Southern Song Dynasty Government Kiln Museum
Kiln ruins and crackle-glazed imperial ceramics rebuilt from over eight thousand excavated shards.
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About this audio guide
This guide to the Southern Song Dynasty Government Kiln Museum in Hangzhou opens with a single crackled bowl and traces the exiled Song court's potters, who set up this kiln near the old city wall after fleeing south from northern invaders, tasked with matching the sacred grey green ware reserved for imperial rituals. It follows how their iron rich local clay and a mismatched glaze produced an unplanned network of hairline cracks, and how the potters chose to work with the flaw rather than hide it. The guide also traces the site's own long burial, unrecognized until 1930 and not properly excavated until decades later.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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