page_title: Chinese ceramics
section_title: Ding ware
hierarchical_section_title: Chinese ceramics / Types of Chinese pottery / Ding ware
caption_attribution_description: I took this picture of an object in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Photography is permitted in the museum and no restrictions are placed on the resulting images.
context_page_description: Chinese ceramics show a continuous development since pre-dynastic times and are one of the most significant forms of Chinese art and ceramics globally. The first pottery was made during the Palaeolithic era. Chinese ceramics range from construction materials such as bricks and tiles, to hand-built pottery vessels fired in bonfires or kilns, to the sophisticated Chinese porcelain wares made for the imperial court and for export. Porcelain was a Chinese invention and is so identified with China that it is still called "china" in everyday English usage.
  Most later Chinese ceramics, even of the finest quality, were made on an industrial scale, thus few names of individual potters were recorded. Many of the most important kiln workshops were owned by or reserved for the emperor, and large quantities of Chinese export porcelain were exported as diplomatic gifts or for trade from an early date, initially to East Asia and the Islamic world, and then from around the 16th century to Europe. Chinese ceramics have had an enormous influence on other ceramic traditions in these areas.
context_section_description: Ding (Wade–Giles: Ting) ware was produced in Ding County, Hebei Province. Already in production when the Song emperors came to power in 940, Ding ware was the finest porcelain produced in northern China at the time, and was the first to enter the palace for official imperial use. Its paste is white, generally covered with an almost transparent glaze that dripped and collected in "tears", (though some Ding ware was glazed a monochrome black or brown, white was the much more common type). Overall, the Ding aesthetic relied more on its elegant shape than ostentatious decoration; designs were understated, either incised or stamped into the clay prior to glazing. Due to the way the dishes were stacked in the kiln, the edged remained unglazed, and had to be rimmed in metal such as gold or silver when used as tableware. Some hundred years later, a Southern Song dynasty writer commented that it was this defect that led to its demise as favoured imperial ware. Since the Song government lost access to these northern kilns when they fled south, it has been argued that Qingbai ware (see below) was viewed as a replacement for Ding.
  Although not as highly ranked as Ru ware, the late Ming dynasty connoisseur Gao Lian awards Ding ware a brief mention in his volume Eight Discourses on the Art of Living. Classified under his sixth discourse, the section on "pure enjoyment of cultured idleness", Master Gao said: "The best sort has marks on it like tear-stains…  Great skill and ingenuity is displayed in selecting the forms of the vessels."
caption: Ru Ware Bowl Stand, Chinese, Early 12th Century; Buff stoneware, with crackled light bluish green glaze, and a copper edge; London, Victoria and Albert Museum, FE.1–1970[47]
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