Cizhou Kiln Ruins

Cizhou Kiln Ruins

The Cizhou Kiln Ruins are a national key cultural relics protection unit.

Cizhou Kiln Ruins

The Cizhou Kiln was one of the famous northern folk porcelain kilns in the Song Dynasty. It is a national key cultural relics protection unit. There are two main sites: one is located around Guantai Town in Ci County, and the other extends from Pengcheng Town to Lingshui Town beneath Nanxiangtang Temple within the scenic area, covering an area of about ten square li.

The Cizhou Kiln has a history of over 7,000 years, dating back to the ancient Cishan culture pottery. With a long and fluctuating history, it rose to prominence by the 10th century for its exquisite porcelain production, becoming a representative of northern folk kilns in the Song Dynasty. The region was named “Ci” (meaning “porcelain”) due to the prosperity of its kilns, gaining fame worldwide. It was praised with sayings such as “Ten Li of Pengcheng, a fortune earned daily” and “Jingdezhen in the south, Pengcheng in the north.”

The decoration of Cizhou Kiln porcelain is characterized mainly by black-and-white contrasts—elegant, simple, vigorous, and bold. Its white-glazed black floral designs are unique, and it innovatively employed decorative painting techniques to depict figures, birds and beasts, insects, fish, landscapes, and other scenes on porcelain, ushering in a new era of painted ceramic decoration in China. Today’s Cizhou Kiln not only preserves these traditional features but also continues to develop, with its products sold worldwide.

Both pottery and porcelain are great inventions of China, earning the country the reputation of the “Porcelain Kingdom.”

In the history of Chinese ceramics, the historically renowned Xing Kiln, Ding Kiln, and Cizhou Kiln in Hebei, along with the recently discovered Jingxing Kiln, have all gained international acclaim, writing a glorious chapter in China’s ceramic heritage.

The Cizhou Kiln Ruins are a national key cultural relics protection unit, located in the areas of Guantai Town in Ci County and Pengcheng Town in the Fengfeng Mining District of Handan City. This area was historically part of Cizhou, hence the name Cizhou Kiln.

The Guantai Kiln (site) is an important part of the Cizhou Kiln, situated in the southwestern part of Ci County, 27 kilometers north of Fengfeng. This region is rich in coal, porcelain clay, and refractory clay, and is also close to Anyang's Shuizhi Village, known for producing glaze materials. These resources provided favorable conditions for the development of the porcelain industry. The Guantai Kiln site spans over 200,000 square meters. In 1958, 20,000 square meters were excavated, yielding more than 10,000 cultural relics. In 1987, four relatively intact horse-hoof-shaped and bun-shaped kilns from the Song and Jin Dynasties were discovered.

The Cizhou Kiln is a famous ancient folk porcelain kiln in China. It began producing celadon as early as the Sui Dynasty. By the Song Dynasty, the kiln’s porcelain-making craftsmanship reached its peak, and its products became most renowned during this period. Production continued through the Yuan, Ming, Qing Dynasties, and up to the present. The Cizhou Kiln is not only diverse in variety and large in output, but also boasts distinctive ethnic styles and regional characteristics, forming a unique Cizhou Kiln system that holds an important place in China’s ceramic history. The kiln’s techniques spread widely across the Yellow River basin—including Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Shanxi, Shaanxi—and southern regions, and were even introduced abroad. It was reported that on May 8, 2002, a delegation led by Mr. Suzukaze, director of the Osaka Museum in Japan, visited Handan for research. While viewing the Cizhou Kiln exhibition, they were surprised to discover that a famous ancient porcelain bowl in Japanese tea ceremony culture was identical to one from the Cizhou Kiln. Previously, this bowl had been believed to have been introduced to Japan from the Korean Goryeo Dynasty during the Edo period.

Most of the porcelain produced by the ancient Cizhou Kiln was everyday tableware for the people. Its decoration is characterized by black-and-white contrasts, using techniques such as iron rust flower, incised carving, red and green coloration, and yellow-brown, green, blue, and kiln-transformed black glazes, which form the unique features of Cizhou Kiln ceramic decoration. The art of Cizhou Kiln decoration broke away from conventional patterns, rarely using abstract or rigid geometric motifs. Instead, it drew inspiration from realistic depictions of historical stories, folk tales, lush flowering branches, fluid scroll patterns, and lively birds, beasts, and fish. The patterns were artistically stylized based on the character and expression of their subjects, resulting in simplified yet exaggerated, vibrant forms. This approach gave Cizhou Kiln ceramics a strong ethnic style and traditional artistic charm, winning widespread popularity among the masses.

During the Song Dynasty, porcelain was often valued for its single-color glaze, with underglaze decoration not yet mainstream. But at the Cizhou Kiln, not only were white, black, yellow, green, and tri-colored porcelains produced, but underglaze painted ceramics were also created on white porcelain, featuring a rich variety of decorative techniques that became hallmark works of the Cizhou Kiln. The “History of Chinese Civilization” describes it as a unique flower in the history of Chinese ceramics.

In addition to underglaze decoration, the Cizhou Kiln pioneered China’s earliest overglaze decoration—red and green color painting. Red and green overglaze involves applying red, green, and other colors onto white porcelain glaze, followed by low-temperature firing. The Song Dynasty Cizhou Kiln red and green overglaze marked the beginning of Chinese overglaze ceramic painting, laying the foundation for the development of overglaze techniques in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

Today, the Cizhou Kiln system centered around Pengcheng in the Fengfeng Mining District includes over ten manufacturers producing high-quality ceramics. They manufacture eight major categories, including daily-use ceramics, art ceramics, garden ceramics, and Song-style replicas, spanning thousands of varieties with an annual production capacity exceeding 100 million pieces. It has become one of China’s eight major ceramic capitals, exporting products to over 60 countries and regions. Using modern craftsmanship and technology, the kiln continuously develops new products. The renowned ceramic mural “Spring of Science” at the Capital Airport is a masterpiece of modern Cizhou Kiln, adding new luster to the ancient tradition.

Further Reading:

· Second Batch of Hebei Provincial Cultural Relics Protection Units

· Fourth Batch of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units