The traditional porcelain workshop (locally called the biscuit house) in Jingdezhen is the principal place for shaping operations. The structures of the existing workshops today have been finalized over a long-term evolvement.
The porcelain workshop in Jingdezhen, a special place for shaping operations, is a courtyard architecture composed of three individual buildings: the main hall, granary and the clay house, of which the main hall is mainly for shaping operations and usually faces to the south. The granary is a storehouse of raw materials, looking to the north. The two buildings are parallel with each other. The clay house is located at the western end of the main hall and extends southwards till it is joined with the granary. The clay house is mainly for aging and tramping of clay. In the middle of the architecture is a rectangular yard and the doors of all the houses, surrounded by inclosing walls on all the sides, are wide open to the inner yard. All of them constitute a enclosed type of courtyard. Under the roof of the main hall are wooden racks. The two groups of wooden racks are joined with wooden rods (called room). The rack structure is a ready-make rack for drying biscuit.
A drying-rack basin (also called drying-rack pond) is dug out in a place between the inner yard and slope. The drying-rack basin is composed of such two parts as biscuit-drying racks and the water basin. The basin is actually a rectangular reservoir with its long sides in parallel with slopes. The reservoir is underground and stores water all the year round. The biscuit-drying racks, setup above the basin, are mainly for drying biscuits.
A drying-rack basin (also called drying-rack pond) is dug out in a place between the inner yard and the slope. The drying-rack basin is composed of such two parts as biscuit-drying racks and the water basin. The basin is actually a rectangular reservoir with its long sides in parallel with slopes. The reservoir is underground and stores water all the year round. The biscuit-drying racks, set up above the basin, are mainly for drying biscuits.
The evaporation rate of water in the basin varies in accordance with changes of the temperatures. With the scorching sun directly overhead in summer, the rate is much high and the evaporative moisture will play a role in slowing the drying of biscuit to some extent. There is only a corridor between the drying-rack basin and the biscuit racks in the main hall and it is quite easy for potters to turn around quickly when they shift the long board from the biscuit racks in the main hall to the biscuit-drying racks. It is also convenient to take the biscuits on the biscuit-drying racks back to the biscuit racks in the main hall quickly when it rains as there is much rain in the South of China. Therefore, it saves efforts and time. Such a rationalized design is perfect.
Nowadays, few of the porcelain workshops in Jingdezhen have been set up completely by these design criteria, but there are still many traditional shaping workshops which have survived well and still work normally today.
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