Conservator's Talk (Episode 2): Conserving Ceramics I
8 Video Views·Feb 26, 2026
The Shanghai Museum Conservation Center, one of the largest of its type in China, houses labs equipped with advanced facilities and a dedicated team of conservators devoted to preserving and investigating the treasures in the Museum's collection and beyond.
The series introduces the work of the conservators behind the scenes. Many of their practices are precious legacies passed down through generations. So far, the Center is honored by six intangible cultural heritage elements, among which the bronze and ceramics restoration techniques are inscribed on the national ICH list. In Episode 2, Yang Yun, a leading ceramics conservator, tells her story of preserving and restoring ancient Chinese ceramics.
I started working in 1989
and since then I've
restored roughly several hundred
cultural relics mostly ceramics
The first piece I restored was a colored pottery artifact shattered into over a hundred fragments
Ceramic restoration follows several
key principles: reversibility
minimal intervention and
maximum information preservation
A set of Yuan blue-and-white porcelain boxes featured in
the "Yuan Blue-and-White Grand Exhibition" — we strictly
followed this principle applying the minimal possible
intervention at the time the pieces were extremely fragmented
Before restoration if it's not suitable for
repair we must completely dismantle it clean it
thoroughly and restore it to the state of shattered porcelain then
reassemble it afterward
We take advantage of this slow-drying
phase to make many precise adjustments then
use double-layered wet sandpaper to polish
it thoroughly achieving maximum smoothness
Smooth enough that your fingertip glides across
without leaving any trace—like glass sliding over
glass These tasks may seem simple but achieving
this effect requires repeated meticulous effort
From disassembling and cleaning to
bonding filling gaps sanding and finally
achieving the final
porcelain-like finish
the entire process
took a full six months