MING STUDIES, 6:37-44 (Spring 1978)

JINGDEZHEN AS A MING INDUSTRIAL CENTER*

Michael Dillon

Fouliang, the county in northeast Jiangxi province of which

Jingdezhen is the largest town, has a long history of association
with the pottery and porcelain industry. According to local tra-
ditions, pottery was first made in Fouliang in the Han period. The
Imperial Court of the Chen dynasty received Fouliang pottery in 583
and during the Tang dynasty, kilns near Jingdezhen which have since
been excavated, supplied porcelain to the emperor on several oc-
casions. High quality porcelain, and coarser pottery for local use,
were made throughout the Song and Yuan periods. During this time,
however, the workshops and kilns which produced the porcelain were
scattered around Fouliang county and little if any was made in
Jingdezhen itself, which functioned primarily as a market and as a
government control point for official orders.

During the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) the industry and Jingdezhen

underwent radical changes. The quantity of porcelain produced in-
creased dramatically and the quality was greatly improved. Jing-
dezhen was transformed from a market into an industrial center, so
that by the end of the dynasty most kilns outside had closed down and
production was concentrated in the town. Although this process
continued throughout the Ming dynasty, the period of most rapid
change was in the sixteenth century in the reigns of the Jiajing
(1522-66) and Wanli (1573-1620) emperors.

A number of factors were involved in this transformation. Some

of them acted directly as a stimulus to industrial production while
others permitted the industrialization to take place. The most im-
portant factors are the interest of the Court in porcelain, the
availability of raw materials, the technical expertise of the potters,
labor supply, appropriate management and financing, transport and
marketing networks, the growth of an export trade, and the great
changes taking place in the national economy during the sixteenth
century.1

IMPERIAL ORDERS
Although the industry produced a wide range of pottery from coarse
bowls for everyday use to the finest blue-and-white ware for the
Imperial Court, it was the luxury side of production that was the
key to industrialization, and primarily the demands of the court that
stimulated the production of high quality wares. There are records
of court orders for porcelain going back to the sixth century, but
regular shipments did not begin until the Ming dynasty when an Imperial
Porcelain Depot was established in Jingdezhen. Designated official
kilns fired porcelain for the Depot which shipped it, irregularly
at first, to the Court. In the sixteenth century court orders be-
came more frequent and gradually larger as the following table
shows:

This paper was presented at a panel on Historical Geography

of China, Association for Asian Studies, Thirtieth Annual Meeting,
Chicago, April 2, 1978.
 -38-

Date Number of Pieces Fired

1529 2,570
1531 12,300
1544 50,000
1555 79,750
1571 105,770
As well as increasing demand, the pressure put on the industry by
the large orders—which also called for consistently high quality—
forced potters to make radical changes in organization. Non-
official workshops and kilns were brought in to manufacture the
porcelain, and as will be shown, the organization of labor changed
completely. Without the stimulus of the demand from the Court it
is doubtful whether Jingdezhen would ever have expanded and in-
dustrialized to the same extent. Although fulfilling imperial orders
was at times a financial burden on the potters, they were also able
to manufacture and sell high quality wares commercially because of
the prestige gained from being an official supplier.

RAW MATERIALS
Jingdezhen was particularly well supplied with raw materials be-
cause of its geographical location and it was this abundance of re-
sources that had made possible the initial development of a pottery
industry in Tang and Song times. China clay and china-stone, the
two materials needed for the porcelain base, are decomposition pro-
ducts of feldspathic rock and were mined in the hills around the town.
The wooded mountain sides provided pine and brushwood for firing the
kilns and also fern, the ash of which was mixed with limestone to
make glaze. Even a certain amount of cobalt oxide for blue coloring
was available locally, as were pigments for less expensive decoration.

Local resources provided the basis for the industry, but with in-
creased production and greater specialization, potters were forced
to look elsewhere- As the industry developed, higher prices for the
finished products meant that raw material sources further afield could
be exploited and during the late Ming dynasty, clay was brought from
as far away as Xingzi at the northern tip of the Poyang Lake, Yugan
at its southern tip, and Qimen CKeemun) in Anhui,

Cobalt salts for blue-and-white porcelain and copper for red deco-
rations were more of a problem as the highest quality was needed to
maintain the pure underglaze colors. When local sources became ex-
hausted or were found to be insufficiently pure, cobalt was imported
from the Middle East through Sumatra, or from Yunnan. In this as in
many other factors it was the flexibility and adaptability of the
industry that enabled it to expand. When high quality blue was not
available, as in the fifteenth century, red porcelain was sent to
Court in place of blue-and-white.

MANUFACTURING TECHNIQUES
The Ming dynasty was not a time of technical innovation in the
porcelain industry and indeed it is scarcely an exaggeration to say
that technical excellence had reached a point long before the Ming
at which it was to remain until the twentieth century. There were
minor modifications and refinements in aspects of the manufacturing
process; for example, Ming potters developed a technique of blowing
the glaze onto the pot through a bamboo tube with its end covered
in gauze, thus ensuring a more even cover for larger pieces. However,
 -39-

(Underscoring indicates districts supplying clays to Jingdezhen)

in general the process of mining and mixing the clays, throwing the
body on a potter's wheel or moulding it in slabs, decorating,
glazing and firing, had been known for a long time. Jingdezhen re-
lied on the tradition of manufacturing rather than on innovation
to supply its high quality wares.

MANAGEMENT OF THE INDUSTRY

The porcelain industry was not, as used to be supposed, a state-
run industry completely under official control. Jingdezhen in the
 -40-

Ming period was a collection of small craftsmen running either a

kiln or a workshop or both and employing their families, or in
larger enterprises apprentices, journeymen and hired laborers.
Of the kilns in the town, a number, noted for the quality of their
production and their capacity, were designated official kilns and
required to produce porcelain for the Court as part of their tax
liability. The number of kilns under contract to the court in this
way was twenty in the Hungwu period (1368-1398), but increased to
fifty-eight in the Xuande reign (1426-1435), However, at the peak
of production during the sixteenth century, the number of kilns in-
volved in firing imperial porcelain was far greater than this as
orders were subcontracted to non-official kilns.

In overall charge of production^ for the court was the Imperial

Vessel Depot (Yuqichang >j#P ^'z Jjjj^ ) also known as the Imperial
Depot (Yuehang). This was managed by either a eunuch commissioner
sent by the Court to procure supplies, which was the case up to 1530
and from 1599 to 1620, or by local officials who ran the Depot
during the period of greatest change in the industry in the late
sixteenth century. Wares from the kilns were sent to the Depot
where they were checked, packed and stored, awaiting shipment to
the capital.
There was no official supervision of production for the open
market. Potters made and fired their own wares and arranged their
own terms with traders through their guilds. They were, of course,
affected by the official system, but often beneficially if they
were able to carry out a subcontract.
The highly decentralized organization of the potteries with small
discrete units operating independently seems to have led to a degree
of adaptability that made development possible, When large orders
for imperial porcelain were received, the number of kilns involved
could be extended. When orders declined, individual units could
make their own arrangements to supply privately to the domestic,
or later to the overseas market.

LABOR
Because the manufacture of pottery was carried out entirely by
hand from mixing the clays to taking the pot from the kiln, the
supply of labor was crucial. As demand for porcelain was increased
±n the sixteenth century the amount of labor required increased
correspondiBgly. The old corvee system of forced labor became in-
capable of supplying the number of skilled potters and laborers
required for imperial orders and gradually fell into disuse when it
was commuted to silver tax payments in the Single Whip reforms of
the early sixteenth century. By the Wanli period (1573-1620) nearly
all craftsmen and laborers were hired whether they were producing
imperial or commercial porcelain, and the wages attracted men from
all the counties in northeast Jiangxi.

There was a large pool of available labor. In the Jiajing period

(1522-1566), landholdings had become more concentrated and many
large estates were being formed through imperial gifts, by purchase
or by peasants entrusting their land to a lord to avoid paying
taxes. Many men were thrown off the land and the number of these
was increased in Jiangxi by a series of natural disasters including
a huge flood in 1540. Local gazetteers of the sixteenth century
show that men were drawn into Jingdezhen from the surrounding
counties of Poyang, Yugan, Dexing, Leping, Anren, Wannian, Nanchang
and Buehang. Labor was seasonal with a high point in the summer and
men wjejpe^ usually employed on a temporary basis. The presence of
workers from different areas in the towns led to a certain amount
 -41-

of conflict and there are records of battles breaking out between

natives of different counties.
One aspect of the organization of labor that made possible the
industrialization was the rapid development of specialization,
By the sixteenth century there was a very fine division of labor in
Jingdezhen. Kilns and workships specialized in firing and making
specific wares. Within a workshop of any size there were specialists
mixing the paste for the body, throwing, "mould-tapping" to ensure
uniform size, trimming on the wheel, decorating and glazing. Other
individuals took specialist responsibility for loading and firing
the kilns. Such a highly specialized division of labor permitted
the improvement in quality demanded by the court and by wealthy
private buyers, and also permitted an increase in production as in-
dividuals became expert in finishing their tasks speedily.

TRANSPORT
Efficient transport was important both for participation in the
marketing network and for ensuring that supplies of raw materials
reached the industry. Jingdezhen was fortunate in that it was con-
nected by river with the Poyang Lake, the communications center of
the region, and also had adequate local land transport. This road
transport was fairly primitive but was a vital link between the town
and the clay and china-stone mines in the hills around. Land routes
also served to a certain extent to transport finished porcelain.
The Meiling Pass route into Zhejiang and the route along the Gan
River to Canton were both used for this. Overland transport relied
almost entirely on manpower—shoulder poles or barrows for clay and
special frames for kiln firewood—and this is probably a function
of the availability and cheapness of labor as ox carts were not un-
known in the region and could have been used.
All imperial porcelain and many privately sold wares made during
the Ming dynasty were transported by water except for a short period.
Cargoes were loaded at Jingdezhen and shipped down the Chang to
Raozhou where they were transferred to larger vessels for the lake
crossing. A further transfer was often necessary before the cargo
reached Jiujiang on the Yangtze and was ready for transshipment to
Nanking and then Peking. Shipping for private trade was organized
by shipping brokers who linked the junk masters with merchants.
Shipment of official supplies of porcelain was arranged through the
Imperial Depot.

The transport system was somewhat disjointed and it was difficult

to organize a continuous or regular supply to a particular market
since individual shipping contracts had to be negotiated for each
section of the journey. Nevertheless, this did allow a certain
flexibility so that when one market dried up it was easy to switch
to another.

MARKETING AND FINANCE

The private marketing of porcelain was clearly extremely important,
in spite of the fact that there are no reliable figures to indicate
the quantities produced or sold. Nearly all porcelain was sold in-
side Jingdezhen, and prospective buyers would arrive in the town
and negotiate through a firm of state-licensed brokers with whom
they stayed. Merchants and traders from all provinces operated in
Jingdezhen. Some were said to have bought only a basketful of
cheaper wares to sell outside the town for a small but quick profit,
but.there were also much larger concerns involved. One of the great
commercial networks of the Ming dynasty, the Huxzhou (or Xin T an)
 -42-

merchant syndicate which was based in Anhui province, regularly dealt

in porcelain from Jingdezhen, Local gazetteers from all over China
record that their porcelain came from Jingdezhen and once porcelain
was included in a nation-wide network like that of the Huizhou group
it soon found its way onto the export market,
Commercial interests were also vital in capitalizing the potteries.
One trader from Huizhou, Pan Cijun, is recorded as having cornered
the market in porcelain by buying all available pottery in a bad
year and taking over the debts of potters on terms more favorable
to them. Since porcelain manufacture was seasonal and debts were
settled only every so often, the investment of merchants in the
production system was vital to the survival of the producers as it
provided working capital in the time-gap between production and
sale. Commercial interests probably did not contribute to the small
amount of fixed capital required to set up a kiln or a workshop in
the home.2
Some finance was also made available from the government^ although
the exact extent is not clear. The Fouliang treasury levied taxes
on the surrounding counties in lieu of labor service and was respon-
sible for the cost of transporting the imperial porcelain to the
capital and for paying the laborers. Materials for making imperial
ware seem to have been requisitioned and registered potters from
official kilns were probably not paid,

EXPORT TRADE
Towards the end of the Ming dynasty, the export of porcelain which
had begun in the Song period and continued in some quantity through-
out the early Ming, initially through Portuguese traders, increased
greatly. With the involvement of the Dutch East India Company in
the China trade from about 160Q a new, European, source of demand was
revealed, one that was badly needed by Jingdezhen as official orders
were declining. The dynasty was coming to an end and the court had
more pressing problems than ordering porcelain. The sale of porcelain
to Japan, and in fulfillment of special orders from the Dutch and
other Europeans, was vital in filling the gap created. One ship
alone, the "Vlissingen," took 38,641 pieces to Holland in 1612 and
the "Gelderland" shipped 69,057 in 1614. Between 1602 and 1657
nearly three million pieces were shipped to Europe.
At first porcelain with adapted Chinese designs was sold, but
later Japanese and European decorations were copied. Porcelain was
also sold plain, to be decorated elsewhere, another example of the
flexibility and adaptability of the industry. Large-scale exports
came too late to be instrumental in the industrialization but they
did make it possible for the town to sustain its development once
imperial orders declined.

CONCLUSION
Although the interest of the Imperial Court in procuring supplies
of porcelain was a vital stimulus to the industry, its development
was only possible within the context of the increasingly commercialized
Chinese economy of the sixteenth century. The inflow of silver from
Japan and Latin America, via Portuguese and other traders, had stim-
ulated the use of currency, the growth of regional and national
markets and the development of commercial handicraft production.
Ita reforms such as the Single Whip sequence encouraged this develop-
ment.

However, Jingdezhen*s great strength was its adapt ability and this
 -43-

seems to have been due to the lack of central control. Although it

was the largest town in its county and indeed in its region,
Jingdezhen was not the seat of the xian government, which was based
in Fouliang just to the north. The Imperial Depot, which was the
main official presence in the town, was concerned with procurement
rather than management, which it left entirely to the master potters.
Small independent production units with little fixed or working
capital and with only short-term development plans were able to re-
act swiftly to large changes in demand. The industry was geared to
a high rate of turnover because of the high interest on loaned
working capital. Orders had to be finished quickly to meet the re-
payment deadlines.3 Distribution was also organized and able to
react in a similar way. It was this flexibility that enabled the
potteries to adjust to greatly varying imperial orders and to demands
for different types of porcelain for both the domestic and the ex-
port market.

NOTES
1. The principal sources for this paper are the county and pre-
fectural gazetteers for the region around Jingdezhen:
FOULIANG XIANZHI (1682) >f % W tr-
RAOZHOU FUZHI (1684) ^ ^1 j ^ £.
and the two major histories of the industry:
Jiang Siqing, JINGDEZHEN CIYE SHI (History of the Por-
celain Industry in Jingdezhen; Shanghai, 1936)
and JINGDEZHEN TAOCI SHIGAQ (Draft History of Jingdezhen;
Peking, 1959) -JL $» $ j|] ]^jL#j) prepared by the Porcelain
Research Department of the Jiangxi Bureau of Light
Industry.
For fuller annotation and bibliography see M, S. Dillon,
"History of the Porcelain Industry in Jingdezhen" (Ph.D,
dissertation, Leeds University, 1976).
2. See Fu Yiling, MING QING SHIDAI SHANGREN JI SHANGYE ZIBEN
(Merchants and Commercial Capital during the Mine and Qing
Periods; Peking, 1956) ^ |c ^L , $ ~;t j# A* jj] A. A-fi]£ X < f a n d
Fujii Hiroshi, "Shin-an shonin no kenkyu" (Studies on the
Xin'an Merchants), TOYO GAKUHO, 36:i-iv (1953-54) tL & &

3. The importance of a high rate of turnover emerged during a

conversation with Mark Elvin.

PLACE NAMES

Anhui (Nanzhili) j£ fa ($]A&)

Anren -j£- -J-
Chang River ^ y^
Dexing $ , $k
Duchang %l j^
 -44-

Fouliang
Gan River "Iff 2*
Huguan 5$ft $,
:
Hukou /*ft ^
Jiangxi >£. V#
Jingdezhen
Jiujiang ^ ?u
Leping «£ i^
Nanchang ^h ^
Poyang Lake |^ ^ ^
Qimen £* f*|
Rao River /jf>|\ 54.
Raozhou (Poyang) /j^ #| (f> npJ
Wannian jh
Wuyuan ^ >jj
Yugan ^ -*-
Xingzi ^ y

Michael Dillon teaches at Leeds Polytechnic in Leeds, England.