In porcelain, matter and energy come together in a demiurgic embrace, and the small city of Jingdezhen has plenty of it. For more than a thousand years, it has been the porcelain capital of China. Before it was renamed Jingdezhen during the Northern Sung period, it was known as Chang Nan (昌南). Upon decreed to be the official supplier of imperial porcelain, skilled craftsmen from all over the country settled here. Seventeenth century European explorer-traders referred to this fragile translucent white substance after its place of origin, “chang nan” or as they mispronounced it, “chai-na”. Chang Nan became china and for early Europeans, the strange vast land where all this priced material came from was also, simply, China. In the history of porcelain, there is also the story of rich cross-cultural fertilization as Chinese and European technique, patterns and colours, mixed in a cloudy mess. Europeans imitated Chinese designs, made innovations, and Chinese in turn copied European designs.

Though Jingdezhen porcelain is still much coveted in China, most of the porcelain for daily use coming out of Jingdezhen as made-in-Jingdezhen porcelain, are now produced in Guangdong, because it has become cheaper to produce these there through systematised production methods. What is actually produced here in its kilns, are mainly imitation Chinese antiques, which fetch higher prices after applying the gloss of history, for antique markets all around the world.

As Manuel De Landa would argue offering a materialist history, Chang Nan, Jingdezhen, china, are just names that present the morphing flow of matter that enmeshes the blurred zones of what is nature and what is culture, what is authentic and what is not, what is of value and what is not.

official story: in a museum showcasing how porcelain was made in the past, by aging craftsmen still familiar with old ways. hand-painted glaze.

how it is done in a present-day workshop: pasting read-made stick-on patterns

after applying culture: imitation of the “most expensive antique ceramic auctioned in London” RMB 3689.

copy-antique street. notice soliciting the employment of craftsmen skilled in the painting of “blue and white patterns, landscape, flowers and birds, people and animals”

students from local ceramic school selling their self-made design at a sunday street market. 10 to 30 RMB.