Parrot

These parrots were made in south China around 350 years ago. They are from Jingdezhen, a city called China’s ‘porcelain capital’. People have been making pottery there for 2,000 years. They found china clay in soil near the city, to shape into bowls, plates or figures like these parrots. They took firewood from nearby forests to burn in the kilns that baked the pottery hard.

The parrots were made when the Qing or Manchu emperors ruled China. So important was china-making in Jingdezhen that the emperor once had control over it.