Quick Take: Jingdezhen is undergoing a creative renaissance where centuries of imperial ceramic heritage meet contemporary global design. Through a collaborative vision between founder Nian Gu (Wharton MBA) and 5th-generation scholar-artisan Luca, Hearthlys translates ancient mineral formulations, four-stage kiln firings, and hand-applied 24K gold detailing into sculptural tableware engineered specifically for modern, minimalist American interiors.
For centuries, Jingdezhen has been universally synonymous with Chinese porcelain.
To much of the world, the name still evokes antique blue-and-white vessels, imperial kilns, and artifacts preserved behind museum glass. But spend time in Jingdezhen today, and a fundamentally different picture emerges.
Young ceramic designers are establishing independent workshops in the surrounding hills. Students and researchers from Jingdezhen Ceramic University showcase experimental work at curated design fairs. Kilns, raw mineral suppliers, mold sculptors, glaze chemists, overglaze painters, and independent studio artists form an extraordinarily dense creative ecosystem.
The ancestral knowledge is alive. What has evolved is how a new generation chooses to speak through it.
Jingdezhen is experiencing a movement that feels less like a nostalgic revival of the past and more like a true contemporary renaissance.
The story of Hearthlys chief designer Luca offers a direct window into this transformation.
A Family Lineage Written in Porcelain
Luca was born in Jingdezhen in 1993. Ceramics was woven into his daily life long before it became his formal discipline.
His family’s roots in the city's porcelain industry reach back to the late 19th-century Guangxu era of the Qing dynasty. His great-great-grandfather worked within the Imperial Kiln system crafting saggars (xiā bō)—the heavy, fire-resistant ceramic containers engineered from strictly guarded mineral recipes to shield royal porcelain from direct flame, ash, and falling debris inside wood-fired dragon kilns.
A saggar is never the showpiece seen when a kiln is opened; it is the protective cocoon that makes imperial perfection possible.
The craft adapted across generations:
- The Mid-20th Century: Luca’s grandfather navigated the city’s state-owned ceramic enterprise era, rising from packaging operations to factory director.
- The 1990s Reform Era: As state industries restructured, Luca’s parents and extended family founded independent private workshops, preserving traditional hand-crafting and antique porcelain reproduction.
The industrial landscape transformed dramatically across 150 years, but the family never put down the clay.
Mastering Heritage to Pioneer Contemporary Design
Luca represents an entirely new chapter of this lineage. Rather than simply managing the family workshop, he pursued rigorous classical training alongside advanced academic design theory.
Before establishing his contemporary studio practice, Luca spent years systematically mastering traditional overglaze decoration within his family’s workshops. He earned his degrees in daily-use ceramic art and design at Jingdezhen Ceramic University, where he is currently completing his doctoral research in Ceramic Decoration & Design Theory.
His academic work investigates the historical migration of Chinese ceramic decorative motifs across maritime trade routes and their long-term impact on global material culture.
His design perspective extends well beyond Jingdezhen. Luca has conducted extensive on-site field research across the world's most historic ceramic capitals:
- Faenza, Italy: Analyzing contemporary studio vessel forms and sculptural development.
- Limoges, France: Studying European luxury porcelain vitrification and fine tableware standards.
- Kyoto & Ishikawa (Kutani), Japan: Investigating generational craft preservation, mineral glazes, and tactile surface finishes.
His academic rigor and studio mastery have earned major industry recognition, including the prestigious Gold Award at the 7th China (Dunhuang) Ceramic Art Design Competition.
Luca understands ancestral rules deeply enough to know precisely which ones can be reinvented for modern living.
A City Built on a Living Network of Specialized Masters
What makes Jingdezhen unique in the global design landscape is that ceramic expertise rarely resides in a single factory.
A designer does not work in isolation. One artisan spends four decades understanding the behavior of raw mineral glazes under reduction firing. Another specializes exclusively in the formulation of high-fire clay bodies. Another spends a lifetime mastering fine micro-relief carving or ancestral gold application.
Many of the master artisans Luca collaborates with today belong to the network of generational ceramic families he grew up alongside.
When a Hearthlys piece requires an exacting approach to genuine 24K gold detailing (Diǎnjīn), Luca works with a master specialized in that single technique. When a design requires a tactile, dimensional relief glaze, he collaborates directly with glaze chemists whose families have formulated mineral finishes for decades.
Jingdezhen is not an industrial assembly line. It is a living, breathing library of distributed human knowledge.
The Generation That Returned: Tradition as a Design Vocabulary
In recent years, a younger generation of ceramic designers has returned to build a contemporary creative community around Jingdezhen's historic infrastructure.
Surrounding the valley of Xianghu, independent studios sit among the hills, supported by an immediate local supply chain of raw clays, high-fire kilns, and specialized craft workshops.
For these designers, tradition is not a rigid mold to replicate. It is an expressive vocabulary.
They possess access to techniques perfected over centuries, but they deploy them to create functional art for a global modern audience:
- An ancient celadon or iron-rich mineral glaze is paired with an understated architectural silhouette.
- A classical micro-relief carving technique is abstracted to create tactile borders.
- Traditional craft knowledge is transformed into an intentional design tool.
Heritage survives not by remaining frozen in time, but because someone gives it a compelling new reason to exist. That is the essence of Jingdezhen's new renaissance.
From Contemporary American Homes Back to the Kiln
Hearthlys was born at the intersection of this ceramic renaissance and contemporary interior design.
Founder ENZE brought a complementary international perspective to the studio. Holding an MBA from The Wharton School and a background in global finance, Nian spent over a decade studying, working, and living across the United States. She approaches ceramics through the lens of contemporary Western architectural spaces, quiet luxury interiors, and the everyday objects people choose to live with.
Luca brings the depth of Jingdezhen’s heritage from the inside; ENZE brings the spatial demands of modern homes from the outside.
Their collaboration does not attempt to adapt antique court porcelain for export markets. Instead, it addresses an essential design question:
What can centuries of Jingdezhen ceramic mastery create when the starting point is the way we live right now?
In a warm minimalist home—where walls, linen upholstery, and natural wood furniture are quiet and restrained—a tabletop object does not need to be plain.
In fact, the opposite creates better balance:
- The Architecture: Clean lines, neutral palettes, and generous open space.
- The Hearthlys Object: High craft density, hand-hammered relief surfaces, pure mineral clay, and delicate 24K gold accents.
The quieter the room, the more space there is for authentic craftsmanship to speak.
A design starts with how a piece will anchor a walnut dining table, stone kitchen island, or bedside console in a modern residence. Then come the technical challenges only Jingdezhen can solve: How should the raw mineral clay feel in the hand? How will the relief catch morning daylight? What subtle hand-carved variations must be preserved rather than machined away?
The result is neither delicate museum porcelain nor rustic stoneware. It represents a third path: functional porcelain crafted with centuries of ceramic intelligence, designed intentionally for contemporary living.
The Living Heritage: Crafting for Today's World
There is a striking continuity in the lineage behind Hearthlys:
- Generation I: Formulating saggars to shield imperial porcelain during Qing Dynasty firings.
- Generation II & III: Managing technical operations within state-owned ceramic enterprises.
- Generation IV: Establishing private studios dedicated to classical porcelain artistry.
- Generation V (Luca): Uniting family craft mastery, academic research, and global design to create Hearthlys functional art for contemporary homes worldwide.
Luca’s doctoral research explores how historical ceramic trade once shaped global aesthetics. Today, his work actively continues that cultural exchange.
His ancestors crafted porcelain for the imperial world of their time. Luca and Hearthlys create porcelain for the modern world we inhabit today.
We craft in Jingdezhen not to reproduce the past, but because the past remains capable of creating something truly extraordinary.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q: What makes Jingdezhen porcelain historically unique?
A: Jingdezhen has been the porcelain capital of the world for over a thousand years, renowned for its rich kaolin clay deposits, imperial kiln history, and an ecosystem of specialized master artisans who have passed down multi-stage firing, glazing, and carving techniques for generations.
Q: How does Hearthlys combine traditional craftsmanship with modern design?
A: Hearthlys bridges ancestral techniques—such as pure mineral clay formulations, four-stage kiln firings up to 1240°C (2264°F), and hand-applied 24K gold detailing—with clean, architectural silhouettes tailored for contemporary minimalist and quiet luxury interiors.
Q: Who is behind Hearthlys ceramics?
A: Hearthlys was founded through a partnership between Nian Gu (a Wharton MBA with a background in global finance and international interior aesthetics) and chief designer Luca (Qi Xu), a 5th-generation Jingdezhen ceramicist and doctoral researcher at Jingdezhen Ceramic University.
