Five Great Kilns

The Five Great Kilns (Chinese: 五大 名窯, Wu da ming yao), also known as Five Famous Kilns, is a generic term for ceramic kilns or wares (in Chinese 窯 yao can mean either) which produced Chinese ceramics during the Song dynasty (960–1279) that were later held in particularly high esteem. The group were only so called by much later writers under the Ming and Qing dynasties, and of the five, only two (Ru and Guan) seem to have produced wares directly ordered by the Imperial court, though all can be of very high quality. All were imitated later, often with considerable success.

The five kilns produced respectively: