ancient craft into the ranks of modern art.
In addition to the steady and simple blue and white porcelain, there is also a type of colorful porcelain that is the most popular.
Bold red, seductive pink, bright green, bright gold......
It is a scenery there, and a lotus pond in your hand.
It is the art of porcelain, but also the knowledge of painting, it is called glaze color.
Overglaze color is to use a variety of color materials to paint on the glaze surface of porcelain that has been fired, and then enter the kiln for the second time to solidify the color materials at low temperature.
The most important thing is the painting technique, which is a ceramic art that tests the painting skills.
The documentary visited Li Leiying, a master in the colored porcelain world.
She is good at drawing traditional Chinese style baby play pictures on ceramics,
Skillful brushwork is more slippery than drawing on paper.
These cute and foul images are endowed with a sense of warmth and transparency by ceramics.
It is a texture that is not found in paintings on paper, and this is the charm of colored porcelain.
The most involuted industry in Jingdezhen is ultimately competed in art skills, and each craftsman has a direction to specialize in and a subject matter that he is good at.
Cui Di is a master of painting fish, and she has moved the underwater world to white porcelain.
She uses a technique called red and green color, which dates back to the Song Dynasty and is a 1.0 version of overglaze.
In Jingdezhen, the painting of pastels always reveals a kind of painter's sublimity.
The subtle chromatic differences can be precisely controlled by the pastel washing technique, which gives ceramic artisans unprecedented freedom to become painters.
Ma Weidu once displayed several exquisite ceramic tea bowls in the Douyin live broadcast room: "These small cups are all painted in pastel, and they are painted to a limit, no different from the official kilns of the Yongzheng period." ”
These small pastel porcelain cups all come from the same kiln - Xu kiln in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province.
Xu Zhijun, the founder of Xu Yao, has been studying pastel technology for 24 years.
He wanted to find a craft that could be done well for decades and would not change easily.
This is the craftsman spirit of Jingdezhen.
In Jingdezhen, where craftsmen have been passed down from generation to generation, the "second generation of Jing" is not good.
The colored porcelain created by Li Jueming was often disliked by his old father.
But he still regularly put his painted porcelain works in the box and respectfully held them to guide his father.
Don't look at being criticized by the old father, but Li Jueming's craftsmanship is actually not bad.
He applied the pattern on the spring of a lotus jade pot in the Yongzheng period to the bowl, and the finished product was very amazing.
The delicate brushstrokes and elegant composition make people forget the vulgar, and they are really strict and apprentices.
From a porcelain piece with "Tianzier" written on it, to a porcelain vase with a hundred flowers in full bloom.
From Chenghua to Yongzheng, there are more than the names of emperors who have walked through.
What flows on porcelain is the history of color breaking free from shackles, and it is also the history of the emancipation of artistic concepts.
Inheritance and innovation, like two gears, drive the progress of human civilization.
In "I Am Your Porcelain", we see those amazing porcelain.
There are lotus flowers blooming, men and women feasting, from a pair of wings to a sky, mountains full of wild flowers, blue peaks, noisy markets......
It is better to say that porcelain is a fantasy world created with craftsmanship.
There's a saying in the film that says it beautifully: created by one eye, possessed by another.
If we didn't have those colors on porcelain, how would we spend a long and boring night?
If there is no porcelain, our nation may only be black and white in the history books.
Porcelain condenses China's past and present, and has endured for thousands of years.
"I Am Your Porcelain" is such a good-looking and moving documentary, which not only popularizes the knowledge of porcelain, but also pulls in the distance between us and porcelain.
The most touching thing is that China, as the homeland of porcelain, has inherited the talent and patience of the craftsmen of its predecessors.
The craftsmen who silently make porcelain in the film have a calmness that is rare in modern times.
They treat porcelain like their own children, not just a means of livelihood.
After watching this documentary, I can't help but want to go to Jingdezhen to take a look.
Feel the long-lost spirit of Chinese craftsmen.
*This article was written by RAMA