A 10th anniversary interview with Franz Collection CEO Francis Chen

The founder of Franz Collection, Francis Chen (Chen Li-hang)

Franz Collection is 10 years old. Its founder Francis Chen has used 30 years of contract manufacturing experience to take traditional porcelain onto the international stage. The spirit of the brand is “The porcelain carries the way, the Way learns from nature”, conveying endless humanistic values and natural beauty. CEO Chen uses Franz Collection’s 10th anniversary works to interpret the wonders of heaven, earth and people, conveying the idea that truth should be pursued in science, beauty in art, people should be good, and expounding the eternal humanistic values of loving heaven earth and people, expressing flowers and grasses and the rhythm of birds and insects of nature in 3D shape in his works, with bright smooth color lines expressing humanistic elegance.
 

A porcelain product based on a painting from the National Palace Museum Collection by Castiglione

Franz Collection is unique amongst the porcelain brands of the world in that it has its own patented chamfer demoulding method that frees works from the restrictions of certain shapes and angles, allowing relief 3D shape and rich colors to be used, making works more artistic, innovative and powerfully moving, and better able to convey the beautiful meaning within.
The initial processes a Franz work go through, simply put are: design> molding> demoulding> injecting> repair semi-finished product> bisque firing> under-glazing > glazing> glaze firing…the work only being completed after hand painting and over 100 stages. The traditional formula has been changed to allow the firing temperature to be lowered to 1,205℃, saving energy and reducing carbon emission. In terms of kilns, clean electric kiln or high grade gas kilns have replaced polluting heavy oil kilns. Just like the wonderful humanistic values Francis Chen seeks to convey, enterprises that make such an effort to protect the environment and save energy are rare nowadays.

 Porcelain products based on the National Palace Museum’s painting Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains

Digital archives + Cultural creativity + Taiwan brand－Franz Collection

In its 10 years Franz has often taken advantage of digital archives; as CEO Chen says, using science to pursue truth allows cultural creative products that are given added value by digital archives and are more appealing to modern people to be made. 
In fact, many beautiful Franz products that are the product of digital archives + cultural creativity + Taiwan brand can be seen all over the word, conveying Taiwan’s beautiful local culture.

For example, the series Formosa: My beautiful island developed by Franz and Taiwanese master designer Lin Pan-sung (Apex Lin), took spring lily, summer  Calla lily, autumn pine cone and winter butterfly orchid as the subjects, using 3D porcelain to display the beauty of Taiwan’s four seasons. Franz also cooperated with contemporary ink painting master Wu Guang-zhong; after digitizing of graphic works they became the elements of 3D creativity, adding new life to tradition and combining 3D and profound philosophy to allow new artistic creativity.

A work was also created based on the masterpiece that merges eastern and western colors and perspectives by Castiglione from the National Palace Museum Collection; digitization played a vital role in the process of turning 2D to 3D and an ancient painting was transformed into a 3D porcelain work, giving new life and meaning to an ancient painting. The pair of vases based on Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains is one successful creation. Digitizing allowed the essence of the painting to be extracted, 3D value was added to create a new artistic vocabulary, creating cultural value and also representing an important landmark in popularizing Chinese culture throughout the world. 
 

Porcelain works based on works by Van Gogh from the Van Gogh Museum

Franz also staged the Manet to Picasso Masterpieces from the Philadelphia Museum of Art together with the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Taipei Fine Arts Museum and created several works based on pieces in the collection of the former. Franz also cooperated with the Van Gogh Museum; appreciating works of the master as 3D porcelain works move the viewer in a different way. To celebrate its 10th anniversary Franz invited seven leading designers, including G.G. Santiago, from the US, Ute Patel-Missfeldt from Germany and Taiwan’s He Zhen-wu, to design its 10th anniversary commemorative porcelain, seven limited edition commemorative porcelain works, only 2000 of each to be released worldwide. The results of digitization were used to make superb creative cultural products.
 
The manager of Franz Music Restaurant (Franz & Friends), Eric

Digital archive added value + Use of own brand
When the manager of Franz Music Restaurant, Eric, was interviewed he talked of the “beautiful porcelain, beautiful food, beautiful music” high cultural literacy displayed by Franz’s cross-industry joint venture, evidenced by the digital archive-based table decorations , the cups and saucers, condiment jars that not only show a high level of workmanship and decorativeness, they also have practical use, killing two birds with one stone and displaying the merger of ancient and modern and rich cultural content.
The future of Franz’s future cooperation with digital archives and cultural creativity and future brand vision

Franz’s hopes that the merger of digital archives + modern truth-seeking technology + goodness-seeking culture + beauty-seeking art will give its porcelain more cultural penetration and make it more inspirational, raising the level of national aesthetic sense and enhancing the beauty of merging old and modern, making it a brand with even more cultural meaning and world influence, helping create wonderful lives and a harmonious world.

For more information visit the Franz Collection website: http://new.franzcollection.com.tw/tw/fz_news