Qianjiang Porcelain - breathing a new life into an old tradition
Qianjiang is a type of porcelain decoration that resembles classic Chinese paintings. The painting style itself is not the only that is very similar.
Like those paintings Qianjiang items frequently have verses, poems, dedications or a similar at the end, or on the reverse side with vessels.
A lot of this type of porcelain is dated and signed.The dating is in the form of the cyclic date, the signature is the artists written name and/or red seal. See cyclic calendar and dated porcelain for more details.
19th century Qianjiang jar Origins Qianjiang developed in the middle of the 19th century, probably in the 1860s, as a direct result of internal strife and civil war caused by the Taiping rebellion. During the Xianfeng reign the Taiping rebels attacked Jingdezhen and the course of this the imperial kiln was destroyed. The kiln artisans who escaped with their lives had lost their work place and needed to make a living. Some of these artisans formed a group that started to paint in a new style – Qianjiang.
This painting-like porcelain decoration continued until the 1930s, when it slowly got replaced by newer decoration styles.
