The brick is the witness of history
Suzhou Museum of Imperial Kiln Brick
Suzhou Imperial Bricks Museum, located at NO.95 West Yangchenghu Road, Xiangcheng District, covers an area of 38875 square meters and a construction area of 15087 square meters. It was designed by the famous architect, Liu Jiakun.
As the first museum in China to display “Imperial Kiln Bricks”, it aims to protect precious cultural heritage through the construction organization, and present the little-known experience and suffering of “Imperial Kiln Bricks” and its profound historical and cultural connotation from ultimate and various perspectives.
The main part of the Museum is the main hall including the Imperial Kiln Site, Visitor Center, Contemporary Art Exchange Center, Relic Kiln Site Groups, supporting service area. The main hall is the core of the whole museum buildings, fully displaying different experiences of the Imperial Bricks through three sections including “exploration”, “achievement” and “application”. It creates a vivid reproduction of an Imperial Brick’s suffering experience from a local raw material, yellow clay, on the banks of Yangcheng River transforming to a part of the highest palaces and halls of dynasties in advantage of various display and exhibition means such as cultural relics display, reconstruction of scene, scientific and technological simulation, interactive games, etc., delivering the illustration of an exclusively imperial material “created under the imperial edict”. Therefore, the Bricks are called “Imperial Top Brick” exclusively adopted by the royalty.
A stove for burning paper bricks 
Dancing in gold bricks 
The sun shines through the shadow of the gold bricks
Name: with a nick name as “Gold”
Shape: with upright and complete surfaces
Color: with pure cyan color like a mirror
Sound: with silvery sound when knocking, like the “Qin” (an ancient musical instrument)
Inscription: with maker’s name carved for governor to check the quality
Imperial Bricks refer to a kind of paving square bricks with high quality exclusively used for buildings especially the palaces in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Gold Bricks Paving Ground writes, the name “Gold Brick” (Bricks) was given for the following three reasons: Its feature is thin but solid and it makes a sound like gold stone when knocking;
Baking a Brick requires complicated craftsmanship and costs as high as gold; In ancient times, the Imperial Bricks could only be transported to the “Jingcang” (Capital Repository) in the Capital for exclusive use in the imperial palaces. Therefore, they are called “Capital Bricks”, which is later referred to as “Imperial Bricks”.
Imperial Bricks’ Experiencing and Suffering
A. Soil-Fetching: to pick from special clay layer and then go through 7 procedures including excavating, carrying, parching, beating, pounding (“chong”), milling, sieving;
B. Mud-Refining: the key is to go through 6 procedures including settling, filtering, airing, drying, throttling and trampling;
C. Adobe-Fabricating: the key is to go through 10 procedures including kneading, bearing, filling, milling, scraping, hammering, flipping, casting, shielding and airing
D. Drying in shade: to put adobes in shady room in non-windy days to turn over every day and clap every viewpoint with 8-month efforts;
E. Adobe-Baking: to bake adobes by chaff grass in the 1st month, wood pieces in the 2nd month,
F. granulated wood in the 3rd month and branch wood for 40 days;
G. Kiln-Hosing: the adobe-baking lasts for more than 4 months in the kiln, close the kiln and water the kiln from the tianchi on the top of the kiln. The water turns into steam once it meets with high temperature. This process renders an unique color of blue and gray to the Bricks.
Bricks Inheritance
Imperial Kiln Bricks refer to a kind of paving square bricks with high quality exclusively used for buildings especially the palaces in ancient times. The name, Imperial Brick (“Gold Brick”), was given because its feature is thin but solid and it makes a sound like gold stone when knocking. The Bricks were produced in Lumu Imperial Kiln located at Yuanhe Streets, Xiangcheng District, Suzhou City. The existing Lumu Imperial Kiln site is the unique ancient brick kiln preserved well of the many kiln groups at that time. Since the late Qing Dynasty, it has been used to bake Bricks for the royalty and still in use nowadays for baking a large number of traditional Bricks for the maintenance of the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square and palaces, halls and ancient buildings at home and abroad.
The Imperial Kiln is a rarely existing and living relic listed as a dual-heritage protection organization in both of tangible and intangible form in China. The preservation of the Imperial Kiln and the protection of the craftsmanship of “Bricks” can provide a physical basis for the research on ancient buildings and building materials, which is the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage.
The Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage writes in 2003 that “Intangible cultural heritages are faced with serious threats of damage, disappearance and destruction”, and it also stresses that protection on intangible cultural heritages shall “comply with sustainable development”. Then all countries must adhere to the guideline of “protecting first, rescuing first, rational utilization and inheriting development” to achieve sustainable development.
In order to protect the Imperial Bricks and promote the culture related, Yuyao Community in Yuanye Streets established a “Imperial Kiln Workshop” exhibition area in 2011, demonstrating the history and culture, production skills and inheritance of the production techniques of Bricks; in 2013, Yuyao Brick and Tile Factory set up a showroom for the Imperial Kiln Bricks, displaying the collection of ancient Bricks from the Ming and Qing Dynasties as well as products produced in recent years. However, limited by size and region, neither influence nor visibility is great. Today, the Museum of Imperial Kiln Bricks will become a large-sized place with symbols and influence, assembling all the elements related to the Bricks and integrating resources, which will greatly increase the popularity of Imperial Bricks at home and abroad.
Suzhou Museum of Imperial Kiln Bricks will spare no effort to inherit traditional craftsmanship, display more than 1,000 “Imperial Bricks” used by the royalty from Yongle Period in the Ming Dynasty to Xuantong Period in the Qing Dynasty.
A concerted effort to preserve our heritage is a vital link to our cultural, educational, aesthetic, inspirational and economic legacies – all of the things that quite literally make us who we are.
– Steve Berry
Images by: Xiangdong Meng
VR by: Chuangbo Xinxi Yangzhou
Video by: CCTV China
Interactive prototype by: ml286