Shanghai Institute of Ceramics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences revealed on June 8 that after years of research, its lab on ancient ceramics has set up a "fingerprint" database of ancient ceramics. After successful restoration of ceramic production techniques in ancient times, the lab has successfully cloned various ancient ceramics made by imperial kilns of the Southern Song Dynasty (AD1127-1279).

In fact, "fingerprint" of a ceramic refers to its chemical components. Since ceramics made in different times and places show different features of element distribution, once the "fingerprint" of a certain ceramic is known, the ceramic can be cloned.

According to Wu Rui, a researcher of the lab, at present the database includes "fingerprints" of five categories of ceramics, namely elegant and exquisite ceramics from imperial kilns of the Southern Song Dynasty in Zhejiang, extremely rare and precious ceramics from Ru Kiln of the Northern Song Dynasty (AD960-1127) in Henan which only had a history of a few decades, blue and white porcelain from imperial kilns of the Ming (AD1368-1644) and Qing dynasties (AD1616-1911) in Jiangxi's Jingdezhen, world-famous ceramics from Zhejiang's Longquan Kiln and ceramics from Zhejiang's Yue Kiln, origin of china.

The "fingerprint" database of the lab includes macro-elements and trace elements contained in the five categories of ancient ceramics but currently the lab can only clone ceramics from imperial kilns of the Southern Song Dynasty.

(chinanews June 9, 2005)