Porcelain sculpture Master: He Chaozong
He Chaozong was a celebrated early 17th century Chinese potter. He Chaozong fashioned mainly Buddhist, white porcelain statuary in the tradition of the Dehua kilns in Fujian province, known in the west as Blanc-de-Chine. Little documentary evidence remains for He Chaozong apart from extant examples of his ceramic art. A gazetteer entry from 1763 mentions him with other art notables of the Ming Dynasty and establishes that the artist had earned a considerable reputation in his day.
His works identified by his seal are in an entirely different category than the usual Dehua statuary of the period and those later. They are thickly potted and exhibit an artistic expressiveness and creativity unmatched by thinner and standardized unsigned works. He Chaozong and the few other artists of the Dehua kilns were nearly unique in Chinese ceramic history, which was characterized by anonymous and industrial scale production. Blumenfield, in his Blanc de Chine, presents the reader with what may be one of the few believable examples of the artist, replete with a hidden inscription visible to ultraviolet light.
Of great interest is the manner of carving of the piece which shows none of the exuberant flowing robes of other examples of the master that may be simply attractive to the eye. Of additional interest in the Blumenfield book is the He Chaozong seal impressed on an additional Guanyin statues attributed to He Chaozong. All of the characters in the seal appear in reverse. This indicates that at least some seals on Dehua porcelain figures were akin to brands and perhaps of metal construction that could be mistakenly impressed in reverse. The outer borders of the Blumenfield seal, and the seal presented with the Manjurisi statue accompanying this article, were both incised and evidently added after the characters were impressed on the bodies of the figures.
Editor: Liu Xiongfei
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