Taiwan Today

A new Taiwanese porcelain brand pushes the envelope of the craft.

Throughout the world, there are many cultural references to the color white, often related to purity and cleanliness. 1300 Only Porcelain, a new brand that launched in the market in the summer of 2010, chooses to craft unglazed white porcelain for the challenge it brings. “In porcelain, small imperfections can sometimes be covered up by colors and glaze, but there is no way to hide them on unglazed white ware,” says Henry Shen, founder and art director of 1300 Only Porcelain, which he says is the sole porcelain brand run by an artist in Taiwan. “As a new brand, our approach to getting 1300 Only Porcelain noticed is to be absolutely perfect.”

Such perfection can only be appreciated through close observation, but often what catches the eye at first glance is the company’s unique designs. Many of the pieces, for example, have a predominantly horizontal design that is rarely seen in traditional or modern porcelain. Also, each piece is crafted with what Shen calls a “720-degree technique,” meaning that the works can be placed at or viewed from any angle.

Born in 1958 in Kaohsiung City’s Qijin District, art was not Shen’s favorite subject during his school days. After graduating from the Department of Electrical Engineering of Kun Shan University in Tainan County, Shen decided to “escape” from Taiwan after a tragic traffic accident took the life of his best friend during Shen’s last semester at Kun Shan. “We had so many plans for the future, but life is so unpredictable and it seemed everything became meaningless without him,” Shen says. “I just couldn’t move on, so I thought it would probably do me some good if I ran away to a new environment for a while.”

Contact with Clay

Shen landed in New York City when he was 22. For the following several years, he worked at a restaurant run by one of his relatives there, until he could finally get himself together. He spent some time collecting information, trying to figure out what would be the next step. At the age of 29, Shen began attending a number of interior and product design courses at Parsons the New School for Design and Hunter College of the City University of New York. These courses allowed Shen his first contact with clay, which was one of the many mediums he had to work with during the classes. He became interested in it, and went on to study at New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and then, with a full scholarship, earned his Master of Fine Arts from the University of Hartford in Connecticut. “Arts and design aside, the most important lesson I learned in those years was how artists and designers deal with difficulties, find solutions and make breakthroughs,” Shen says.

Teaching, creating or designing, the future seemed to be promising in the United States, but Shen decided to return to Kaohsiung in 1997—about a year after he earned his graduate degree—to look after his aging parents. What he had not decided yet was whether he should take the artistic route or the commercial route. “It was a struggle,” he says. “I started at Parsons with product design, but there is always the desire inside a designer to create something for the sake of pure art rather than meeting the market’s preferences.” An incident shortly after his return, however, helped him make the decision: Shen sent one of his pieces to a national ceramics contest held by the National Museum of History and won first prize. “Maybe I just got lucky, but first prize the first time out, it came all too easily,” Shen says. “For me, there seemed to be little challenge to being an artist, so I took the other route.” In Qijin, he set up a company making products such as pottery bricks, sculptures and wall decorations, as well as tableware and other small items. Working with construction companies at a time when Taiwan’s overall economy was good and everyone was building, buying or redecorating their houses, it was easy for Shen to make a small fortune. And since there were few providers of such products in the Kaohsiung area, Shen also had many opportunities to work on the local government’s public arts projects.

Maybe it was the financial success that rekindled Shen’s desire to be an artist or perhaps it was the government’s promotion of the cultural and creative industries since the early 2000s that made Shen think. At any rate, he started to ponder the idea of creating his own products for the collector’s market. “There are so many famous brands that have been around for many years in this market,” he says. “If I want to be noticed, I need to have something unique.”

He noticed that in recent years, some artists and designers have made a name for themselves by “extending”—making small changes or adding decorative designs to—the basic shape of typical porcelain items. Taiwan’s Franz Collection Inc., for example, is one of the most successful companies in marketing such works, Shen says. “But I was looking for some kind of fundamental change that can be identified as soon as people see it,” he says. “For me, a few small changes here and there don’t really count as being creative since the basic design is still limited.” 

The “basic designs” of porcelain art, Shen explains, are “vertical” designs such as vases, cups and decorative plates. These typical designs have been used for centuries, but Shen wanted to create “horizontal” designs. A very difficult part of horizontal design, Shen explains, is to maintain the shape while the clay dries, as the moist clay molds are soft.

Fitting It All Together

Moreover, since a design can be composed of dozens of parts, it is also a challenge to decide how and where they should fit together, as clay swells and shrinks during kilning. “Such a design involves structural problems that are beyond most artists,” Shen says, who draws on his background in product design to solve such challenges. “I guess that’s why we don’t see them in traditional porcelain ware.”

Shen also notes that there is usually an obvious “bottom” in traditional porcelain ware so that they can “stand” properly. This, however, limits the potential of how a piece can be appreciated. Shen takes his 720-degree design approach (360 horizontal and 360 vertical) so that the work can be appreciated from every angle. A good example is Shen’s Venus with Narcissus. The piece shows Venus posed in an elegant stretch while her hair flows back forming an arch that supports the goddess and takes on the shape of narcissus flowers. The work measures 27 centimeters in height, 22 centimeters in width and is 47 centimeters long, and can be appreciated from all angles.

Venus with Narcissus took Shen three years and numerous failures to make into a workable item for reproduction. From a typical business point of view, this time-consuming process for designing a small quantity of products is not at all economical, but Shen sees it from another angle. “The complicated designs and high-level techniques required to execute them also make ‘imitating’ them impossible—or at least economically unviable,” he says. “Since each of our designs is unique, we’ll be far ahead when others figure out how to craft our designs.”

In total, Shen invested NT$150 million (US$4.8 million) in the five years before 1300 Only Porcelain developed enough of a collection to launch as a brand last July. For the brand’s debut, unglazed porcelain in pure white was chosen to demonstrate the designer’s pursuit of perfection. In some pieces, a few lines or small parts are glazed with gold to give them more depth. The subject matter varies from imaginative beasts from Western and Oriental myths to animals and plants found in nature. One of the most eye-catching pieces is Flying Tiger, a three-meter-tall creature that spreads its 120-centimeter wings in a work that obviously breaks the rules of traditional porcelain in both design and technique. But large or small, although each piece shares the same color scheme and design philosophy, it is easy to see each is also unique.

Currently, 1300 Only Porcelain has a shop at The Mall in Taipei City and a showroom in Taichung City. To market 1300 Only Porcelain, Shen has also been holding exhibitions. Quite frankly, however, there are not too many porcelain lovers who would spend NT$220,000 (US$7,100) for a work such as Venus with Narcissus—especially one from a new brand.

Building a Brand

Meanwhile, building a brand instead of working as a single artist means that Shen has the responsibility to feed his employees—currently there are about 70—rather than just feeding himself. To encourage more people to enjoy porcelain collecting, Shen and his team have also put out some smaller items that are lower priced. Each piece of the Chinese zodiac collection, for example, sells at NT$3,000 (US$97). Measuring 10 centimeters in diameter, these smaller items are easier to craft, but are just as much examples of perfect white porcelain as Shen’s larger works.

In the few months since the launch of the new brand, 1300 Only Porcelain has also had a presence at several shows overseas. Its collection was warmly received at the 2010 Paris Maison et Object, and high-end porcelain dealers from Los Angeles, London and Moscow have expressed interest in representing the brand. Recognition in foreign markets is certainly a great encouragement, but Shen has greater ambitions than just gaining a market for his products. “For me, the number 1,300 has very special meanings,” he says. “It’s the temperature at which the white porcelain is kilned, and 1,300 years ago was one of the most glorious times for Chinese porcelain.” By using the number as the brand name, Shen aims to recall the glory days of old with unique porcelain that is perfected at a temperature of 1,300 degrees.

Write to Jim Hwang at jim@mail.gio.gov.tw