Leading Chinese artist, Li Xiaofeng, proves to be one of China’s most original and exclusive artists. Looking for a new kind of material, he has opted for recycling ancient porcelain. Today, Boca do Lobo shares with you this unsual artwork.

Using old porcelain shards, he cleans them, shapes them, then assembles them with silver wire, creating dazzling costumes, which have travelled around the world.

Li Xiaofeng was commissioned by LACOSTE to do a limited edition design for their Holiday 2010 Collector series complete with the crocodile logo. 20,000 printed polo tees inspired by the signature beautiful porcelain pieces are on sale—a collection for men and women.

For both, he had to adapt his work methods slightly. For the limited edition printed polo, he chose blue and white shards with lotus and children designs from the Kangxi Period (1662 – 1772 AD) of the Qing Dynasty (1644 – 1911 AD).

The lotus grows from mud underwater to emerge as a flower, symbolising purity and rebirth. Images of babies represent fertility, as during that period the high infant mortality rate meant that people decorated ceramics with babies hoping they would be blessed with children.

This particular type of folk ceramics reflected the Imperial taste at that time and was only used by the upper classes, as techinically the painted blue background on a white base that delineated the figures was more complex to produce.

Xiaofeng shaped and polished the shards as usual, but instead of drilling holes and linking them with wire he photographed each (251 for the men’s polo and 304 for the women’s) and placed them one by one in a life-size digital pattern of the polo’s front, back and sleeves.

The final touch was the addition of a white LACOSTE crocodile logo, the rarest breed in the brand’s collection. The printed Porcelain Polo is limited to 20,000 pieces for both men and women and comes packaged in a silk pouch stamped with the red seal LI XIAOFENG LACOSTE logo above.

It took Xiaofeng three full months to paint, fire, fragment, shape, polish, and finally link together the 317 shards to create the Porcelain Polo, which is the most expensive and most exclusive LACOSTE polo to date.