Fang Weiming - A researcher and senior professional craft artist

Fang Weiming is the director of Chinese Jiangsu Yixing Pottery Research Academy, the vice chairman of Chinese Shanghai Pottery and Porcelain Artists Association, the visiting professor of Jiangsu Wuxi Technics Institute, an academician of Chinese Pottery and Porcelain Industry Association, a teacher of intern center of Art Department of Qinghua University, an academician of Jiangsu Craft Art Academy, a member of Pottery Art Committee and A researcher and senior professional craft artist.

He was born in Yixing, Jiangsu Province, China, a city which enjoys a great name"pottery city" in 1954. He started learning pottery crafts in 1971 and gradually became excellent by learning and working. In 1988, he began to receive three-year correspondence education majoring in Chinese painting in Chinese calligraphy and Painting Correspondence College. Through thirty years or hard work, he has mastered the decal crafts of pottery and reached a new level in creating ways and combination of artistic language with expressing skills. His achievement has formed an artistic style integrating appearance with flavor expressed by traditional crafts and has surpassed the tradition but continues to introduce the essence from it to bring about a new face of pottery decal art.

His works borrows the advantages from different fields and breaks the old for creation. He especially shows his outstanding accomplishments with a plain but splendid and gorgeous style in harmonious combination of pottery shape and glaze colors. With the blending style of remote ancient times, the flavor of Tang and Song dynasty, the modern abstract style and the folk flavor which are gracefully integrated with a modern look and hidden ancient charm, he has formed his special genre as folk art which enjoys an authority and is ethnical in the development of pottery art today and has received great compliments from professors such as Chen Ruoju, Yang Yongshan, Chen Jinhai and Du Hongyu from Art College (originally Centre Technics Art Institute) of Qinghua University. Fang Weiming is always concentrating his attention to learning and accumulation and has collected more than 200 valuable pictures of decal art of different past times and carried forward them with much efforts by a sense of responsibility to protection of pottery culture.

Therefore he is invited to be the supervisor of the Pottery Research Academy which is the intern centre for many colleges like the Art College of Qinghua University, Centre Art Institute and China Art Institute. His pottery works have won the favor of collection circle and art circle home and abroad. The |°superfine pottery desk|± which he had designed and made has been exported to Japan and also his |°nine-dragon canister|± has been collected as fine collections by British Victorian Museum. He has made publicity in media like Xinhua Daily, People|ˉs Daily and CCTV. His book Pottery Decal Decorations in the Past and Present and Future and his paper A Discussion about Pottery Decal Decorations has been published in the magazine Jiangsu Pottery.