Visiting | Dong Dan

The studio held a quiet tension. Against a concrete wall, rows of unfired vessels captivated us with an earthy red—awaiting their transformation in the kiln into the profound, luminous black that defines Dong Dan’s practice.  Each piece stood as a study in potential, their curved surfaces holding light differently depending on their stage of completion.

“I don’t simply make vessels,” he reflected. “I give form to volumes.” His process begins with creation, then shifts to curation—returning to a collection of silhouettes to identify those that hold what he calls 张力, a dynamic tension in their curvature. This selection process is intuitive yet deliberate, guided by an understanding of how clay moves and settles. Only the forms that speak are carried forward into the meticulous stages of carving and glazing, where their essential qualities are refined rather than altered.

“They come from my purest focus—a perfect roundness, a profound black, serene as a monument.”

Dan's pursuit manifests in his exploration of 玄 (xuán)—a classical concept of profound darkness that in his hands becomes a glaze existing between matte and gloss. He achieves this finish through technical mastery, creating his signature black from local materials: soil-based glaze enriched with straw ash for control and iron-rich Sichuan clay for depth.

His work is an act of recognition—of looking at history through a contemporary lens. Deeply inspired by Jizhou kiln traditions, he reinterprets their legacy not through replication, but through resonance. The technical challenges of achieving perfect black glazes connect him to centuries of ceramic innovation, while his formal sensibility remains distinctly modern. He speaks of Song dynasty patterns like 满天星 (Aether) and 天欲雪 (Near Snow) with the affection of a self-proclaimed hopeless romantic, drawn to their poetic names and celestial imagery. In his hands, these historical references become subtle, abstract impressions—stardust captured in glaze, the quiet tension before snowfall held in the turn of a rim.

The final object is not so much made as it is revealed—a volume given voice through fire, a dialogue between the ancestral and the immediate, between remembered beauty and present feeling. 

Full interview with Dong Dan is available on https://jadegrain.com/pages/view.