From ancient stone to your shelf.

Long before it had a name, this bend of the Yellow River was already home. The Shuanghuai Tree site preserves a Neolithic settlement of rammed-earth platforms, pottery kilns and planned streets — evidence of organized community life more than five millennia ago. Named one of China's top ten archaeological discoveries of 2020, it anchors Gongyi's story at the very beginning of settled life in the Central Plains. Everything that follows — stone, porcelain, tombs, courtyards — starts here, with people choosing to stay.

Around 1,500 years ago, artisans cut caves into the rock face and filled them with thousands of carved Buddhas, bodhisattvas and flying apsaras. The grottoes' most famous works — the great reliefs of the emperor and empress worshipping the Buddha — show a dynasty expressing devotion at monumental scale. Weathered but undiminished, the carvings set the region's visual language: flowing robes, serene faces, and the sense that stone can remember.

By the Tang dynasty, Gongyi's kilns were among the most accomplished in China — producing luminous white porcelain and the celebrated three-color sancai wares that traveled the Silk Roads. Fire, clay and mineral glaze: the same material instincts behind our White Porcelain collection were already at work here twelve centuries ago. A city that learned to shape earth into objects of quiet beauty.

Gongyi holds the mausoleums of seven Northern Song emperors — the dynasty's largest imperial tomb complex. Lining the spirit paths stand stone guardians, mythical beasts and pairs of auspicious birds with wings outstretched: the very auspicious birds redrawn on our Echoes of Stone ornaments. What was carved to guard an emperor for eternity now keeps watch over a writing desk. Empires end; the birds remain.

From the Ming dynasty onward, the Kang family of Kangdian built one of the great courtyard mansions of central China — and a commercial empire to match. 'Kang Baiwan,' the millionaire Kang, became a byword for the shrewd, grounded enterprise of the region's merchants. Behind its carved bricks and timber screens lies another Gongyi story: not emperors or monks, but people who built prosperity with patience and kept their roots while trading across the country.

Gongyi today is an ordinary, hardworking city — and that is exactly the point. The grottoes, tombs, kilns and courtyards are not fenced-off relics; they are part of the landscape people walk through every day. GONGYI begins here: translating a place's long memory into objects for contemporary homes. Deep roots, daily rituals.