It looks like porcelain but feels like metal. It shimmers with colors that never fade. Cloisonné — known in Chinese as jingtailan (景泰蓝), “Blue of the Jingtai Era” — is one of China’s most labor‑intensive crafts. Thin copper wires are bent into intricate patterns, then filled with powdered glass and fired at high temperatures. The result is a surface as smooth as enamel and as durable as bronze. Once reserved for emperors, today cloisonné is accessible to anyone — but the skill of the master remains rare. This is the story of a craft that came from the West, was perfected in China, and still dazzles after six centuries.
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