NONGZAO Field Notes • Red Clay and Pine Smoke

A tradition can only endure if it continues to be used today.

Original Text | Xu Gang • NONGZAO Field Notes

In November 2021, I travelled to Anfu Town in Rongchang, Chongqing.

The hills rose and fell gently, and the earth along the roadside was reddish brown. Locals called it red clay. I crouched down and picked up a handful. The soil was soft and damp, mixed with fine sand.

Anfu has a long history of pottery making. Potters dug clay from the hillsides and gathered pine wood from the surrounding mountains. Through wedging, forming, trimming and firing, the clay became vats, crocks, jars and urns. These vessels once travelled along the Laixi River to households throughout Sichuan and Chongqing, finding their way into ordinary households, where they sat by kitchen stoves, in courtyards and beneath the eaves, used for storing wine and grain and fermenting pickled vegetables.

Rongchang pottery is recognised as one of China's four great pottery traditions, and Anfu is known as the “Pottery Capital”. These titles offer an introduction to the craft for outsiders. For local people, however, pottery needs little explanation. It is part of everyday life. How a vessel is made, and what form it takes, depends first and foremost on what people need from it.

That was the relationship I wanted to understand: how a particular clay becomes a vessel, how a craft takes shape through daily life, and how it changes as life itself changes.

Clay and Vessels

Anfu's red clay is a starting point for understanding Rongchang pottery.

Clay from different sites varies in particle composition, mineral content and plasticity. These differences emerge in the colour, texture and performance of the finished vessels after the clay has been prepared, formed and fired. For local potters, the material is not an abstract resource but a set of conditions they must work with every time they make something.

In one workshop, I saw jars that had just come out of the kiln. Anfu's potter, Li, picked one up, tapped it and listened to the sound it made.

“This clay is well prepared,” he said. “It won't crack in the firing.”

He threw the clay without a mould, adjusting its shape with both hands as the wheel turned. Slowly, the body of the jar rose from the spinning mass. I asked him how Rongchang pottery differed from Yixing purple-clay ware.

“Purple-clay teapots are for the literati,” he said. “Ours are for farmers. They need to last. Looking pretty isn't the point.”

A Yixing teapot and a crock for pickling vegetables serve different purposes and belong to different patterns of use. One is shaped by the demands of brewing tea, holding and handling the vessel, and appreciating its appearance. The other must contain food and withstand the conditions of fermentation and long-term storage. A vessel's form is determined not by its material alone, but also by what it is expected to do.

Many traditional forms in Rongchang pottery developed in response to precisely these practical needs. For wine jars, pickle crocks and storage vessels, capacity, wall thickness, rim structure and firing quality all affect how well a vessel performs and how long it lasts. The clay makes certain forms possible; years of use test those possibilities.

The traditional pickle crock makes this particularly clear.

In the Sichuan–Chongqing region, pickling was once an essential way for households to preserve food. Traditional pickle crocks have a wide body and a narrow mouth. A water-filled channel around the rim, together with the lid, forms a water seal that helps limit the entry of outside air. The porosity of the ceramic body, the degree of firing and the quality of the walls also affect water absorption, permeability and performance in use.

A crock's worth is not determined by how attractive it looks when it comes out of the kiln. What matters is whether it continues to perform as it should over years of use. How the clay is prepared, how the body is formed and how far it is fired all serve the same purpose: making a vessel that works.

These methods are difficult to attribute to a single act of invention. They evolved through repeated cycles of making and use. A vessel was made and put to work; experience revealed what worked and what needed adjusting; the next vessel was made accordingly.

The forms of local pottery gradually settled into place through this ongoing relationship between material, making and everyday need.

Kiln Fire and Work in the Mountains

Anfu's climbing kilns follow the contours of the hills, their chambers rising in stages along the slope. During my visit, I saw an old kiln that was still in use. The chambers occupied different positions along the incline, each with its own temperature profile and firing conditions. Loading the kiln required careful consideration of the size and thickness of each vessel, as well as the conditions it needed to fire properly.

How the potters arranged the wares depended both on the kiln's structure and on their familiarity with it. The kiln established the basic conditions, but the outcome of each firing still depended on decisions made on site.

The kiln was fired with pine wood. The kiln master told me that pine burned fiercely and that the smoke it produced also affected the firing. Pointing towards the flames at the kiln opening, he explained how he judged the heat.

Firing relied largely on experience. The colour of the flames, changes inside the kiln, the length of the firing and the way the vessels responded at different stages all informed his decisions.

“How do you tell?” I asked.

He shook his head. “It's hard to explain. You know when you've seen it often enough.”

It was not an answer that could be turned into a set of instructions. Yet it made me realise that experience means more than knowing a sequence of steps. It also involves developing judgement through prolonged observation, and knowing when to adjust in response to the differences that emerge in each firing.

Kiln fire never submits entirely to human control. The potter's task is to understand the character of the kiln, know the condition of the fuel and the vessels, and make decisions in response to what is actually happening. Even when the process follows the same sequence, variations in clay, kiln loading and firing conditions can produce different results.

Some of this knowledge can be documented, but it is difficult to separate it completely from the working environment in which it takes shape. Only through continued firing can potters encounter problems, test their judgements and build up experience.

The kiln site is materially connected to the surrounding landscape. Clay is dug nearby, fuel comes from the surrounding area, and the kiln itself is built to follow the terrain. Topography, available resources and methods of production together establish the conditions for pottery making in Anfu.

A Collective Craft Within the Village

Pottery is rarely the work of one person from beginning to end.

In the workshops, some workers prepared the clay, others threw or trimmed the forms, carved patterns or loaded the kiln. Still others tended the fire. I met a woman who decorated the vessels by carving directly into the damp clay. She worked with a knife, without a preliminary drawing or any particular effort to make the patterns perfectly regular. As her hand moved, the design gradually emerged on the surface.

I asked what she was carving. She said she hadn't thought about it; she was just doing it as she went along.

The patterns might have come from the countryside she knew, or they might simply have grown out of habits formed through years of making. They did not necessarily begin with a clearly defined design intention. Yet as the vessels entered everyday life, these marks became part of the local practice of making things.

What I observed was that none of these workers operated in isolation.

The person preparing the clay needed to know how to make it suitable for forming. The thrower had to understand the proportions and wall thickness of different vessel types. Those trimming and carving the pieces needed to judge the condition of the clay body. The kiln workers, in turn, had to account for differences between vessels and manage the firing as a whole. The outcome of each stage affected what could be done at the next.

A ceramic vessel's journey from clay to finished object involved the labour of different people, as well as the coordination they had developed over time.

Apprentices rarely began by learning a complete body of theory. They entered the workshop first, fetching tools, carrying pieces, preparing clay and observing how others worked. Gradually, they took on more of the process. The consistency of the clay, the thickness of the vessel walls, the right moment for trimming and the changes that occurred during firing all had to be learned through practice.

The transmission of this craft depended on working together. Knowledge was distributed across different hands and embedded in the relationships between stages of production. As long as the workshop remained active, people had opportunities to learn, correct their mistakes and build on what they had already acquired.

When orders declined and production contracted, some stages might no longer require dedicated workers. If younger people left and apprentices lost the opportunity to enter the workshop, the knowledge once sustained through everyday collaboration could begin to fragment. Even if an individual potter still remembered how to make a vessel, the craft as a whole might no longer function as it once had.

Passing on a craft means more than teaching a technique to the next person. It also requires ongoing work, real demand for production and an environment in which knowledge can be used repeatedly.

Vessels Growing into Everyday Life

A newly fired crock has yet to live a life of its own.

In one household, I saw a pickle crock that had been used for thirty years. Smoke from the kitchen stove had darkened its body, and the surface bore the marks of long use. The woman of the house told me that it had been passed down by her mother-in-law, and that the brine inside had been maintained for decades.

Vegetables pickled in that old brine had a sourness particular to the household.

The crock made me reconsider when an object's life really begins. Its time does not start and end on the day it is made. It is carried home and placed in the kitchen, where it is filled with vegetables, used for storage, washed and put to work again and again. Gradually, it becomes intertwined with a family's eating habits, daily labour and memories.

For the potter, the crock is an object to be made. For the person using it, it is an everyday kitchen utensil. After years of use, it becomes part of a household's life. These identities do not contradict one another; they coexist in the same vessel.

Fresh from the kiln, a crock may be one among many similar objects. After years of use, however, the life it has carried cannot simply be replaced by a new one. An everyday object does not acquire value only at the moment it is purchased. Its continued participation in daily life also determines the place it occupies in people's minds.

When an object and a way of life have adapted to one another over time, the object becomes more than a combination of material and form. It also embodies how people use it, care for it and choose to keep using it.

Why Is the Craft Becoming Harder to Sustain?

In the past, the need to store water, grain, pickled vegetables and wine provided relatively stable uses for different kinds of pottery. Households needed these vessels, giving workshops a reason to keep making them. As vessels were used, damaged and replaced, production continued through this cycle.

Later, industrial products such as plastic buckets and stainless-steel containers entered the home. Refrigerators changed the way food was stored, while household sizes and eating habits also shifted. Traditional pottery did not lose all its uses, but some of the needs that had once sustained it became less common. People had more choices when it came to objects that were heavy, fragile or took up considerable space.

Changes in use eventually reached the workshops. As orders declined and production volumes fell, it became difficult to maintain the division of labour that had once supported the craft. Tasks that had required several people might be combined or abandoned altogether. With fewer opportunities to work, younger people also found it harder to learn the full range of skills through everyday participation.

Preparing clay, moving materials and making large vessels all require physical effort. Firing a kiln demands long hours of attention. For younger people, whether to continue making pottery is not simply a question of affection for tradition. It is also a question of income, working conditions and the possibilities available for their future.

If pottery can no longer provide a viable livelihood, while other work offers a more stable income, leaving the workshop becomes a practical decision. We may want the craft to be passed on, but we cannot simply place that responsibility on potters and apprentices, expecting them to bear the costs through interest and sentiment alone.

Traditional wood-fired kilns face changing production conditions as well. The availability and cost of fuel, emissions restrictions and safety requirements can all affect whether a kiln can continue to operate. For a small workshop, if demand is insufficient and the costs of necessary upgrades and operation are difficult to meet, continuing to fire the kiln becomes increasingly challenging.

When a kiln falls silent, its workers lose opportunities to practise and refine their judgement. When orders become scarce, the division of labour between different stages of production begins to disappear. As fewer people take part, the knowledge once sustained through collective work becomes harder to pass on.

The decline of a craft rarely happens overnight. Changing demand, income from labour, policy conditions and population movement accumulate over time. By the time a kiln finally goes cold, the forces behind its closure may have been at work for years.

Can a Preserved Craft Continue to Grow?

Intangible cultural heritage recognition, exhibitions and cultural product development offer different ways to preserve and share traditional crafts. They can document processes, display objects, introduce Rongchang pottery to wider audiences and, in some cases, bring potters new orders.

But preserving a technique and sustaining production are not the same thing.

A craft can be filmed, documented and exhibited. A ceramic vessel can become a museum piece or a cultural product. Yet a production system once sustained by everyday needs still requires people to keep making things, customers willing to buy them, and the different stages of work to remain connected. If only the forms and processes remain for people to observe, without the conditions needed for production and use, the craft can still lose the basis for its continued development.

Design should not simply give an old vessel a new appearance, nor turn a crock into a more expensive commodity. It can begin with the material and the craft itself, and reconsider how these vessels might relate to contemporary life. Which accumulated skills remain useful? Which forms no longer suit present-day conditions? What new uses might allow this knowledge to remain relevant?

But an idea does not automatically become production. New objects must be made and tested. Whether a technique can deliver consistent results, whether people want to use and buy the objects, and whether the craftspeople involved can earn a reasonable income are all practical questions that need answers.

These questions cannot be resolved through a single design intervention, nor can they be answered by praising tradition alone.

My visit to Anfu in November 2021 showed me how a craft is bound up with clay, kiln fire, the division of labour within a village and the rhythms of household life. Its formation depended neither on technique alone nor simply on the special qualities of a material. The craft endured because material, production, use and everyday needs had formed a relatively stable relationship.

When those relationships change, the craft changes with them.

As I left Anfu, I thought again of the pickle crock that had been used for thirty years. It had not become useful because it was recognised as intangible cultural heritage. Nor was it necessarily something every household should continue using simply because it belonged to a tradition. It remained in that home because it still had a place in everyday life. The brine was still there, and the practice of pickling was still alive.

Perhaps a craft can endure for the same reason: it must remain connected to the ordinary things people do.

Fieldwork is only the beginning. The next question is whether these vessels can still find a place in life today, and whether design can help forge new connections that allow them to do so.

— Fieldwork: November 2021