Fu Lamp

Linglong porcelain, sometimes described in English as rice-grain porcelain, comes from Jingdezhen in China and was reserved for court use during the Ming and Qing dynasties (14th to 20th century). Output was tiny even then, and surviving pieces are scarce. Fu Lamp, a Kickstarter project, sets out to turn this roughly 500-year-old technique into an object for everyday use. Its name refers to 福, the Chinese character for good fortune.

Light through porcelain

The maker says 696 tiny openings are cut into the lamp's surface, then filled repeatedly with glaze until they take on a jade-like translucency. When lit, light passes softly through these points. A touch sensor built into the porcelain switches among 3 brightness levels, which the maker positions for reading, meditation and dining. A rechargeable battery means the lamp isn't tied to an outlet and can move between living room, bedroom and balcony.

How it is made

According to the campaign, the design took five years of trial and error, with low porcelain yields early on. Craftspeople and designers eventually developed a way to fire a double-walled porcelain body as a single piece, producing a seamless form. The double wall removes the need for internal support parts, giving a cleaner silhouette. The maker traces the idea to a potter's trick of resting a cup on an unfired porcelain dome to keep its rim perfectly round.

• Fired 5 times at 1300℃, versus the 2 to 3 firings the maker cites for ordinary porcelain and 4 for traditional linglong ware
• Water absorption of 0.5% or less, with a dense crystalline structure the maker says resists scratches, staining and discoloration
• Silicone stencils and sandblasting replace hand-carving to reproduce an even coin-pattern motif
• A proprietary glaze formula that the maker says completes in one pass what once took days of repeated coats

The maker also states that the high firing temperature removes harmful substances. Together, the stencil and glazing changes are meant to keep the delicate pattern consistent while making larger production runs possible, without abandoning the look of traditional linglong porcelain.