Jingdezhen

Jingdezhen (China) signed a friendship pact with Faenza on 20 April 2013. It is a city of about 1,500,000 inhabitants located in the north of Jiangxi Province, China.

Jingdezhen is a UNESCO City of Crafts and Folk Art and it is considered the porcelain capital of the world.

Already under the Tang Dynasty (618-907), Jingdezhen was referred to as a city overrun by ‘kilns linking one village to another, stoves lit everywhere’. Under the Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1269-1378), there are records of the first blue and white porcelain, found in tombs dating from 1319 to 1336, most of which came from the kilns in Jingdezhen.
During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), thanks to centuries of experience, porcelain from Jingdezhen reached technical perfection (transparency and brightness) and, thanks to links with the Court, the region around Jingdezhen became the centre of the porcelain industry in China. The imperial porcelain administration was established in Jingdezhen in 1393/1402. In 1540, it is estimated that more than 10,000 people were employed in ceramic production in Jingdezhen. Under the Ch’ing Dynasty (1644-1912), the city was said to have around 18,000 potter families out of a population of about 1,000,000 at the beginning of the 18th century.