A Very Rare Yongle Imperial Porcelain Brick from the ‘Porcelain Tower of Nanjing’ c.1412 and 1419

A Very Rare Yongle (1403-1424) Imperial Ming Porcelain Brick from Porcelain Tower of Nanjing, made at Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province. This pure white porcelain brick is L shaped and glazed on one side only, it was made between c.1412 and 1419. Porcelain was rarely used as a building material in China as it was considerably more expensive than the normal lead-glazed earthenware. It was ordered as building material for the Da Bao’en Si in Zhubaoshan, outside Nanjing, and made at the imperial factory at Zhushan. From the excellent Catalogue of Late Yuan and Ming Ceramics in the British Museum (Jessica Harrison-Hall. The British Museum Press, 2001. ISBN 0-7141-1488-X.). “Initially, in 1982, seventeen similar bricks were excavated from the Yongle stratum 3 there, on Zhushan Road. These are misshapen, which to some extent explains why they were discarded. However, in 1994 a further 2,240 Yongle white porcelain bricks were unearthed at Dongmentou, in four different sizes. On a visit to Jingdezhen in 1997 the author saw, piled into a wall at Jingdezhen Ceramic Research Institute, these materials, originally may have been buried as spare building materials”. There is thick white residue, which in places is very thin, this is rice glue. This is a traditional adhesive that was used in Ming architectural fittings, such as this pottery elephant. Rice glue was used as a mortar in the Great Wall of China, to this day there are sections of the Han dynasty wall where the rice is still fulfils its function after 2,000 years. The Yongle emperor ordered this tower and temple to be built as a memorial to his dead parents. Construction began in AD 1412 and the main structure of the tower was completed in AD 1419 and the temple finished in AD 1431. The pagoda was nine stories high and was known in Europe as the Porcelain Pagoda because of these bricks used as a building material. Before it was destroyed in the Taiping Rebellion in AD 1853–54 it was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World. From a Victorian collection of curios. Inscribed in pencil, now worn, with a date, perhaps 1851 0r 1861. A paper label edged in blue reads “Porcelain from the Porcelain Tower Nankin”.

Accompanying this Yongle porcelain fragment is an 18th century engraving from John Hamilton Moore’s A New and Complete Collection of Voyages and Travels, London c.1778, depicting the Porcelain Tower.

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