On Oct 13, the China Ceramics Innovation Seminar was launched at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. The event was concurrently a donation ceremony of the contemporary ceramics design masters. Artists winning the design master title and officials from the local government receiving donations attended the ceremony.

At the ceremony, Li Tinghuai contributed the celeste glaze, three-foot wine goblet with a bow string pattern, a Ruzhou ceramic product, to Yan’an, a sacred place of Chinese revolution. Other design masters also donated works.

The Chinese ceramics design master is the supreme national honorary title in the ceramics design sector conferred by the Ministry of Culture to ceramics designers with prominent performances. The candidates are recommended by the China World Ethnic Culture Exchange and Promotion Committee and China Architectural Ceramics Association.

In March 2011, a committee of 13 national masters selected 176 candidates from nearly 1,000 applicants in the ceramics producing areas by using a secret ballot. In July, a review committee of 11 national masters selected nearly 70 candidates from the 176. In August, after a nationwide public summons, the sponsors conferred 64 experts, including Li Tinghuai, as the first group of Chinese ceramics design masters.

Seven people from Henan province won the honorary titles -- Li Tinghuai, Liu Zhijun, Zhang Jinwei, Yang Xiaofeng, Guo Aihe, Mei Guojian, and Ji Deqiang. They are experts in the research and development of Ruzhou ceramics, Jun porcelain and decorative porcelain sectors.

Li Tinghuai is the only person studying Ruzhou ceramics, the most famous of Chinese five porcelains (Ru porcelain, Mandarin porcelain, Jun porcelain, Ge porcelain and Ding porcelain.

Li said he would continue to make innovations to Ruzhou ceramics on the basis of inheriting traditional merits, to make products with more artistic appeal, visual shocks and sense of the modernity, thus contributing to the promoting of the Ruzhou ceramics traditional culture and boosting Ruzhou’s cultural industry.

Ceramics designers donate works to the sacred place of the Chinese revolution