Can not help but share this Shiwan tea up that 蕭忠明 shared on Facebook. These kind of utilitarian Shiwan pottery objects are especially beautiful to me.

Shiwan Ceramics and Pottery Art Gallery eMuseum

This is an eMuseum where anyone can post Shiwan ceramics and pottery examples, not to be confused with an actual reputable museum.

https://aggv.ca/emuseum/search/shiwan

Shiwan Ceramic Gungjai Figurines

(Shiwan Ceramics, Beauty, Color and Passion)
tinyurl.com/10i4f46u

The Cantonese word gungjai has no exact English translation, but is best rendered as Shiwan "art pottery figurines". The development of this small sized figure sculpture became a hallmark of Shiwan art. According to He Bingcong, a well known Hong Kong potter, author, and teacher of on Shiwan gungjai " became the sound of the hearts of the people of Guangdong". Despite the efforts of many potters gungjai expression could not be translated into the medium porcelain.

Many figure sculptures traditionally recognized as being early pieces display a full glaze of the entire figure, but the essence of the potters recognition of the unique characteristic of their clay material was the use of a combination of glazes for the clothes, leaving flesh areas unglazed.

The figure of Shou Xing in illustration 10 makes it tempting to wonder if this unique discovery of the Shiwan artists came as a result of the interplay between the early wares of Zu Tang Ju and Wu Nan Shi Tang, the first glazed and the second unglazed. This figure falls into the traditionally recognized Zu Tang Ju category, but the flesh areas remain unglazed allowed the artist much greater detail in facial features, which led to the ability to display a range of human character and emotion. Once the artists embarked on the new style, the older pieces with full glaze were appreciated for their archaic gungjai flavor.

The potters pulled their subject matter from a wide range of historical religions, and folklore subjects, many derived from the Cantonese opera, and into these they put the emotions they felt and witnessed in daily life. Some artists such as Liu Zuochao, departed from the usual subject matter of history and folklore and sculpted the common people, showing their physical deformities and even grief. In his harelipped nun (80), Zuochao has successfully conveyed the pathos and hard life of his character. A twin photograph of apparently the same subject by the same artist (13) demonstrates  Zuochao's psychological study of this personality and displays a completely different behavioral stance in which the nun attempts to compensate for her deformity with pride and perhaps slight arrogance.

The forms of Shiwan figure sculptures embraced the spectrum of gong su (labored sculpture) and yi su (abstract of impressionistic sculpture). The former comprised the labored technique of the carefully defined lines and robe folds of a Pan Yushu or a Liu Chuan. The latter comprised the much freer impressionistic style of sculpture of a Chen Zu or Zeng Liang. The potters also distinguished between sculptures with jie shou (simplified hands) and those with cuo shou (rolled hands). The former method resulted in a more reasonable priced figure since the potter too shortcuts, such as using a single lump of clay for a hand and separating the fingers with a wooden knife. From a marketing perspective, a figure made by the later method would be double or triple the price of the former, since the artist would carefully roll out each finger from a separate piece of clay, joining them together afterward in a realistic manner to make a hand.

Symbols And Rebuses In Shiwan Ceramic Ware

Terese Tse Bartholomew

The artistic pottery of Shiwan includes many objects produced for household use, such as vessels and wall vases of many shapes and forms, oil lamps, items for the scholar's desk, objects for household alters, and decorative pieces like the famous figurines and sculptures of Shiwan. While some of these household articles are plain and are admired for their elegant shapes and beautiful glazes, others are decorated with auspicious designs and are appreciated for their symbolic meanings. Although some designs in Chinese art are purely ornamental, the majority have some auspicious significance. The Chinese believe that by surrounding themselves with auspicious motifs, their wishes will come true. These motifs represent hidden wishes of the Chinse, the basic wishes for blessing, wealth, and longevity.

By decoding and analyzing these decorative motifs, it is possible to understand the function of a piece and the intention of the buyer or giver. Is it a wedding gift? Is it intended for a birthday? Besides the general wishes for blessings, wealth and longevity, people from different walks of life wish for different things. In the old days, the rulers of China might long for peace in the universe (tianxia taiping), a bumper harvest (wugu fendeng) and a reign without end (yitong wannian, government officials might hope for high position and wealth (yuyang fugui), that they might rise rapidly in rank (mashang fenghou), and that their ranks might pass on to their descendants (guandai chuanliu), merchants desired wealth, so their households could be filled with "gold and jade" (jinyu mantang), and scholars hoped to pass their national civil service examinations and to place first among the three final ones (lianzhong sanyuan). Some of these wishes are represented by symbols, such as a peach for longevity, a pomegranate for numerous offspring, or Liu Hai, as a youth, with his three legged toad and sting of cash, for wealth. More often than not, these desires appear as four character phrases. Sometimes they are written out in full on art objects, or household vessels, or they may appear as a rebus or pictorial pun, a grouping of seemingly unrelated objects signifying a short phrase or idea. For example, a popular motif for indicating a rapid rise in rank is a horse carrying a monkey on its back. This is a pun on the phrase mashan fenghou, which translates, "May you immediately be elevated to the rank of marquis". To make the meaning unmistakable, the bee is incised on the shoulder of the horse.

The use of rebuses is very prominent in Chinese art because many words in the Chinese language share the same pronunciation. This linguistic characteristic creates endless opportunities for punning, not only in daily speech, but in art as well. Except for a few local variations, the symbols and rebuses found on Shiwan ceramic ware are traditional ones used elsewhere in China. 

Shiwan Ceramics Waste Materials and Kiln Accidents Create Unequaled Variety in Flambe Glaze ( Cat Nos, 18-27)

(Shiwan Ceramics, Beauty, Color and Passion)
tinyurl.com/10i4f46u

Foshan's concept of putting waste materials to good use was central to the development of Shiwan art pottery. Whether of not there is any truth in the oral tradition that some of the Shiwan potter ancestors came from the Jun kilns in Henan Province, it is certain that the range of color, and variation in flambe glazed developed by the Shiwan potters is much greater than that seen in Jun ware, or for that matter flambe glazes produced anywhere else. The generally poor economic conditions of the potters would encourage stringent use of all materials without waste (as compared with the imperially supported kilns), but also creative use of waste materials such as the mirrors from discarded opera costumes or rust shaved off old watch springs.

Added to these ingredients was the interaction of the potters with the inconstant conditions of the dragon kilns, always adding an incalculable element. This incalculable element could, of course, ruin a glaze, but sometimes (such as 68) added a miraculously fitting touch, the fire's contribution to the artistic creation.

These conditions resulted in the creation of a myriad of unique glazes ( 18-27) and an appreciation for kiln accidents such as the "melastoma flower" (19) glaze which was misfiring of "pomegranate red".

The creation of imaginative names for these varied glazes was as much the domain of the dealers and collectors as of the potters themselves, who proudly state that even they did not know all the names given to their glazes. Names such as tiger skin, leopard skin, pomegranate red, peacock's feather, and sesame seed were coined to describe both color and configuration. In like fasion the glaze of the figure holding a bamboo pipe (24) was named red date red by collector Albert Cheng, who noticed its similarity to the red dates he was serving. The glaze on the seated Lohan (25) defied the ability of the exhibit organizers to describe, hence they have left its naming up to the ingenuity of the viewers of the exhibition.