Designing a Teapot in Jingdezhen
In the first five years of Tranquil Tuesdays one of the many (many) things I did in addition to running the business was design the teaware collections working with artisans in Jingdezhen to bring them to life. That was super fun.
I wanted to take you behind the scenes to catch a glimpse of the collaborative design process that went into creating one of our exclusive handmade teaware pieces in the photo album above.
I (Charlene) spent months, if not years, collecting ideas culled from all sorts of varied sources: museum visits, reading books, browsing photos, noticing great shapes or forms when I’m at a restaurant or cafe, or anything. My mind was always on alert for cool teaware ideas.
Then I show the teaware artists my ideas and they show me their ideas and we discuss what is possible and most feasible.When I visited Zhu Xuan in Jingdezhen in the fall of 2013, we literally spent half an hour just showing each other the teaware photos and ideas we’ve collected since we last saw each other.
In Jingdezhen, the porcelain making process is very specialized and fragmented. Each step of the process has different masters who specialize in a very specific skill. The mold master we work with specializes in teaware and tableware so he gave lots of practical feedback to our design and measurements and the photographs above are a little glimpse into that process.