Floral Wave Tapestry

This contemporary porcelain vessel, ‘Floral Wave Tapestry’, revisits the Fencai enamel tradition with a focused attention to material, form, and narrative. While the grandeur of imperial wares first drew the artist’s attention, it was the small, utilitarian pots encountered in the markets of Jingdezhen that captured her imagination. Their restrained forms and direct, often naïve depictions of flowers, fruit, and scholar’s objects inform both the visual language and approach to the design and decoration of this work. The gourd form, Hú Lù, associated with good fortune, provides a dynamic structure through its double swelling, allowing imagery to unfold in a continuous band around the surface. Stylised botanical motifs, drawn from different seasons, create shifts in density and rhythm, encouraging closer observation of the surface pattern. Fencai (known in the West as ‘famille rose’) is an overglaze enamel technique dating from the 18th century, used to decorate porcelain produced at the Imperial Kilns in Jingdezhen and painted in the Palace workshops in Beijing. The technique employs a black, oil-based outline to contain the enamel during firing. Here, the artist adapts this method through a contemporary use of dots of colour, articulated with fine black lines, while a palette of rich greens, yellows, and pinks extends this historical vocabulary into a distinctly personal and modern expression.