Piecing together the precious porcelain past

An exhibition of these restored artifacts, which focuses on 99 flower-themed porcelain objects and the lifestyle and pleasures they reflect, opened on Aug 1 at the Ledao Hall in the Prince Kung's Palace Museum in Beijing. It runs until Aug 27.

According to Wang Lan, who is a consultant at the Jingdezhen Imperial Kiln Institute, the Prince Kung's Palace Museum, as a representative imperial Qing residential complex, is famous for its gardens, and so they have chosen porcelain with floral and plant patterns to reflect this.

As the items were made to serve as drinking vessels, tea sets, fruit trays, flowerpots and bird feeders, they also reflect the daily pleasures of the past.

Wang singles out one of the objects, a partly-finished doucai style case. "It is decorated to look like a landscape painting on a moon-shaped fan, and shows a garden corner bursting with spring life, birds, butterflies and flowers."

Doucai is a technique used in painting porcelain, where parts of the design are painted in a blue underglaze, and the rest is overglazed in different colored enamels.