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Before the Great Firewall blocked gmail messages, a Beijing friend was able to translate the inscription on the back of this cloisonne plate. His words:
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the characters on it are
the first row is "designed by Zhu da nian"
zhu da nian is the chinese designer's name
http://baike.baidu.com/view/225903.htm?
maybe this guy
the second row is Beijing special craftswork company
the third is "trial factory made"
so this means "manufactured by the trial factory of the beijing special craftswork"

you know all these titles of the factory and the company seem to be of that specific period of 1970-80s
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This is a very strange plate - the mechanical drawings are weirdly reminiscent of Dupont or 3M or Industrial Workers of the World logos or Soviet posters. And the grain in the border seems to be corn, not rice or millet?
The enamel colors are subtle and modern. The blue enamel on the back seems similar to that used by the JingFa factory.

Anyone have any thoughts on when this might have been made?
I thought perhaps it might be an artifact of the Cultural Revolution, 1966-76, as it certainly lacks any single theme that could be considered bourgeois revisionism - not a whiff of tradition Buddhist or floral or bird or landscape motifs.

Or is it earlier, when Zhu Dian was a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts? In the early 1950s there was much government concern and support for the revitalization of traditional arts in porcelain, cloisonne, lacquer, ivory and jade carving. Themes featuring peasants and workers were encouraged.

Or is it later, from the 1980s,when Zhu Danian was once again a professor in the decoration department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts? The JingFa factory was at its peak in the 1980s, with skilled staff, a new palette of enamel colors, and production facilities that could have accomplished the excellent work on this plate.

I'd love to hear some other opinions, if anyone cares to venture some.







Link :Zhu Danian page in Baidu

I'll add my take on the translation and repeat the characters as well:

設計: 祝大年
sheji: Zhu Danian - Designed by: Zhu Danian

北京市特種工藝公司
Bei-jing Shi Te-zhong Gong-yi Gong-si - Beijing Municipal Specialty Arts & Crafts Corporation

实驗工廠製造
Shi-yan Gong-chang Zhi-zao - Manufactured by the Experimental Factory

As you note, the design is devoid of overt reference to anything metaphysical or reflective of traditional myths and legends. Shown instead are images of industrial tools and cereal crops. Then in the markings, the characters include a number that have been simplified since the plate was produced. Combined with these clues, the use of an experimental factory to make a plate full of Socialist symbolism suggests strongly to me that this plate was produced circa the late 1950s to late 1960s, during the Great Leap Forward through Cultural Revolution era.

After 1976, following the death of Mao and the downfall of the Gang of Four, it only took a few years for the resumption of traditional arts and crafts production under the guidance of the rehabilitated Deng Xiaoping.

Best regards,

Bill H.

Bill, thank you for the great information on the text, and analysis of the design. Also thank you for the pinyin version of the characters.

Zhu Danian's biography does seem to support your suggestion that a pre-1970 date for this piece seems likely, as that's the year he was packed off to a work farm during the Cultural Revolution, possibly as a result of in 1957 having "been wrongly classified as a rightist, unjustly aggrieved 20 years."

Most of his work seems to be related to mural painting and porcelain design and decoration, so I agree with your late 50s-late 60s time frame for this cloisonne plate. This was also the era of the experimental workshops that Qian Meihua and Jin Shiquan worked in in an effort to revitalize cloisonne - Meihua as a young art university graduate, Shiquan as a middle-aged cloisonne artist who had been trained as a teenager in the Lao Tian Li workshop. Everyone was determined and enthusiastic and hopeful that the new government would enable great things.

Here's a link to an English translation of the Baidu article, without the advertisements.

An early? Zhu Danian porcelain plate shares a border pattern with the cloisonne plate.

I was a bit mistaken about the complete lack of traditional iconography - the cloud motifs in the border are stylized, but recognizable from Ming and Qing and early Republic versions. And I wonder if the gear wheel in the center isn't a sly transformation of one of the eight Buddhist treasures, the Wheel of Law?



URL Title :Zhu Danian biography

I am wondering what the use of some traditional characters in the inscription on the back of the plate implies: that it was made before the full switch to simplified characters in the 1950s, or is evidence of the occasional selective return to traditional characters seen in some areas of art and publication since the 1990s.

There's enough patina showing on the brass rim seen in these latest pictures for me still to think this dish likely is a 1950's product, and certainly made no later than 1970. Zhu was criticized as being a rightist in 1957, when the second phase of the Hundred Flowers campaign was underway. He apparently fended off the criticism until 1970, when he was "sent down to the countryside" (xia fang le) to perform rural labor in Hebei Province. Apparently he was among the intellectuals rehabilitated with Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s.

Best regards,

Bill H.

Reviewed the 1950s chronology in a book about Qian Meihua, and discovered this:

1951, graduated ... and was assigned to Beijing Special Crafts Company, as a pattern researcher.

1953, was assigned to Experimental Plant of Beijing Cloisonne, and engaged in design work

Not until 1958 was she transferred to the Beijing Enamel Factory, "as the person in charge of design studio."

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