Porcelain has always held a place in the home, but rarely did women hold a place at the kiln. For centuries, workshops across China passed knowledge from father to son, while women remained on the outside, observers of a tradition they were not permitted to touch.
That story, like so many others, is changing.
Deng at work in her Jingdezhen studio, 2022
Fixing glazing by hand, 2024
Tucked away in the hills of Jiangxi province, Jingdezhen is a city shaped by clay and fire. For over a thousand years, it has produced porcelain that found its way into royal courts, monasteries, and homes across continents. But what makes Jingdezhen special isn’t just its output, it’s the way porcelain remains a part of everyday life here. You’ll find it drying in courtyards, stacked in alleyways, fired in kilns that have stood for generations. There’s a certain rhythm to the city: slower, quieter, and always with the trace of dust in the air.
A view of the kiln, 2018
Process of glazing, 2025
Amid this backdrop, Deng Xiping carved out a life that defied convention. She entered the kiln as a young apprentice in a time when women were told they didn’t belong there. The tools were heavy. The work was unforgiving. But she stayed. She watched, she learned, and over the course of sixty years, she became a master of colour glaze porcelain, a technique as precise as it is poetic.
Her rise was not loud. It was built in silence, in routine, in decades of discipline. Recognition came eventually: national honours, exhibitions, titles. But her real legacy lies in the hands of the women who followed. Because she opened the door simply by walking through it, and leaving it open behind her.
Artisan waiting for kiln opening, 2006
Roselle Garden – newly introduced form for the 2025 reimagining
From this history, Roselle Garden was reimagined. First created in 1987, the collection returns today not as a replica, but as a continuation. Crafted in the same studio that once belonged to Deng Xiping, each porcelain piece carries a lineage of care. The colours shift gently with light. The glazes hold traces of fire and time. These are not decorative objects, but companions for a quieter home.
To hold one is to hold more than porcelain. It is to hold the weight of history, the warmth of hands, the strength of women who chose to stay. In your hands, this becomes more than an object, it becomes part of your story.
'Beauty, especially when made slowly, allows us to return to ourselves.'
