Shards Art and Design

China’s ‘porcelain capital’ Jingdezhen produces lots of precious and aesthetically appealing ceramics, but it also produces tons of ceramic waste. A situation that inspired the Beijing- and US-based duo Jeffrey Miller and Thomas Schmidt to develop and create a technique to blend aluminum and porcelain shards and to found the design brand Recycled China. (Fig 7) Out of the newly developed material they create flower pots, picture frames, exterior and interior architecture elements such as wall panels for decoration or functional purposes.

Other methods to recycle broken china in smaller quantities, e.g. from a personal item that was broken at home, are promoted online.

China has a flourishing market in shards of historic ceramics that can be acquired in antique shops all over the country, but especially in Jingdezhen.See Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Anne Gerritsen on China’s porcelain shard market; Anne Gerritsen, “Chapter 1 – The Shard Market,” in The City of Blue and White Against this background, contemporary artists have started to integrate porcelain fragments into theirs works. Among them the most famous artist by far is Li Xiaofeng, whose shard-made costumes mimic clothes while essentially remaining unwearable.

Artists outside of China, among them most notably Korea sculptor Yee Soo-kyung and Israeli artist Zemer Peled, have also become significant figures in the field of ‘shard art’.