Bantao Yao

The red, blue, yellow and green feathers on these two parrots haven't simply been painted on. Each little piece overlaps the next; even the edges stand out. Below them, the pink flowers have petals with shapes and temperaments of their own. This is jiannian, the cut-and-paste ceramic craft responsible for the divine commotion of dragons, birds and characters on Taiwanese temple roofs. At Bantao Yao, it comes down to eye level. You can inspect the mad three-dimensional jigsaw without squinting into the sun.

In Bantou village, Xingang, founders Chen Chung-cheng and Hsieh Chiu-tuan converted an old factory into a place to see craft, make something, and eat. Food is standard equipment on a Taiwanese outing. Chen studied with jiaozhi pottery master Lin Tsai-hsing; the faces, costumes and lively gestures of temple figures followed him into the craft museum and garden. Among the garden's ceramic loofahs and mosaic flowers, the surrounding fields' vegetables have acquired some spectacularly overdressed relatives.

Jiaozhi pottery is shaped and fired with coloured glazes. Jiannian attaches cut ceramic or glass pieces to a prepared base. The park explains the sequence: bend a wire skeleton, build a cement body, then test your eyes and patience cutting and attaching its extravagant outer clothing. Look again at the smooth curve of a parrot's neck. Every little fragment needs precisely the right piece of real estate. Your own neck may start aching in sympathy.

If your hands are itching to try, NT$280 buys a mosaic activity you can take home that day. Painted ceramic plates cost NT$350 square or NT$400 rectangular, including firing but excluding delivery. Flying home tomorrow? Read that distinction now, before weeping over your absent plate at the airport. There's hotpot, coffee and afternoon tea too: admire somebody else's painstaking ceramic marvel, eat something warm, then leave with a DIY mosaic for which you must accept full responsibility, whatever it looks like.