He Chaozong

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He Chaozong 何朝宗 was a celebrated early 17th century Chinese potter. He Chaozong fashioned mainly Buddhist white porcelain statuary in the tradition of the Dehua kilns in Fujian Province, known in the west as Blanc-de-Chine. Little documentary evidence remains for He Chaozong apart from extant examples of his ceramic art. A gazetteer entry for 1763 mentions him with other art notables of the Ming Dynasty and establishes that the artist had earned a considerable reputation by his own day. His works identified by his seal are in an entirely different category than the usual Dehua statuary of the period and those later. They are thickly potted and exhibit an artistic expressiveness and creativity unmatched by thinner and standardized unsigned works. He Chaozong and the few other artists of the Dehua kilns were nearly unique in Chinese ceramic history which was characterized by anonymous and industrial scale production.

[edit] References

Encyclopedia of Chinese Artists (Zhongguo meishu jia renming cidian), Shanghai, p. 255.