“Jing-Shi Zhai” is a work studio that was established by a potter, Gong-Cheng Chen, after he had moved his house from Tainan to Taitung. While Jing means respect and Shi indicates solid in Mandarin, these two words represent respectively Mr. Chen’s attitude to pottery creation and his style of creations. Jing and Shi also deliver Mr. Chen’s low-profile and elegant personality.
Mr. Chen has been steeped in the pottery field for 18 years, putting efforts in creating daily-life items throughout. He insists on hand making and mixing glaze on his own for building a safe recipe. He does these not only for users to feel assured but to avoid environmental harm during the pottery-making process. In normal times, he either collects dead wood in mountains as raw materials for wood-fired kiln pottery or finishes pieces of glazed pottery by gas kiln’s high-temperature burning. Through skillful management of the corresponding relationship among shapes, lines, and glazing colors, Mr. Chen’s creations provide an affinity.
“If an object could bring quiet enlightenment and spiritual yearnings in ourselves, then it is a mature creation.” This is a truth that Gong-Cheng Chen, the potter, came to comprehend after spending years among Taitung’s mountain forest and East Rift Valley to study and explore continuously pottery field. This enlightenment makes his creations recognizable and has become his core idea when making pottery.
If we explore deeper, we would realize the so-called life is actually an embodiment of each kind of feeling and expression. If we could add aesthetic feelings into it, life would show its different faces to us. We consider pottery a kind of art that combines aesthetic feelings and life to the most. Most of the time, feelings induced by the fact that we get close to pottery, touch pottery, use pottery, and interact in many aspects of life with pottery are richer than just watching it.
Therefore, the best maintenance for pottery is to get close to it and use it. Daily use makes pottery glow, allowing users to create their own memorable moments in their lives from the experience of the present.