10.1 The ICAA International Ceramic Art Award
Founding and positioning
Founded in 2016. Full name: “Blanc de Chine” International Ceramic Art Award (ICAA).
The ICAA must be understood within the coordinate system of global ceramic art competitions. The three internationally recognised major ceramic art events are: the Faenza International Ceramic Art Competition (Italy), the Mino International Ceramics Exhibition (Japan), and the ICAA. A three-way balance. Faenza dates from 1938, Mino from 1986, ICAA from 2016—the youngest, yet the fastest-expanding.
Four editions
| Edition | Venue | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1st (2017) | Musée des Confluences, Lyon, France | Inaugural edition held at a major European museum |
| 2nd (2019) | Musée Masséna + Opéra de Nice, France | Dual venues, extending into performing-arts space |
| 3rd (2023) | Yinlan Centre, Hangzhou, China | First edition held in China |
| 4th (2024–2025) | Xiamen, China | 50 countries / 845 artists / 994 works / 11 prizewinners |
Editions 1–3 combined: nearly 60 countries, approximately 2,000 entrants, 2,243 works. The 4th edition (Xiamen) alone reached 50 countries, 845 artists, and 994 works, marking a step-change in scale.
Jury composition
The composition of the jury directly determines the academic credibility of any art competition:
| Juror | Position |
|---|---|
| Catherine Chevillot | Former Director, Musée Rodin, Paris |
| Claudia Casali | Director, MIC Faenza (International Museum of Ceramics) |
| Romain Sarfati | Director, Manufacture de Sèvres |
| Jay Xu (许杰) | Director, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco |
Musée Rodin, MIC Faenza, Manufacture de Sèvres, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco—each juror represents the highest scholarly authority in a distinct field, and their participation directly establishes the ICAA’s credibility within the international ceramics community.
Rule design
50% white-porcelain material requirement—entries must use white porcelain as the primary material (at least 50%). This rule is critical: it ensures the ICAA does not devolve into a generic ceramics exhibition but remains anchored to “white porcelain,” Dehua’s core material advantage.
Residency programme
Fourteen countries, 39 artists, five-week creative residencies. The programme brings international artists to Dehua to work with local clay in local kilns and workshops. The core output is a relational network: upon returning to their 14 home countries, the 39 artists each become a contact point for Dehua white porcelain within their national academic and creative circles.
10.2 Su Xianzhong—a fourth transformation across four generations
Su Xianzhong, born 1968. Fourth-generation inheritor of the Qiyu Porcelain Studio (蕲玉瓷庄).
Su Xuejin (1869–1919)—great-grandfather. Gold medal at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition for the work Plum Blossom. V&A object C.49-1953—a piece accessioned in 1953, which Su Xianzhong personally identified as his great-grandfather’s work during a visit to the V&A in 2019. Sixty-six years later, the great-grandson recognised his great-grandfather’s hand in a London museum.
Su Xianzhong’s transformation—from traditional Buddhist sculptural ceramics to a contemporary art language, centred on the Paper series begun in 2016.
The Paper series renders the forms of paper in white porcelain—creases, folds, tears, curls. Hard-paste porcelain fired at 1,300 ℃ displays every visual attribute of paper; the tension between physical properties and visual appearance constitutes the work’s central force.
V&A FE.52-2018—a Paper series work, accessioned by the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2018. This made Su Xianzhong the first Dehua contemporary artist to enter the V&A collection.
Works by Su Xianzhong are also held by the National Museum of China and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Su Xianzhong’s display practice includes a signature detail: he uses salvaged bricks from dismantled Dehua kilns as plinths for his work. Contemporary white porcelain resting on century-old kiln brick—physically, a superimposition of two temporal layers; semantically, an explicit dialogue between tradition and the contemporary. This display method materialises the dimension of time directly into spatial relationship.
10.3 Peter Ting—the outsider’s narrative advantage
Peter Ting, Malaysian-British ceramic artist and curator. First visited Dehua in 2004.
Core narrative
Peter Ting constructed a narrative about Dehua white porcelain aimed at Western audiences: “Dehua white porcelain was among the first Chinese ceramics to reach Europe and directly inspired the birth of Meissen.”
The power of this narrative lies in its concision and verifiability—the European imitation evidence chain provides the complete material record. Peter Ting’s contribution was to synthesise evidence scattered across museum archives and academic papers into a story that can be told in thirty seconds.
V&A collaboration
FE.52:1,2-2012—Buddha Hands, accessioned by the V&A in 2012. The work was hand-shaped by Dehua craftsman Chen Wei—Peter Ting supplied the design concept, and Chen Wei executed it using traditional Dehua techniques. This “international design + local craftsmanship” collaboration model is a precursor to the Arita “EPISODE 2” approach examined in international luxury porcelain benchmarking.
In 2017, Peter Ting held a solo exhibition at Ting-Ying Gallery in London.
2019 V&A exhibition “A Continuous Conversation”—curated by V&A curator Xiaoxin Li. The exhibition title captures Peter Ting’s methodology: a continuous conversation with tradition, neither return nor abandonment.
The outsider’s advantage
Why could Peter Ting—neither a Dehua native nor a mainland Chinese artist—play such an important role in the contemporary narrative of Dehua white porcelain?
Because outsiders perceive what locals cannot. Dehua artisans are so deeply familiar with their clay and techniques that the impact these elements have on an external observer is invisible to them. The outsider’s first encounter—an instinctive response to the material’s texture and the density of craft—carries unique persuasive force in an international communication context, precisely because it requires no cultural translation.
10.4 State-gift porcelain—the highest tier of product endorsement
Since 1996, over 50 pieces of Dehua white porcelain have been selected as state gifts.
2017 BRICS Leaders’ Xiamen Summit—15 of 16 state-gift porcelain pieces came from Dehua. Chen Mingliang’s Sunlight (日光) was the representative work among them. 15/16—a near-total sweep. This ratio demonstrates that in quality vetting at the state-gift level, Dehua white porcelain’s competitiveness overwhelmingly surpasses that of other production regions.
Bing Dwen Dwen and Shuey Rhon Rhon—the handcrafted versions of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics mascots were produced by Shunmei Group in Dehua. The “impossible to find” frenzy surrounding Bing Dwen Dwen during the Games pushed Dehua into mainstream consumer discourse—even though most buyers had no idea that the mascot they were scrambling for came from a county in the mountains of Fujian.
State-gift porcelain generates no direct revenue, but its brand value lies in this: quality vetting at the highest political level constitutes an official endorsement of Dehua white porcelain’s craft standards, and this endorsement radiates across the entire production region’s commercial output.
10.5 Michelin Guide official partner
The Dehua county government’s March 2026 briefing confirms that Dehua has become an official partner of the Michelin Guide.
The Michelin Guide’s brand equity rests on “the authority of quality discrimination”—the Michelin star is the globally recognised apex of the restaurant rating hierarchy. The Dehua–Michelin partnership links “Dehua porcelain” with “the world’s finest dining experience.”
The specific scope and form of the collaboration have not yet been fully disclosed. But the partnership itself already sends a signal: Dehua is extending from a “manufacturing brand” toward a “lifestyle brand.”
10.6 Dehua white porcelain in Western interior design
Research reveals a phenomenon rarely covered in Chinese media but persistently present in Western interior design: Dehua white porcelain—especially Blanc de Chine Guanyin figures and Foo Dogs—is a fixture in high-end interiors.
Charlotte Moss, Mary McDonald, Ruthie Sommers—these leading interior designers active in New York and Los Angeles frequently employ Dehua white porcelain in their projects. Usage is highly concentrated on one scenario: a mantelpiece with Foo Dogs paired at each end, a Guanyin figure or meiping vase at centre, flanked by a gilt mirror frame and candlesticks—the classic mantelpiece arrangement.
In this context, Dehua white porcelain is not “Chinese craft” but rather a “classic interior element”—much like Zuber wallpaper or Fortuny fabric, it has been absorbed into the Western design tradition as part of its own vocabulary.
Another use case: converting large Dehua white porcelain vessels into lamp bases. A Guanyin figure or meiping vase receives lamp hardware and a shade, becoming a table lamp. This conversion has stable demand in the New York and London antique-lamp markets, with individual converted pieces priced between $2,000 and $15,000.