Zhao Kiln
One person, one kiln
Zhao Kiln is not a workshop with a production line. It is one trained artist in Yixing who makes each piece from raw clay to finished pot — and a website, so the pots can find people outside China.
The hand behind the line
Zhao Ruyan
Yixing · Assistant Craft Artist · Sole maker
Everything on this site is made by one person. Zhao Ruyan throws each form, brushes on the slip, draws the pattern and cuts it herself, in Yixing — the town whose clay has been worked for five hundred years. She read ceramics at Jingdezhen Ceramic University, then took a master’s in Chinese painting at Zhejiang Normal University.
Carving she learned at home. Her father, Zhao Hui, holds the highest state rank in the craft, and she has cut alongside him since she was small. What she brings of her own is the painting: years spent on Song and Yuan masters — how a branch takes its weight, where a flower is allowed to leave the frame — worked into clay with a blade instead of a brush.
- Training
- Member of
- Selected awards
See what is available now
Because everything is made by one pair of hands, a piece sold is a piece gone until the next firing.