Teaching a generation of artisans

When Sun Lixin's daughter was 3, she once climbed onto his tall work chair, picked up a brush and tried to imitate her father painting porcelain.

"Dad, let me teach you how to paint," Sun recalled her saying with a laugh. She liked to paint as he did. Sun can still vividly remember that moment.

"I thought, this is a gift from heaven," he said. For him, it was a sign that his family's connection to porcelain may carry on to the next generation.

Sun, born in 1967, is a fourth-generation porcelain craftsman in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province.

He began learning from his father at 13. During a three-year apprenticeship, he would arrive at the factory about an hour and a half earlier than required each day to clean tables, sweep the floor and boil water for senior craftsmen before beginning his own work. He later passed tests in iron-wire line drawing and fenshui, a demanding technique in blue-and-white painting.

Those years shaped his understanding of the craft: skill is mastered through repetition. "Only when the skills in your hands are solid can the images under your brush come alive," Sun said.

After working outside Jingdezhen for several years, including in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, as an interior designer, Sun returned in 1998 and joined his father in reviving the family's porcelain workshop.

Blue-and-white painting became central to his work.

Drawing on traditional Chinese painting and techniques passed down through his family, Sun has explored subjects ranging from landscapes to figures.

He has also studied the freehand landscapes of late-Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) folk blue-and-white porcelain, which he described in his research as natural and unrestrained, with simple compositions capable of creating a profound artistic mood.

With porcelain painting, there is little room for hesitation. The unfired body absorbs water quickly, making a misplaced stroke difficult to correct. Fenshui, which creates tonal variations through the control of pigment and water, is particularly demanding.

For Sun, this uncertainty is also part of the value of working by hand. He believes the interaction between the craftsperson and the material gives handmade porcelain something that machine production cannot fully reproduce.

He now asks his students to build that control through the same kind of repeated practice he experienced as a teenager.

Hu Yixin, 25, studied blue-and-white landscape painting with Sun for over two years. Hu hailed Sun's hands-on approach to teaching, as he often examined students' work individually, pointed out problems and demonstrated corrections, and even stopped at times to correct their posture.

Sun has taught more than 60 students over the years, including apprentices from India and Australia. Some, he said, have gone on to establish businesses that surpassed his own "in wealth and influence".

He also follows a rule passed down by his father: apprentices are taught free of charge.

"My father told me that, in the early days, people who came to learn the craft mainly did it to make a living," Sun said. "So we should teach them for free."

Sun highlighted a growing public interest in ceramics since Jingdezhen's handicraft porcelain industry sites were inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in July. People have approached him asking whether he could teach them to paint porcelain.

One Sunday, a mathematics teacher who had been teaching himself porcelain painting came to him with a technical problem. Sun examined the work and demonstrated how to better handle the brush and water.

The teacher left gratefully, Sun said, thanking him for teaching him the "real skills".

"Jingdezhen has been an open city since ancient times," Sun said. As the city's porcelain heritage now draws growing international attention, Sun said he feels both proud and encouraged to see more people coming to Jingdezhen because of ceramics. "This is what makes us craftspeople proud," he said.

More than a century after his great-grandfather entered the porcelain trade, Sun is still doing much of what he began doing as a teenager: practicing, painting and passing on what his hands have learned.

zhaoruinan@chinadaily.com.cn