Foshan
— — the city that taught the south its hands.
Not only on a wall.
“A delta city of nine million, older than its skyline lets on. Foshan is where Cantonese opera was shaped, where Wing Chun was sharpened in the back rooms of Chan Village, and where the potters of Shiwan have worked the same red clay for more than five centuries. The Ancestral Temple still stands in the centre, lacquered and dim, exactly the colour of long use. *from the studio*
Foshan, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Foshan sits in the Pearl River Delta in central Guangdong, about 20 kilometres west of Guangzhou, with which it shares one continuous metropolitan footprint. The municipal population is roughly 9.5 million across five districts, of which Chancheng is the historic core. The city's name translates as Buddha Mountain, after Tang-era bronze statues unearthed on a low hill in the seventh century. For nearly a thousand years Foshan has been one of the four great market towns of southern China, and the surrounding district remains a heartland of light manufacturing.
The Ancestral Temple in Chancheng, Zumiao, was first built in the Northern Song dynasty in 1078 and rebuilt after a Ming-era fire. It is dedicated to the Northern Emperor and holds a five-tonne bronze statue cast on site. The temple complex now also houses memorial halls for Ip Man, the Wing Chun grandmaster who taught Bruce Lee, and Huang Feihong, both of whom were Foshan men. The black-tile roofs and the wooden opera stage in the front courtyard read as the oldest continuous public space in the city.
Shiwan, in the south of the city, has been a ceramics centre since the Ming dynasty, and the Nanfeng pottery works there has operated continuously for more than 500 years — among the oldest still-working sites of its kind in the world. Foshan is also the recognised birthplace of Cantonese opera, and the Qionghua Guildhall here was the historical guild seat of the entire form. Lion dance and Wing Chun, both Foshan traditions, anchor the spring festival programme each year in the squares around Zumiao.