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The Ru Kiln was established in 1107 AD, in the Northern Song Dynasty. Its location was believed to be in the Linru County, Henan Province. However, the archeologist never found the exact location of the kiln after many year's research. In 1986, the ruins of the kiln was found in the neighboring Baofeng County. 22 porcelain vessels were excavated, thus answered the question that confused the archeologist for many years. In the Song Dynasty, the Baofeng County was called Ruzhou, so the kiln was named as Ru Kiln.

Ru Kiln was built up to produce royal utilities only. Its design was affected by another big kiln the Yue Kiln in South China. Therefore the Ru Kiln produced celadon as its major product. The roughcast, glaze and design were all exquisite and well controlled, demonstrating a very high standard of porcelain producing. The cast of the Ru Kiln porcelains were very smooth, fully covered by bluish glaze, with some tiny fine crackles. The Ru Kiln made utilities such as bowls, plates, bottles, basins and boxes. It was very difficult and complicated to made a perfect Ru porcelain, since small pieces were easier to control, the Ru Kiln almost never produce vessels larger than 30cm diameter. Usually it was between 10 -16 cm.

The Ru Kiln was only opened for a few decades. It was closed when the Northern Song was defeated by the Jin Dynasty in 1127. Therefore even in the next Southern Song Dynasty, the Ru porcelains were considered very valuable. Today, only 65 pieces of Ru porcelains are well kept. Among them 23 are reserved in the Taipei National Palace Museum, 17 in the Beijing Forbidden City Museum, 8 in the Shanghai Museum, 7 in the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art in Britain, others reserved by the private collectors. In 1992, a small Ru porcelain plate with the diameter of 8 cm was sold in New York at the price of 1.54 million US dollars. Another Ru Kiln Vessel was sold at the price of 50 million Hong Kong Yuan (about 6 million USD).

The Ru Kiln porcelains have a special sapphire like clear blue. Many collectors call it "the blue sky after shower". This is an important character of the Ru porcelains.

Background Knowledge: History of China

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