Pottery Firing Technique (Tibetan Black Pottery)

The Tibetan black-pottery firing technique is practised chiefly in Tangdui village of Nixi township, Shangri-La, in the Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture; archaeological finds trace pottery-making here back more than two thousand years to the stone-coffin culture, and the whole village has lived by the craft for generations. In June 2008 the technique entered the second national ICH list, and in 2009 Sunnuo Qilin of Tangdui was named a national-level representative inheritor.

Nixi black pottery is made entirely by hand from local iron-rich red clay, through selecting, pounding, sifting and kneading, then forming by hand-beaten throwing, polishing with river pebbles, and finally open-air firing in a mound of wood and grass that smothers to smoke, the carbon soaking in to turn the ware a deep, hard black; the shapes are mostly butter-tea pots, braziers and cooking pots for everyday Tibetan use.

Nixi black pottery preserves the ancient open-air carbon-smoking firing method and is called a "living history of pottery," holding real value for the study of south-western minority craft, the Tibetan way of life and the vessels of the tea-horse trade, and serving as a distinctive cultural-tourism experience.

The making and hands-on experience of black pottery can be found at Tangdui village in Nixi township and at the productive-protection transmission centre for the craft.