SOME 160 pieces of porcelain deemed not good enough for China’s imperial court that were shattered 580 years ago have finally made their way to the Forbidden City.

    An exhibition at the Palace Museum about the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) imperial kilns in Jingdezhen, a porcelain town in Jiangxi Province, has brought pieces restored from unearthed ceramic chips together for the first time with the museum’s well-preserved imperial collections.

    Lu Chenglong, deputy chief of the utensil department of the museum, said the three-month-long exhibition, which closes Sept. 3, was overdue.

    “We have been planning this kind of exhibition since as early as the 1990s, but could not do it for various reasons,” he said.

    Through strengthened cooperation with local museums, especially the Institute of Archaeology of Porcelain of Jingdezhen City this year, the porcelain finally left Jingdezhen for Beijing to be displayed alongside 137 perfect vessels made from the same imperial kilns.

    “Although a great deal of imperial porcelain had been passed down by the imperial families, there is so much we don’t know about imperial porcelain production at that time. Visitors can clearly observe the differences by comparing the substandard and perfect pieces,” he said.

    A man surnamed Wu who runs an antique store in Beijing visited the exhibition twice in two months. “The contrasting pieces on display are very valuable. They help us improve our understanding of ancient porcelain,” he said.

    He noted that the defective pieces either are misshapen or have flawed colors or drawings.

    Since the 1970s, Chinese archaeologists have unearthed dozens of tons of ceramic chips from the ruins of the ancient imperial kilns in Jingdezhen and have restored 1,400 pieces so far.

    “Restoring these chips is a huge and time-consuming project but very valuable,” said Lu Chenglong, who has been studying ancient porcelain for 31 years.

    Due to the fragility of the pieces, wars, regime changes, natural disasters and other factors, a large amount of porcelain that passed the quality inspection of kiln supervisors disappeared. Without archaeological excavation of the ancient imperial kilns, knowledge of the imperial kilns and the porcelain they produced would remain vague, said Lu.

    One blessing for Chinese porcelain researchers, Lu said, is that ceramics, either chips or vessels, appear new after being cleaned, no matter how long they have been buried in the earth.

    Historical records show that during the reign of Emperor Wanli from 1573 to 1620, the heyday of porcelain production in China, there were 100,000 people working at imperial and private kilns in Jingdezhen alone. Some of their products were exported to Africa, Europe and the Americas.

    (Xinhua)