Not everybody's cup of tea
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Wu Guangrong has explored new possibilities for the development of traditional pottery art. The teapot (pictured above) is one of his signature works.For nearly two decades, Wu Guangrong has been throwing himself into creating special boccaro clay works, which are commentaries on society.
His hand kneading method produces dots, lines, and natural curves on surfaces, which cannot be formed by any machine. Many of his pieces have been collected by museums across the country including the Palace Museum, the National Museum of China and the National Art Museum of China.
"The majority of my works are teapots, but I never treat them just as teapot. Many of them are not suitable for ordinary use, instead, they are a medium for self-expression of what I am concerned about," the 46-year-old said.
The Anhui native is one of the most famous pottery artists in China and lectures at the department of pottery crafts at the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang Province.
Teapot making has played a crucial role in tea culture, and Yixing boccaro teapots are the best in China. For centuries they have been known for their varied forms, colors and the unique molding patterns.
Wu admitted that without his wife Xu Yanchun, who is a pottery technician, he would have never come into contact with boccaro ware making.
Xu was born in Yixing, which is known as "capital of pottery" about a two-hour drive from Hangzhou, and was nurtured in pottery teapot-making environment. Her major at an art college was of course pottery design.
Wu, however, wanted to work as a book designer in a publishing house after graduating from the Nanjing College of Arts in 1989.
After they were married, the couple settled down at Dingshan. Xu buried herself into teapot making at a local pottery crafts factory, while most of her schoolmates abandoned their majors to chase higher paying jobs.
"Under her influence, I started to be fascinated by pottery teapots. I was willing to follow her and play with mud all the time," he said with a smile.
Wu's workshop is based in Yixing, where he travels back constantly during weekends. Most time he stays in Hangzhou for teaching.
His apartment is filled with more than 10,000 books, which are mainly divided into history, pottery, archaeology and customs categories. Wu doesn't look like an artist, no rebellious dress, just wearing jacket and jeans. The middle-aged man maintains the lifestyle of scholars in the past: he lights up incense and drinks the best tea when reading a book.
In the 1990s, Wu began researching the cultural background of boccaro teapot making, a topic that had been rarely studied before.
After mastering the basic skills of teapot design, Wu took the advantage of the plasticity of boccaro clay and tried a new method, instead of using a fixed mold. Whenever he was inspired by a new idea, he made a piece of mud as thin as a paper, with a diameter between 50 and 60 centimeters, and created the body cylinders by hands. He would then use a blower to make it slightly dry, then cast it against the ground to form the teapot.
"The curves and lines change naturally in an unexpected way, and you have to use your own aesthetic judgment in a moment during its change. As a result, every product will have a unique style," Wu said.
Various tools are used at the last stage to finalize the design and one teapot takes about a week. "The key point is whether the shape can express what I think," he said.
His artistic expression through the use of teapots reveals his concerns about the world and mankind as a whole.
One of his works Kneading Teapot No 8 (2005) is an example of showing his worries about the worsening environment in China following the rapid economic developments.
The surface of the blown teapot looks like a desiccating land that is short of water, with deep and hard curves as if it had suffered great pains.
His early work, a teapot named People and Water Resources No 1, which has many pot spouts, won third prize in the China Pottery and Porcelain Art Exhibition in 1990.
In spite of adding tint of modern pottery art to his works, Wu admits not everybody appreciates them, especially his more radical designs.
Wu seldom sells his teapots, as he believes every work cannot be reproduced.
The number of his works has just stood at no more than 100 over the past 20 years, with various sizes from several centimeters to 1.2 meters high.
Wu pointed out that boccaro art is an entity of technology and art, which requires both special technique and artistic cultivation.
"There are too much conservative attitudes of folk art in Yixing pottery art, this is why it has found itself in a narrow lane. I wish more potters dare to break old rules," he emphasized.
Like many artists who encounter a bottleneck of his creation, sometimes Wu is too obsessed with it, wondering what to do next.
"I might give up making teapot for a while, and shift focus to other subjects just writing and reading for instance.
"It is like I get bored with walking, why don't ride a bicycle for an hour. Give yourself a break, then you might discover a new angle to see the world. So, there is no end to creation."
(China Daily 04/18/2007 page19)
