Gốm sứ mỹ nghệ · Fine ceramics · Edition of 20
Celadon tea bowl, crackle glaze
Men ngọc — “jade glaze”, the grey-green celadon Bát Tràng has fired since the fourteenth century.
Phạm Văn Đức
Thrown thin from the white clay of the river bank, glazed in the family’s celadon — rice-straw ash, one clay, a recipe nobody has written down — and fired in a reduction kiln starved of oxygen for a day. Too much air and the green turns yellow; too little and it goes grey.
The crackle opens as the kiln cools. It is not a flaw. Over years it will take on tea, and the bowl will become yours in a way a new one is not.
- Materials
- White river clay, celadon glaze from rice-straw ash
- Technique
- Thrown; reduction-fired for a day; crackle opened in cooling
- Dimensions
- Ø 11 × 6.5 cm · Ø 4.3 × 2.6 in · 0.2 kg
- Edition
- Edition of 20 · Signed and sealed
- Made
- Bát Tràng, Gia Lâm · 2026
The making
One firing, in four movements
Celadon is decided at dusk, when the kiln is sealed, and read at dawn, when it is opened. Everything in between is the fire's.
I
The clay
River clay washed and aged for months in pits until it throws thin and fires pale.
II
The glaze
Rice-straw ash and clay, mixed to the family's measure and dipped, not brushed.
III
The fire
A day in reduction, the air starved so the iron in the glaze turns green rather than yellow.
IV
The dawn
The kiln is opened in the first light, when the colour can be read truly, and the bowls chosen.
From the same village
