The deceptive beauty of ceramic artistry

Among the family kilns still committed to the trade is the one belonging to Su's family, which was first fired up by his great-grandfather, Su Xuejin. His Subduer of Tigers, a figure of a luohan (the Chinese name for an arhat, or a Buddhist adept on the cusp of attaining nirvana), is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, alongside Su Xianzhong's Paper No 1.

For the artist, keeping the family heritage alive is about renewing the presentation of traditional handicrafts.

In his Paper series, the stack of "pages "is placed on a brick Su Xianzhong found in the family kiln.

He says the bricks are what support this trade and make his work possible, and they help remind people of the close association between the fire at the kilns and the smooth texture of the porcelain.

Pure and Infinite is the first exhibition of pieces from the National Museum of China to be displayed outside of Beijing this year. It is the sixth collaboration with the Hebei Museum since the two museums began staging exhibitions of each other's collections in 2018.

In recent years, the national museum has lent items from its collection to museums outside Beijing to benefit a wider audience. Chang Li, director of the Merchandise and Development Department of the National Museum of China, says that they organized 14 exhibitions in China and abroad last year that welcomed more than 2.7 million visits.

The program this year includes a bronze ware exhibition at the Henan Museum in Zhengzhou, Henan province, and an exhibition about traditional Chinese medicine at the Dezhou Museum in Dezhou, Shandong province.