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Magical Hands Restore History Passages
The smell of alcohol and other chemicals sting my eyes and my nose each time I enter the Ancient Ceramics Reparation Section, on the fifth floor of the Shanghai Museum, but it is worth it to hear the impelling stories told by Jiang Daoyin, the nation's top expert in repairing ancient Chinese ceramics.
Jiang's smile reflects the pride that he has for his work and his eyes shine with wisdom. This man in his 50s takes out another piece he has just finished and asks, "Can you find where it was broken��" A new story would thus begin.
Jiang's love of art began as a child and he learned to paint from an early age too. In 1966, he graduated from the Shanghai Opera School and worked as a choreographer for six years in a Peking Opera troupe. In 1973, he was transferred to the Shanghai Museum.
He has now worked at the museum for the past 28 years, working on broken jars, plates, incense burners and numerous potentially valuable ceramics. China is a country of porcelain.
Countless highly valuable works, steeped in history are still treasured in museums and by collectors around the world, although sadly many pieces have also been lost along the way.
For ceramic experts and historians, restoring a broken work can sometimes renew a passage of history. Searching for the hidden truth is what Jiang Daoyin has been doing.
When Jiang first arrived at the Shanghai Museum in 1973, he quickly realized that repairing ancient ceramics was a highly secretive skill, just like traditional Chinese medicine and the Chinese martial arts. The skill of a certain field was regarded as a family secret. A master in the field would prefer teaching the core skills to his son, then a son-in-law, and finally, a daughter, if he was forced to do so.
It was unthinkable for someone outside the family to get to the heart of the skill, according to the old traditions.
After the Shanghai Museum was founded in 1952, the museum selected a number of folk artists to repair the bronze ware, ancient painting scrolls and ceramics the museum collected. But it wasn't easy for Jiang to learn from these old masters. Sometimes the masters would hasten to hide the objects and they would never tell Jiang or the other young workers how to repair the relics.
With his good grounding in art and a persistent mind, Jiang tried every way to learn from the masters. If he smelt a new chemical which the masters used to repair the ceramics, he would memorize the smell, then go to the chemical stores to search for it.
Over the past 28 years, Jiang has successfully repaired over 500 ceramic works.
"Each of them has a life in it. As the pieces gradually come back to the correct place, I feel it talking to me, letting out the part of history it has stored silently for so long, " said Jiang.
Like all the other artists, Jiang also has his crown jewels. In the warehouse of the Shanghai Museum, a large oblate bottle with qinghua (blue and white) decorations, was left untouched for many years. The bottle's ears, rings and cover had long disappeared. No one knew what function it once had, except that it was produced in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).
A few years ago, a bottle with a similar style appeared in the auction market of Hong Kong and fetched 21.47 million Hong Kong dollars (US$2.75 million ), raising the Chinese ceramics' value to a new level.
The bottle was so valuable because it was a typical work from the Yongle period, (1403-24 ) during the reign of Emperor Chengzu in the Ming Dynasty.
The qinghua works of that period have been regarded as the top of the genre, with elegant blue patterns made with high-quality cobalt blue pigment. Every intact qinghua work of the Yongle Period is vied by all ceramic collectors.
Learning of the Hong Kong bottle, Jiang rushed to his office and asked to repair the old bottle in the museum. But nowhere in Shanghai could he find similar bottles. Jiang heard that one such bottle was treasured in the Palace Museum of Beijing, where he was allowed to observe the bottle.
Jiang drew a draft of the bottle, from which he made the ear, ring and cover. But the temperature and atmosphere of today's kiln are totally different from the past. The accessories Jiang made just couldn't fit the old bottle.
Jiang went to the Palace Museum and explained his mission once again. Moved by his persistence, the museum allowed him to take as many pictures of the intact bottle there as he wished, so that he could have the highest accuracy in the size, colour and texture of the bottle.
After studying the kilns of the Ming Dynasty, Jiang drew several plans with the kiln's equipment. Eventually, he found the ideal accessories for the oblate bottle.
When he finally completed the task, a period of two years had passed.
"It was a difficult job, but the joy of fulfilling it is also great, " said Jiang.
Compared to the oblate bottle, another task Jiang took posed even greater challenges.
The Shanghai Museum collected a duck-shaped incense-burner with the decoration technique known as susancai (simple tri-colour ).
Without any written records, most ceramic experts agree that this technique had reached a rather high level in the Chenghua Period, (1465-87) during the reign of Emperor Xianzong in the Ming Dynasty. At the time of Emperor Kangxi (reign 1662-1722 ) in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911 ), this technique advanced into a rather complicated era, which some collectors believe is not as elegant as the early stage of the Ming Dynasty.
In the past, only the noble class had access to the porcelain of the simple tri-colour technique, which were made in kilns run by the imperial government. Only the most perfect objects were allowed to stay and be passed down in history. It was common in those days that the imperial ceramics official would order the 99 per cent of the ceramics in a whole kiln to be destroyed, if they couldn't match with the one per cent of perfect work.
With a little bit of imperfection, the duck-shaped incense-burner of the Shanghai Museum was smashed as soon as it was brought out of the kiln. Amongst its 46 pieces, the smallest one was tinier than a soya bean.
After studying the pieces, Jiang finally put them back into its original shape. With adroit hands, he rendered the cracks so that they were almost invisible.
"By restoring the smashed ceramics, we can gain a glimpse of the so-called 'imperfect works' which could represent techniques and styles of the mainstream. This is a valuable footnote for the history of Chinese ceramics, " said Jiang.
Over the last three decades, Jiang has faced many nearly impossible missions such as the restoration of over 140 pieces of a black pottery tri-foot ding from the Neolithic Age.
A few years ago, dozens of broken ceramics were excavated from Laohushan of Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang Province.
They were the works of a large yet unknown royal kiln of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279 ).
Jiang picked six of the worst broken works. Through initial repairs by local experts, the works had great contrast on the repaired spots and the original parts.
"I get excited at more difficult tasks, " said Jiang. "Every new task is a challenge to my experience."
As a member of the Reparation Committee with the China Cultural Relics Society, Jiang has been invited to hold many training sessions on repairing ancient Chinese ceramics. Recently, he collaborated with writer and collector Cheng Yong to publish a book, "Appreciation and Reparation of Ancient Porcelain." This is another effort to pass down his life-long skill and talent.
"Repairing ceramics is no longer a skill to sustain one's life, but an art to restore the history, " he said.
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