Straddling the Chang River in an area once replete with kaolin, the long-secret critical ingredient of porcelain, Jingdezhen—in the landlocked Chinese province of Jiangxi—has been China’s center for creating the exquisite translucent ceramic for well over a millennium.
Completed last year, but only recently installed with excavated artifacts and fully opened to the public, architect Zhu Pei’s Imperial Kiln Museum marks this legacy on the site of the city’s former kilns from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). Here the finest enamel-glazed and, especially, blue-and-white vessels were produced for the imperial household and for export during one of the heights of the art in China. “It’s a place of historic significance,” the Beijing-based architect says.
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