Cloisonne, made in China with pride

The "Made in China" label is seen on clothes and electrical appliances as somehow meaning an acceptable price and barely satisfactory qualify.

But Luo Shuxiang's works are an exception. Wearing presbyopic glasses, 53-year-old Luo and her five apprentices are surrounded by dozens of colored ore powders.

Luo is not an artist. Their work is coloring for cloisonne and she has been working for Beijing Enamel Factory Co., Ltd. for 39 years.

Luo came to the factory at 16. "I spent three years studying coloring skills under the master at the studio," she says.

After passing the company's regulation retirement age she's still there.

Another veteran sitting close by made the same decision to continue working, although he is 56 years old.

Lu Yonggui works with tools like tweezers and forceps. He twists the thin copper wires into different patterns and inlays them on a copper body.

What Luo and Lu do are the two major steps of cloisonne production.They can take up to six months to finish a complicated design.

Lu says a finished cloisonne product requires five processes: firing the copper body; buckling and inlaying copper wires; coloring; polishing; and gold-plating.

The company has about 90 craftspeople now - most of them over 50 years old. They ensure the company's annual output value of 20 million yuan.

"The monotonous work can turn off young people," Luo says. "Plus the monthly top salary of 3,000 yuan is far from attractive for them."

Cloisonne is a type of enamel in a copper body and decorated with copper wire inlay patterns.

Originating in the Yuan Dynasty, it reached its height in the Ming Dynasty.

Office director Wang Jianzhang says the founder of the Mongol Empire in the 13th Century, Genghis Khan, brought back the cloisonne craftsmen from Arabic countries along the Silk Road. Some of the ancient masterpieces are preserved in Beijing's Palace Museum.

Ming cloisonne was heavy with a thick copper body, and mainly featured on the five sacrificial utensils, including pots, vases and charcoal basins, in the palace. In the Qian Long period of Qing Dynasty, the patterns became more diverse, with auspicious birds, landscapes, insects, calligraphy and famous paintings. All the works were produced inside the Forbidden City during this period.

Under Emperor Dao Guang in the Qing Dynasty, enamel workshops serving Catholicism appeared.

During the Anti-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945, enamel production stopped, resuming with the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

In 1951, Tsinghua University established an arts and crafts group to rescue cloisonne. Seven years later, the local government set up a training school to cultivate arts and crafts specialists.In 1956, then government-owned Beijing Enamel Factory was set up, taking in 42 private workshops.

During the 1960s, arts graduate were dispatched to the enamel production industry, making a great contribution to its development and revival.

Cloisonne products were exported to Europe, North America, and Arabic countries. "People in these regions show extraordinary interest in this Chinese traditional art," Wang says.

"As Chinese people like to express their emotions through euphemism, patterns of animals and plants are applied. For example, the peony represents rich life and mandarin ducks symbolize enduring love.

"Some consumers complain about poor quality of 'Made in China' products," Wang says, "but I think it's because they never see authentic Chinese products such as cloisonne."

The golden age of sales was in the 1980s when the country's reform and opening up policy was just unfolding and annual sales reached 50 million yuan.

But with the spread of foreign cultures among the youth, cloisonne almost ended again in the 1990s, Wang recalls.

In this tough time, the factory produced the gifts that Beijing's municipal government sent to Hong Kong Special Administrative Region when it returned to China in 1997.

The copper body was decorated with flower emblems of both cities - the peony and bauhinia.

To revitalize production, the factory became a limited company in 2002, and four years later, the craft of cloisonne was listed as a national Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Now the firm has a range of 800 products priced from 200 yuan to more than 3 million yuan.

During the APEC Leaders' Week last year, cloisonne vases named "Sihaishengping", meaning "peace in the world", were presented as state gifts to the 20 leaders.

Lu and the other craftspeople are proud to have been involved in such prestigious gifts, but he still worries the craft will be lost to future generations.

"In this industry, designers should have many opportunities to become 'masters' with great reputations and wealth," Lu says. "Craftsmen like me have not been treated fairly even though we are the key part of a perfect cloisonne vase."

Cloisonne crafts are suffering a talent drain. In response, the company has employed more than 30 deaf and mute workers.

"They fulfill the work's basic requirements of sitting still for hours," Wang says, "while we give them employment.

"You may think the price of cloisonne is too high," he says, "but it is earned."