The "Belt and Road" Purple Clay Arts Exhibition is currently on display at the Yixing Museum, Wuxi, east China's Jiangsu province from Dec 16 to Mar 6, 2018.

The "Belt and Road" Purple Clay Arts Exhibition is currently on display at the Yixing Museum, Wuxi, east China's Jiangsu province from Dec 16 to Mar 6, 2018.

The exhibition specially displays purple clay cups that were presented to state leaders at national events, and which were displayed in Beijing earlier this year.

Besides the boutique ceramic works for state and international leaders on show, masterpieces from artists at Tsinghua University and Peking University are displayed in Yixing as well.

This purple clay work is by Zheng Ning, an artist at Tsinghua University. [Photo/news.jnwb.net]

Purple clay ceramics are often given to people with great influence in the world, such as former US President Barack Obama, former UK premier Tony Blair, and Kofi Atta Annan, the former UN Secretary-General.

Zhou Zhongping, vice Party secretary of Yixing, said "Purple clay arts gather various art skills, including engraving, calligraphy, painting and poetry, carrying traditional Chinese culture and the beauty of Yixing all over the world."

The exhibition will later go to other provinces in Shanghai and Taiwan and even abroad to European countries, including Hungary, the Czech Republic and Italy.