Experimental Design—"Techniques" and "Skills" in the Pottery Making of Chongqing Rongchang, China
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Traditional handmade crafts are the treasures of Chinese culture and art. In the past, most of the research on handicrafts in the academic circles centered on the production, inheritance and protection of handicrafts, emphasizing the intergenerational inheritance and development and revitalization of traditional crafts, with less attention paid to the improvisational initiative of handicraft makers' artistic creation, as well as to the discussion of the intervention of multiple subjective forces in the process of artefact production. This paper, based on the Chongqing Rongchang pottery-making crafts as the research object, discusses the influence of improvisation factors and philosophical concepts on the design and production of pottery from the perspectives of design and anthropology. It points out that gold, wood, water, fire and earth are multiple elements and multiple subjective forces that cooperate and intervene to jointly create transform, and jointly create the aura and uniqueness of the objects. The element of improvisation should not be excluded from the inheritance and protection of handicrafts, on the contrary, it is intertwined with "technology" and "witchcraft", and is part of the handmade-craft, or even the handmade- craft itself.
Authors: Hua Guanqing, Chen Yanli, Dai Qifu
Language: English
Topic: Crafts, Textile, and Design
Subfield: Museology
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4401659575