Decoding Jingdezhen Ceramics with Tech

BEIJING, May 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- A report from Science and Technology Daily:

When Ozge Atalay, a ceramic art student from Izmir, Türkiye, learned the craft in her own country and Germany, she was taught to work only with her hands.

Then she spent half a year in Jingdezhen in east China, renowned as the millennia-old porcelain capital of China, and her Chinese friend Zhao Nan, a young inheritor of Peking Opera facial mask making, showed her otherwise.

In her studio, Zhao showed Ozge how she uses 3D scanning. "When I make some small artworks and want to enlarge them, it's hard to keep everything the same because handmade pieces always differ," Zhao explained. "So I use 3D scanning to expand my small structure into a bigger size. I found it really easy to change the size of my work (with 3D scanning)."

For Ozge, this was a revelation. "I never knew there was such technology," she said. Watching the digital model rotate on the screen — an exact replica that could be scaled, studied and shared without even touching the original clay — she found herself wondering, could technology give ceramics a kind of life beyond the physical? A life that does not crack, fade or break?

It was the first time she considered that eternity might come not only from preservation in a museum, but from data.

From fragments to a living archive

Zhao promised to take her to a place that would help her truly understand what ceramics are and the journey began as they walked into the Jingdezhen Imperial Kiln Institute in the Imperial Kiln National Archaeological Site Park, a heritage zone in Jingdezhen. Here, the galleries are filled with broken and restored ceramics and to an untrained eye, the fragments might seem like failures.

However, Ozge learned that these "imperfect" pieces record centuries of uninterrupted firing in the "porcelain capital" and preserve details long buried by time. Now thanks to technology, these details are being transformed into data that will never decay.

Behind the quiet galleries lies a powerful digital infrastructure: the Ceramic Gene Bank. It is the world's first systematic digital platform built around the concept of ceramic genes. Its construction began in 2022, drawing on nearly 20 million porcelain shards unearthed from the imperial kiln ruins over the past 40 years.

Xiong Zhe, head of the institute's technology laboratory, explained the unique advantage they enjoy. The institute's predecessor was the Jingdezhen Ceramic Archaeology Research Institute. Over nearly four decades starting in the 1980s, they excavated about 20 million shards. Based on this foundation, they selected the most representative pieces for sampling and specialized research.

Restoring the unseen

Having a genetic reference is only one part of the story. The real challenge lies in how to bring a shattered object back to visual wholeness without faking its history. That challenge is being met in a restoration workshop not far from the gene bank.

Hao Guojiang, head of the institute's restoration department and a recognized restorer of ancient ceramics, showed them a virtual pattern restoration software developed jointly with Peking University. "It helps us restore the patterns on pieces we have already pieced together," Hao said.

He then described the old way of working. "In the past, when a piece was missing a pattern, we had to search through literature or look at surviving pieces in museums for reference." Using traditional methods, his team spent four years restoring 116 pieces. "Traditional restoration required adding material to the missing part and then painting it by hand. But hand painting always carries a degree of subjectivity," he said.

Now, the combination of the virtual restoration software and a proprietary waterslide decal technique developed in-house has changed everything. "We print the missing design directly onto the restored area," Hao said. "It now takes only five minutes."

He pointed out a key advantage: The decal does not touch the original surface. "You can see a clear boundary between the original and the restoration. This preserves the maximum authenticity of the piece."

Color as calculated poetry

Restoration addresses the missing parts and patterns, but what about the colors that make a ceramic piece breathe? That question led Ozge and Zhao to a different kind of laboratory — one where chemistry and data meet.

At the Jingdezhen Ceramic Research Institute, Hu Zi, director of the Craft Materials Research Laboratory, introduced them to the physical principles behind glaze colors: why qinghua is blue, how underglaze red forms, and how different kiln conditions affect color."By measuring thermal expansion," Hu said, "we can determine the sintering temperature of a material. This is the point where shrinkage reaches its maximum, and that temperature is the optimal firing temperature."

He then demonstrated a thermodilatometer, which shows the material's initial melting point. "This is the most common test we run in ceramic materials research," Hu said.

Ozge realized that unlike relying on experience and intuition, like she had in the past, she and Zhao were now creating with relatively precise data. They tried preparing their own glaze formulas. With modern technology, they could precisely regulate glaze colors from off-white to sky blue to deep blue. Colors were no longer happy accidents, but calculated poetry.

Beyond silent pictures

Data gave them control over color. But could data also capture shape, texture and the feeling of holding a ceramic object?

That is precisely what a different kind of technology promises to do. At the digital asset exhibition hall, technicians were operating precision instruments to capture every detail of a porcelain painting board. On the screen, an optical digital model rotated slowly — each ice crack line in the glaze, every kiln transformation mark, even the tiny bubbles formed during firing were completely captured and permanently preserved in the digital world.

"This is far more than just 'taking clear pictures,'" said Li Xiaoling, chief operating officer of Zhongsheng Technology Company. He explained that traditional documentation of cultural relics only provides rough dimensions and shapes without revealing the fine, tactile details that truly define a ceramic work."Today, using the domestically developed Timiro technology, we can capture every texture of a porcelain piece with precision," Li said.

Timiro is a multidimensional, interactive media technology, different from conventional images, videos or 3D models. Based on Timiro, his team creates what they call "optical twins." "We turn a cultural relic into a digital asset," Li said.

Users can zoom in to see brushstrokes with stunning clarity, or examine the grain of a stone glaze as if holding the object in their hands.

Whether for museum exhibitions, academic research, or online viewing by ceramic enthusiasts, the technology enables people to experience the beauty of porcelain from multiple angles and in full dimension, exploring the secrets hidden in every curve and color.

Timiro technology, Li added, breaks through the key technical bottlenecks in ceramic digitalization, such as the difficulty in ensuring digital fidelity, managing data securely, and making files easy to use.

In this way, it empowers the protection, innovative inheritance of ceramic cultural heritage and multilateral exchanges.

SOURCE Science and Technology Daily