Cloisonné, also known as "copper padding thread weaving enamel", is a unique combination of porcelain and copper handicrafts. It is the luxuriance, fancy and nicety that make cloisonné famed all around the world.

The manufacture of cloisonné requires a series of complicated processes. Generally, a padding with copper should be first built, followed by craftsmen’s painting, and then copper wires curved and adhered on the basis of the corresponding pattern that has been drawn on. Consequently, different colored glaze enamel is embedded in the grids formed by those copper wires, constructing a colorful design. After repeated sintering, polishing, and gold-plating, the cloisonné craft can be finally made. It can be seen that cloisonné production not only uses the bronze and porcelain technology, but also integrates traditional hand-painting and carving skills, hence is rated as the full synthesizer of the Chinese traditional crafts.

The cloisonné can be dated back to the Yuan Dynasty, and get further development in the Ming Dynasty, especially during the Jingtai Period (1450-1456). As made primarily in blue color, this craft was also named "Jingtai Blue". With regard to the origin of this craft there is such a legend in the folk.

One night, a fire burned out the throne’s room where filled with valuables. The furious emperor ordered his guards to make a search in the ash. To his surprise, a little bottle was found, colorful, bright and shining. The emperor loved it so much, and immediately passed down an edict concentrating capital craftsmen to make a copy of it to make them a pair; the duration is only three months, otherwise all of them would be punished. Via careful observation, the craftsmen found that the bottle is made with copper padding, wrapped a layer of enamel outside, with gold and silver wire winding between there. However, no matter how they tried, that padding and the wires could not stuck together, not to mention how the brilliant glaze was sintered. The days quickly passed when the deadline was approaching, if they still could not make a duplicate, all the craftsmen would be taken away to jail on the next day. Right in that evening, a fairy suddenly emerged from the middle of the little bottle, radiating halo and wearing beads and beautiful clothes. She left a poem on the secret of the procedure and then disappeared. These craftsmen were so smart that they decrypted the hints, putting up a stove, picking some stones and medicament and the power of gold, silver, copper, iron, and tin in it. After a whole night smelting, a colorful craft had finally been made out! The crystal glaze, the exquisite wire and the inner padding firmly bonded together. Relying on craftsmen’s skills and their spiritual hearts, since then, Beijing had appeared a kind of unprecedented metallic glaze bottles, and then bows, plates, beads and vases and so on.