Wuxi Shuaiyuan Zisha Museum is a professional museum of purple sand. It was built in the early 1990s. Its predecessor was Shuaiyuan Purple Sand Art Expo Garden. At the beginning of the 21st century, Jiang Rong, a master of Chinese arts and crafts, served as the general consultant of the Expo Garden all year round. Nowadays, the museum specially invites Gu Shaopei, an inheritor of China’s intangible cultural heritage and a master of Chinese arts and crafts, to serve as honorary curator.
The museum collects about hundreds of fine purple sand pottery works of various ages and styles. Many national masters of arts and crafts, such as Lv Yaocheng, Bao Zhiqiang, Xu Xiutang, Xu Hantang, Wang Yinxian, Zhou Guizhen, etc., have all come to guide in person and discuss purple sand art together. More than one million purple sand enthusiasts, Chinese and foreign friends and leaders at all levels of the country have visited here. Purple sand art is a wonderful flower in Chinese ceramic art. Its history can be traced back to the Northern Song Dynasty. Since the Zhengde period of the Ming Dynasty, Chinese literati and the masters of pottery making in Yixing in successive generations have cooperated and used various arts and crafts means such as engraving, inlaying, calligraphy and painting on sand pots to produce elegant and exquisite teapots for making tea. This makes purple sand pottery have the saying that ‘pearls and jades in the world are not enough to be taken. How can it be like a lump of Yangxian soil?’ Purple sand works are collected by major museums around the world.Opening hours: Open all year round from 9:00 to 18:00.
