The Research On Tea Vessels Of Changsha Kiln

Changsha kiln, located in Tongguan town, Wangcheng county, was a famous kiln in Tang Dynasty. It mainly produced daily-use ceramics. The products were sold not only in home market, but also abroad. Although the success were not written on books, reality tells the most. Changsha wares are famous for the sketches and paintings on the products. It's a pity that scholars paid more attention to the decoration but less to the product design.The point of view of this research is set to the design characters and philosophy of ancient ceramics, to show the relationship between the ceramics and the certain society and cultures. The literature investigation and social investigation research method is used in this paper. The vessels of Changsha kiln are taken as main research object. The research is developed according to the thought of data comparison and analyse, function estimation based on design semantics, all of which are researched ground on the development of the ceramics production of Tang Dynasty and Tea culture.Firstly, related knowledge about Changsha kiln and tea vessels are introduced briefly. Secondly, external circumstances such as tea culture's flourish in Tang Dynasty and history of tea in Hunan Province are discussed. Tea vessels' samples are picked from the excavation of the kiln sites in 1983, according to the tea culture in Tang Dynasty, and the books and poems of tea. The samples are divided into different types, bowls were used for drinking, boxes were used for putting in salt, ewers were used for putting hot water, rollers or mill bowls were used for grinding tea into powder. Every type of vessels were judged, explained, and compared to other similar wares. Last, these tea vessels are sorted into different types according to their functions, the evolvement and character of them are figured out.The research study on Changsha kiln is quite new. Many scholars don't agree that Changsha kiln make tea vessels. The thesis research on this systematically, helps to solve the question, and the traditional design idea and culture connotation are wished to be used as reference to modern designs which has feasibility and significance of reality. There are few samples used in the thesis because of condition limitation and other reasons. More samples and data are needed to be analyzed in follow-up research in order to have perfect conclusion.