KilnLore@AOL.COM on sun 10 sep 00
Welcome to the conclusion of my three part explanation of how I came to
locate several sites in China where kiln guardians are either acknowledged or
worshipped. (For a more complete account of this topic please see my article
"Guardians of Fire and Clay: The Legacy of China's Kiln Gods," in Studio
Potter. June 2000, Vol. 28, No. 2).
Locating the "Blessed Potter's Temple" in Jingdezhen ...
I was very fortunate when I went to Jingdezhen in the summer of 1999 to have
three friends as my travel companions from Hong Kong. I was able to work up a
small grant for my excursion with the help and support of the I-Kiln Studio
that I was helping to run, and aid from the Hong Kong Arts Development
Council.
One of my traveling companions was Cassandra Sin-ying Ho, an accomplished
potter who had studied for three months at the Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute
where we stayed while visiting Jingdezhen. Cassandra introduced my potter
friends and I to many wonderful people in Jingdezhen and at the Institute,
including the Assistant Director of the Jingdezhen Ceramic History Museum,
Bai Kun.
As luck would have it, Bai Kun turned out to be an expert on Feng Huo Hsien,
the "Genius of the Fire-Blast" or the Kiln God as some people might be
inclined to call him. To my amazement, not only did Bai Kun know the
traditional story about the myth that I had heard in the States of a potter
who had jumped into the kiln to save the ware from ruin and instead
transformed it into spectacular master pieces, but Bai Kun refuted this story
as myth because he said that he believed that in truth that there had been a
kiln accident in which a potter had died when the Imperial kiln that he was
helping to fire collapsed! Bai Kun explained to my companions and I that the
potter who had perished in the flames was then deified by the Emperor because
of unrest among the repressed potters who labored to produce the exquisite
porcelain articles of Jingdezhen.
During our three day visit to Jingdezhen, Bai Kun showed us several
historical sites relating to the myth of Feng Huo Hsien, including the street
and part of the now rebuilt dwelling where the potter turned kiln god is
believed to have once lived. Bai Kun also explained to us that before the
future kiln god died and was deified (quite a few Chinese gods were once
mortals) Feng Huo Hsien was known as T'ung Bun. T'ung is a family last name.
After showing us other sites that held information relating to the myth of
Feng Huo Hsien, Bai Kun unassumingly led us to the deitie's renovated temple
called the "Blessed Potter's Temple," (I found the title of the temple in a
brochure written in English that a local potter had given to me). The temple
is located on the grounds of the Jingdezhen Ancient Porcelain Factory, which
my friend Cassandra had visited many times. But even Cassandra who was
familiar with Jingdezhen was not aware that the large temple was devoted to a
kiln god (the kiln god that she had seen and taken a picture of was from
another location). We were all stunned and amazed to learn that the nine
gilded and almost life sized statues that we saw before us in the temple were
not Buddhist deities, but were kiln guardians instead! (Buddhist temples are
quite common in China).
I could write much more about the kiln gods and about our adventures with the
rising flood waters that almost kept us from visiting the site, but in
keeping with a fair on-line format, I will bring this account to a close.
There are other kiln gods located in China which I have not written about
here. However, I have elaborated on these other kiln god sites in my article
in Studio Potter.
For more information on kiln guardians please visit my web site at:
http://www.kilnlore.com
Thank you,
Martie Geiger-Ho (alias the Kiln Priestess)
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