Paper short abstract:

Rules are patiently observed untill they are finally overcome, annihilated. Technical achievement in Jian Zhan traditional pottery is tacit, observed, latent, inscribed on the body and action of the performer, who is not following the rules of the canon of his art for he naturalized them.

Paper long abstract:

Jian Zhan pottery in Xiong Zhong Gui's workshop in Shuiji zhen, North Fujian Province, is a union of everyday rituals performed by skilled practitioners who have mastered their own phase of work. They have been trained, through imitation and repetition of gestures and acts, untill they have naturalized and incarnated those technical procedures. During the wearing hours of work they dedicate total, deep concentration on their making, that resembles a long performance of aptitude and dexterity. The process of enskilment, dwelling in a certain environment, responsibility for their work, inscribed as it is inside a tradition of which they are aware, even though they themselves reveal only a few words to the anthropologist, these processes are manifest in their total subtraction from the society to which their families belong: temporally for some, spatially for others.

They do not follow rules because they are inserted into a consciousness, into a self-sustaining economy of the workshop in which there are no rules but tacit knowledge, silent acceptance of destiny and heritage continuity, so they have to adapt their performances to this situation and make their own schedule, organize their work. The Master of the workshop's guidance is silent and pervasive, but latent. He is the founder of the workshop, the repository of that specific tradition, the conveyor of technical secrets that make this pottery style unique, primus inter pares. The study of the chaine operatoire of Jian Zhan is relevant for an understanding of creativity, standardization of art and chinese society itself.