The Mystery of the Song Dynasty Ge Kilns

By staff reporter HUO JIANYING

The double-ear Ge kiln vase auctioned for 10.5 million yuan in 2004.

THE Song Dynasty (960-1279) was a turbulent period in Chinese history. Its first Emperor Zhao Kuangyin seized power in a military coup d’état, but nomadic tribes and minority kingdoms repeatedly invaded Song territory until the dynasty was eventually overthrown in battle. Wary that his officials might imitate his own manner of conquest, upon ascending the throne Zhao Kuangyin controlled all martial power, but in so doing restricted the military development of his empire.

Zhao Kuangyin’s ruling strategy influenced his descendents, and succeeding Song emperors also emphasized economic and cultural development at the cost of military defense. Porcelain was a favorite of Song imperial families and officials, and the imperial government ran official kilns that fired porcelains exclusively for the imperial palace. Even as soldiers fought bloody battles against fierce invaders, the imperial kilns fired new styles of porcelain for pampered members of the imperial court. Ceramic wares produced in the five most famous official kilns of the Song Dynasty, namely the Ru, Guan, Ge, Ding and Jun kilns, are considered porcelain masterpieces that defy replication.

Styles and shapes of the ceramics produced were strictly defined by the emperor. Their quality was paramount, and even the tiniest flaw meant immediate destruction of a piece, no matter how beautiful. Consequently, few ceramic Song Dynasty wares, especially those from the Ru and Ge kilns, have been preserved. Ru wares number less than 100, and only 300 pieces of Ge ware have been unearthed. Antique collectors consider Song Dynasty official kiln porcelains as artistic treasures, and their prices continue to rise. One Ge kiln porcelain bowl was auctioned in New York for US $1.46 million, and another Ge kiln double-ear vase fetched 10.50 million yuan (approximately US $1.2 million) at auction in China.

Ge Kiln Ceramics

A Song Dynasty porcelain bowl from the Ge kiln.

Ge kiln ceramic excavations are always closely followed by experts and antique collectors. They are attracted not only by Ge kiln craftsmanship, but also its mysterious history.
China’s ceramics history dates back 3,000 years to the crude wares produced during the Shang Dynasty (C. 1600 BC – 1100 BC). In the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220), porcelain production skills progressed, and more varieties emerged with each succeeding dynasty. Ge wares, however, have always been the most outstanding of ceramic treasures. After the Song Dynasty, many craftsmen tried to reproduce Ge ware, but despite mastering the skill, they failed to create pieces anywhere near as beautiful in their refinement.

Ge kiln wares were simple yet elegant. They are indicative of the literary and aesthetic pursuits of the Song Dynasty ruling class, whose members spent on ceramic production techniques whatever was necessary to obtain pieces that satisfied fully their aesthetic desires. Even ceramic daily use utensils were so carefully and beautifully crafted as to appear ornamental rather than functional.

Cracks appearing on ceramic wares are either natural or artificial. The latter appear during the firing process, with the aid of the craftsman’s technical skills, while natural cracks occur as a result of changes in the weather or environment.

Varying sized cracks appear on Ge glazed ware that are artificially geared to resemble irregularly cracked ice. Their yellow and dark brown shades clearly distinguish them from other ceramics. The beauty of Ge ware cracks are coined in the phrase “golden iron thread.”

Another characteristic of Ge ware is its thick non-transparent glaze, smooth as jade with small translucent bubbles that form during the firing process. Most Ge ware is darkest at its unglazed base in shades of dark purple and brown, revealed at the mouth of the piece where the glaze is thinnest.

A fish-ear handled incense burner of the Ge kiln preserved in the Chinese Museum of History.

The color of the glaze on Ge wares is normally ivory, indigo, primrose or amber, in shapes imitating ancient bronze ritual objects. Daily use Ge kiln utensils include vases, incense burners, bowls, plates, jars, writing brush washers and incense burners. Ge ware is usually less than 30 cm tall.

For a long time, little was known about Ge ware because as most had formed part of imperial collections, little remained. In 1931, a Beijing antique dealer named Xiao Shunong was asked by a client to go to an old lady’s house to identify an object. He soon recognized it as a replica of little value, but as he was leaving he spied several flower pots under the eaves, among which was a Ge kiln writing brush washer. Xiao asked the old lady if she wanted to sell these apparently worthless articles, and she happily complied, accepting five pieces of silver for them. Xiao immediately kept aside the writing brush washer and sold the rest to a scrap collector. At that time, a Ge kiln writing brush washer was worth about 600 pieces of silver – enough to buy a hectare of farmland.

Mysterious Ge Kiln Sites

All five official kilns of the Song Dynasty, other than the Ge, were recorded in Song Dynasty historical documents. Records pertaining to the Ge kiln did not come to light until later dynasties.

Longquan County in Zhejiang Province was recorded in some Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) documents as site of the Ge kilns. In the early 20th century, when diggings of ancient ceramic wares by local farmers were reported, young history scholar Chen Wanli decided to go there and try his luck at finding the remains of a Ge kiln. To his surprise, materials he found in the old kilns of Longquan had both similarities to and clear differences from historical descriptions of Ge ware. Pieces from the Longquan kilns were less refined than those produced in Ge kilns due to a cruder technique, indicating that they were not court sponsored. The quality of glaze also differed, as the Ge ware glaze is not transparent, whereas that on the Longquan ceramics is crystal clear. The most obvious difference between Longquan and Ge ware lies in the cracks on Longquan ware, which made it clear that the pieces he found had been fired after the Song Dynasty. The young scholar thus proved that Longquan was definitely not the site of the Song Dynasty Ge official kiln.

In the 1930s, an historical relics expert found porcelain ware in the Forbidden City in Beijing that featured spectacular “golden iron thread” cracks. Further research and identification processes found it to match perfectly historical descriptions of Ge ware. Later, similar ceramics were unearthed in China and overseas, providing evidence that Song Dynasty kilns did actually exist. But the final mystery – the whereabouts of the site of the kiln – remains unsolved.

A mural kept in the Song Dynasty Official Kiln Museum in Hangzhou depicts the porcelain firing process.

In the process of searching out the site of the Ge kiln, researchers noticed that historical records mention old and new Ge kilns. Archaeological discoveries in Longquan indicate that it was site of the new Ge kiln, whose produce to some extent resembled that of the old Song Dynasty Ge kilns. Those found in Longquan were consequently named Longquan Ge kilns. Written accounts of the old Ge kilns are very simple, giving no information about their production techniques or location. They did, however, give the impression that the old Ge kiln wares had been produced much earlier and in limited quantities of a far more refined quality than those of the new kilns in Longquan.

After many years of painstaking effort, archaeological and cultural relic scholars are turning their attention to Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province as a possible site of the old Ge kiln.

According to historical records, the Song imperial court moved its capital from Bianjing (present Kaifeng) to Lin’an (present Hangzhou) on the southern bank of the Yangtze River after invasion by the Jin Kingdom to its north. Separated from the Song army by the Yangtze, the Jin army was forced to slow its pace of pursuit. This marked the start of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279). Upon settling in the new capital, the Song emperor began to decorate his new palace. He ordered the building of two official kilns, one in Jiaotanxia and the other in Xiuneisi, both near the capital, to make porcelain wares for the imperial court. The site of these kilns was an imperial secret, and when production stopped, all traces of it were removed. It was not until the 1980s that archaeologists found the remains of the Jiaotanxia kiln while excavating in Hangzhou.

After a heavy rain in Hangzhou in 1996, an outcrop of porcelain shards appeared. Further excavations revealed an old kiln with 7 firing stoves, one workshop and 24 porcelain shard pits. Skillfully made and beautifully shaped porcelains unearthed from the kiln included daily use utensils and large imperial court ritual objects imitating old bronze wares. Their characteristics tallied with descriptions in historical records of Song Dynasty official kilns.

A double-ear porcelain vase unearthed in Longquan, Zhejiang Province.

After several more years of research, investigation and scientific proving, experts now believe the kiln in Hangzhou to be the Xiuneisi kiln of the Southern Song Dynasty. Objects unearthed very much resemble Ge wares, and chemical analyses show that they have the same chemical content and structure. This substantiates the hunch of certain experts that Xiuneisi is site of Song Dynasty Ge kiln. But some experts caution against a final conclusion since these unearthed objects are later than the Song Dynasty while Ge kilns appeared much earlier, in the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127).

There are still a few anomalous aspects to the Ge conundrum, but historians and archaeologists are getting ever closer to solving the mystery of the Ge kilns.