Ceramic Incense Holder

Chinese ceramics are of good quality, beautiful in shape and high artistic value. They are famous all over the world and are also traditional Chinese arts and crafts. As early as the Neolithic Age, China had painted pottery and black pottery with a rough and simple style; more than a thousand years before Europe mastered the technology of porcelain making, China had been able to produce quite exquisite porcelain.

The development of Chinese traditional ceramics has gone through a quite long historical period, and has now formed a variety of products with special techniques and a wide range of applications, which are both ornamental and practical.

What is Ceramic?

Ceramics is a general term for pottery and porcelain. Ceramics and porcelain have different textures and properties. From the development history of China's ceramics, the clay with high viscosity and strong plasticity as the main raw material, opaque, with fine pores and weak water absorption, with muddy sound of striking, and without dense sintering of clay and porcelain stone products in the matrix, are collectively referred to as pottery. The part with high firing temperature and good sintering degree is called "hard pottery", and the one with glaze is called "glazed pottery". The clay or porcelain stone products, which are made of clay, feldspar and quartz, are translucent, non water absorbing, corrosion-resistant, hard and compact, with crisp knocking sound, sintered at high temperature, compact matrix, and good glaze quality, are called "porcelain".

What are the Shapes of Ceramic Incense Holder? Which Folk Cultural Symbols of China are Reflected?

Chinese people have a strong folk culture, and most of the daily items are designed with auspiciousness as the theme, mainly around the content of "happiness, wealth, Longevity, and Joy". Therefore, when choosing the theme to express the meaning, the following things are often used:

The phoenix, the king of birds, is chosen to symbolize great fortune, wealth and auspiciousness. The phoenix flying together is used as a metaphor for perfect love. There are white cranes with the metaphor of highness, purity and longevity, as well as bald eagles, magpies, mandarin ducks, eagles, etc. ; choose the king of flowers, peony symbolizing wealth and prosperity, hibiscus symbolizing grace and luxury, and lotus, plum, chrysanthemum, etc.; choose the orchid that has the title of the most fragrant flower and bless future generations, and the Ganoderma lucidum that symbolizes longevity; The pine tree, which symbolizes longevity and integrity, and in Chinese, bamboo is homophonic with "Zhu" (this word means blessing), that means a hundred years of happiness and a hundred years of longevity and well-being; peaches are often used to symbolize longevity, also called longevity peaches, and pomegranates symbolize many children and many blessings; The dragon represents kingship and auspiciousness, the lion symbolizes power and knowledge is passed on from generation to generation; the carp symbolizes prosperity.

In addition, according to the conventions, the different combinations of these auspicious things have formed a set of unique Chinese pattern system. For example, like a baby holds a lotus, it means that he will have promising sons one by one; the pattern has the bat and the character for "shou"(life) represent both blessings and longevity. A child sets off firecrackers, it means a letter for you to send home to let my parents know you are safe. If a child rides a white elephant, it means auspiciousness. A child rides a unicorn, that is meaning you can pray for a unicorn to let you have more children. Plum blossoms and magpies refer to the mood of joy expressed from the eyebrows and eyes, lotus and fish are mean the family’s wealth increases year by year, and so on.

What are the Advantages of Incense Meditation?

Incense has the effects of sedation, hypnosis, and sleep aid, but it is forbidden for pregnant women and fetuses. Incense is a method for men of letters and literati to keep their health. Incense has different benefits on the human body depending on the spices used. When using spices such as agarwood or sandalwood, incense can make the body quickly calm down, which has calming, hypnotic, Sleep aid effect. Using incense like lavender can relieve tension and anxiety. When using mugwort leaves as incense materials, it can avoid mosquitoes and snake bites and so on.

In 2011, the Sharazar team of Harvard University proved through experiments that if you can meditate for eight consecutive days, you can make measurable changes in these brain regions related to memory, self-awareness, empathy and stress.

In 2013, Richard Davidson, a psychologist and psychiatrist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, published an article in Neuro Psychoendocrinology on how mindfulness practice can strengthen the immune system.

If you happen to have the habit of meditation, then a suitable and beautiful incense holder will be your best companion. When you meditate, lighting an incense holder will not only help you enter a meditative state quickly, but also double the benefits of meditation.