Jade Carving:To appreciate gem and jewelry is mainly to focus on appreciating the molding and the color. And the Chinese jade carving craftwork brings the artistic conceptions of beauty. Chinese jade carving is an art craftwork with deep ethnic characteristics, which is a dazzle treasure in the world of sculpture. It implicit the wisdom of Chinese culture, the religious notion and the thoughts of esthetics.
Beijing Jade Carving
The Beijing jade carving enjoys a long history. Early from the caveman in the New Stone Age, women were able to use jade as decoration. Then in the long history of processing it, jade carving has been generally turned into a graceful figured artwork.
The skills of jade carving are different between the North and the South. South jade carving is centered in Suzhou and Yangzhou while the North is centered in Beijing. Till the Qing dynasty, north and south carving got inosculated in Beijing, where it compiled both good aspects in the two and generally formed a unique style of the Beijing jade carving skills. Things such as the 'Jade Mountain', 'Good Fortune Sea', 'The Da Yu controlled floods jade mountain' in Imperial Palace are all the curiosa handed down from one generation to another in Qing.
Yangzhou Jade Carving
The famous cultural historical city Yangzhou takes an important status in jade carving history. Tangzhou jade article can be separated into six categories including vases, characters, flowers and birds, beasts and animals, archaize and mountains. It boasts a great number of styles in various series. The White Jade Pagoda Stove in the seventies became famous overnight during the national-wide competition, and it exhibited in Tokyo, Nagoya in 1981, where it received high praising and respect from all walks of life. The White Jade Five elements Tower was completed in 1986. The main tower has seven layers and eight sides, 105cm in length, 32cm in breadth, using 8 jade chains and 440 other chains to link the four towers in four directions to form the colony. It is an excellent piece of work which can be rarely seen since time immemorial; The Hundred Years Old Matches Wishes was completed by eggshell techniques in 1989; The Boundless Universe of Buddha was completed by Qianzi Diao techniques in 1990. And all these have been rewarded the Golden Prize of the Nation. The five above-mentioned items have been evaluated by the nation as treasures, which are currently kept in the National Museum of Arts and Crafts.
Suzhou Jade Carving
Suzhou has jade carving since Tang and Dai dynasties. It was famous thoughout the country till Ming dynasty. Suzhou jade carving is mainly in small pieces, most of which are vases, characters, flowers and animals. The archaic vase civility and spectacular; lady characters graceful and coquettish, restrained and plump; flowers and birds uses color well and skillful ,the red mouth green parrot is ideally matched. On the accomplishment, it is good at use hollowed-out work to make the products exquisitely carved, facile and graceful. Suzhou jade carving makes use of its traditional workmanship on decorative substantively. The staple jade are emerald, white jade, kallaite, lapis lazuli, coral, jasper, az, agate, ross quartz, kopje, amethyst, crystal and etc. These can be lined into no less than 20 categories.
Shanghai Jade Carving
The Shanghai jade caving has four kinds in major: vases, characters, flowers and beasts. And the vase is the most advanced and well-know. The molding is elegance and the emblazonry is delicate, full of the interests of bronze which is advocate something unique in jade carving industry. There are variety kinds of vase, stove, vase, tripod, wine container, cup, case, lamp and etc. And the molding is miscellaneous: three-legged stove, four-legged stove, crane stove, phoenix stove, eagle stove and so on. There are also twin chickens, cows, elephants and sheep, and various kinds of chain vase.
The jade carvers in Shanghai are most skilled to use every kind of classification of the jade\'s natural shape, color and luster, to design and carve according to its original material, to create a lot of superb craftsmanship which full of sentiment. Liu Jisong, the technologist in Shanghai Jade Carving factory, who has been known as 'The Most Talented Jade Carver in the South'. His piecework Hundreds Emerald Buddha was carved into 90 different Buddha with various molding and appearances on a 7.5 inches in length, 8 inches in diameter\'s vase. It was inflamed great interests of visitors during the tour 'Shanghai Handicraft Article Exhibition'.
Northeast carnelian carving
Originally carved by the carnelian of Heilongjiang as the raw or unprocessed materials, most of the art pieces are subjected on women, animals, flowers, thuribles with omni form figures. Carnelian was a mineral grown out of high-temperature and high-pressure. It has lots of dazzlingly brilliant colors, such as ash-colored, reddish-brown, greenish-blue and so on. It is extremely rare to see the water core carnelian with a rinsing within, so the handiwork carved by it is especially expensive. Some of them were carved into several layers as ivory carving, the layers inside were carved into the ball carnelian which can be rolled, which was fully revealed the exquisite craftsmanship.
Stone Carving:Shoushan stone carving
Shoushan stone carving is made of the pyrophyllite which is from the Shoushan Village, 40 kilometers to the north suburb of Fouzhou. After carefully carved, the pyrophyllite will be splendid craftwork. Shoushan stone is glittering and translucent, colorful, pliable and it is easy to be shaped. Shoushan stone has more than 120 different types, which can be classified into three categories of Tian Keng stone, Shui Keng stone, and Shan Keng stone. Tian Keng stone is a kind of rare material with the best quality, which can be classified into four categories according to the color, i.e., Tian Huang stone, Tian Bai stone, Tian Hei stone, and Tian Hong stone. Among the four categories, the Tian Huang stone is the rarest and feels best. It is honored as the king stone so that the price of it is even more than that of the gold.
Shoushan stone sculpture is a miracle in current carving technology for its excellent texture, beautiful color, fantastic grain, elaborate sculpture, various types, and profound cultural deposits. This book presents kinds of elegant Shoushan stone sculpture collected by author himself (such as display, seal, and plaything) to readers for appreciation. So that people can feel the beauty of the harmony between the nature and the manual creation as well as the respectable quality of stone that it can edify people though it can not speak.
Qingshan stone carving
Qingshan stone carving refers to traditional Chinese craftwork carved from the Qingshan stone found in the Qingtian County, Zhejiang Province, which is known as the 'hometown of Chinese stone carvings'. Qingtian stone carving is widely loved and collected for its elegant molding and exquisite skills. It is thus honored as 'embroidery in stones'.
Qingtian stone has different colors, pretty sheen, subtle texture, moderate hardness, and thus is easy to be carved into different shapes. The craftwork carved from Qingtian stone is blazing with color, exquisitely carved, and glittering and translucent like jade. The products are pretty artistic. Qingtian quartz has compact molecule structure so that the stone will not break even when it is carved into a line as thin as a hair. When the Qingtian stone is made into a seal using knives, it demands the quick and neat seal cutting skills. As a result, the edge of the seal will not be damaged for a long time. Besides, the stamp-pad ink will not permeate into the seal.
Changhua heliotrope carving
Changhua heliotrope is precious stone only found in China. It is bright red, glittering and translucent. It is honored as the 'National Treasure'on a par with the jewels and emeralds. It is named as Changhua heliotrope because it is native to the Yuyan Mountain, the end of the Zhexi Grand Canyon in Lin\'an, Zhejiang Province, which was originally Changhua County before it was merged into the city of Lin\'an together with two other counties.
Changhua heliotrope is a kind of natural precious stone formed by the paragenesis of cinnabar, kaolinite, dickite, and pyrophyllite and so on. The specialists for jade appreciation believe that Changhua heliotrope is the one richest in color and most changeful among more than 200 kinds of gems. The orebody of Changhua heliotrope was formed 75,000,000 years ago due to the volcanic activity. The mineral deposit runs through a dozen mountain ridges with an altitude of more than thousands of meters and finally forms a tortuous belt of more than 10 kilometers. Cinnabar is commonly refers to as vermilion, which is the major ingredient of the red substances in heliotrope. The cinnabar has many different colors of bright red, scarlet, purplish red, and light red; as well as various shapes of large flakiness, crumb, belt, spot and so on. Kaolinite and dickite are the major ingredients of the red texture of the heliotrope. They are in color of white, yellow, black, grey, red, brown, cyan, and green. And in terms of transparency, they can be classified into transparent, translucent, sub-translucent, and opaque texture. Generally speaking, Changhua heliotrope consists of more than 50 colorful and remarkable varieties, which fall into four categories of frozen ground, soft ground, hard ground and rigid ground.
Liuyang chrysanthemum stone carving
Chrysanthemum stone carving is a remarkable craftwork of Liuyang County. It is carved of chrysanthemum stone which was formed 200 million years ago. As is known, up to now, only Liuyang County produces this kind of natural stone all over the world; so that Liuyang chrysanthemum stone carving is undoubtedly honored as the best in the world. The stone, just like the chrysanthemum, fall into different categories in terms of cores, such as the single core, double core, three cores, and coreless chrysanthemum stones. Besides, it has various flower molding such as the bamboo chrysanthemum, hydrangea nightshade chrysanthemum and so on. Craftsmen will carefully carve the stone making full use of the grain characteristics in order to sort out the petals and add some leaves and finally form dozens of chrysanthemums. In recent years, craftsmen break free from the convention of graphicacy and create the new technology of sculpturing tridimensional flowers and add figures to the carving, such as the craftwork originating from some fairy tales, 'Huang Chao Chants Chrysanthemum' and 'Celestial Beauty Scattering Flowers'. Liuyang chrysanthemum stone carving once won the prize from Panama World\'s Fair due to its exquisite skills and ingenious conception.
Wood Carving:Wood carving is very common in China. It is widely distributed in Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangsu, Guangdong, Hubei, and Shandong. The famous wood carvings are Dongyang wood carving, Chaozhou wood carving, and boxwood carving.
Dongyang wood carving
Dongyang wood carving is named after Dongyang, Zhejiang Province, listed as 'Three carvings in Zhejiang' together with 'Qingtian stone carving' and 'boxwood carving'. It is said that people in Dongyang began to sculpture wood as early as more than 1,000 years. They hand down the craftsmanship in the family and thus create a great many brilliant craftwork as well as great craftsmen. So that Dongyang becomes the famous 'hometown of carving'.
The procedures of Dongyang wood carving can be divided into designing drawings, making roughcast, and slicking. However, those craftsmen who are good at carving and painting and have profound skills can skip the procedure of designing drawings and carve the wood directly. And when creating a new piece of works, they can work out the drawings first and then carve the drawings out by means of memory when others describe their conception. Nevertheless, few people are competent for this kind of complicated qualification.
Zhangzhou wood carving
Zhangzhou wood carving can be dated back to more than 1,000 years ago. It is a beautiful flower blossoming in the earth of Chaozhou folk arts and crafts, and is listed among 'Four Chinese Wood Carvings' together with Dongyang wood carving, boxwood carving, and longan wood carving.
Chaozhou wood carving began in the Tang dynasty and the Song Dynasty at the latest, and started to develop in the Ming Dynasty and developed nearly into perfection by the end of the Qing Dynasty and reached great heights just before the period of Chinese war against Japan.
Zhangzhou wood carving falls into four overall categories of architecture decoration, libation decoration, furnishing ornament and desk ornament. Wood carvings are usually stuck with pure gold foil after the careful sculpture so that they seem glittering. So, wood carvings are also known as 'gold coat wood carving'.
In terms of the selection of subject matter and the artistic treatment, Chaozhou wood carving mainly deals with figures by means of representing the themes of productive labor and daily life of laboring people, historic figures, drama and stories, flowers, birds, insects and fishes, seafood and lobsters and so on. In terms of the patterns, Chaozhou wood carving mainly displays the traditional circular carving and full relief. In terms of the sculpture skills, Chaozhou wood carving will use one of the skills of relief sculpture, permeation sculpture, and line cutting or use them all flexibly to present different beautify in form according to the different subjects and decorations. The most remarkable characteristic of Chaozhou wood carving is the multi-level through-carved sculpture which can break the limitation of space and time and intensively display a complicated story on a painting.
Chaozhou wood carving inherits the traditional wood sculpture skills and also uses the virtues of various other folk arts of stone carving, painting, clay sculpture as well as Chaozhou drama as a source of reference. During the procedure of wood carving, craftsmen integrate all these skills and form a specific school in Chinese sculpture art.
Boxwood carving
Boxwood carving belongs to circular carving. It makes full use of the natural characteristics of boxwood of smooth texture, subtle grain and dignified color. Originally, boxwood carving is in cream yellow. As time goes by, the color will darken and present a kind of simple and elegant beauty.
Among the skills of wood carving, through-carving is the most elaborate one which can work out the glittering and translucent, ingenious and exquisite carvings.
Ye Runju, the great Chinese master of arts and crafts, is skilled at through-carving art and integrates the virtues of different art schools; especially absorbs the ivory sculpture skills of through-carving, engraving, scraping and so on and innovates his former skills so that his craftwork always present remarkable and vivid images which combine the dynamic and static states.
Wood carvings were generally used in sculpturing Buddhist statues, constructing temples, carving dragon lanterns, steles, screens and furniture. After the efforts of craftsmen from one generation to another, wood carving has become a great handiwork article.
Jianchuan wood carving
Jianchuan County is famous as the 'hometown of craftsmen'. Craftsmen are good at sculpturing various figures, flowers and birds, landscape and pictures of dragon and phoenix inferring luck and happiness which are used to decorate doors and windows and furniture. Jianchuan wood carving inherits and develops the excellent traditional skills of wood carving. Craftsmen choose high quality mahogany, southwest birch, Myanmar redwood, natural plant lacquer, and the well-known floral marble as the raw materials; so that the products have practical use, artistic value and are worthy of collection.
Hubei wood carved boat
Hubei wood carved boat is traditional craftwork with specific folk style among Chinese wood carving arts and crafts. Wood carved boat is in elegant pattern and has profound folk foundation and strong decoration effect. Hubei Province is located at the center of China with a great many rivers and lakes and a water communication network leading everywhere, especially connecting the upper reaches with the downstream of Yangtze River, which supplies rich resources for the creation of carved boats. In terms of subject matter, craftsmen will mainly refer to the folk wood sailing ship used in inland rivers and seas, ancient barge, dragon boat, phoenix boat, colored boat at Lantern Fair, yacht, passenger ship and freight ship and so on, which reflect the characteristics of different places and times. In terms of the carving skills, Hubei wood carved boat attaches great importance to the decorative design, through-carved work, and precise film. It is very difficult to carve through the wood because the decorative design should be clear, symmetrical, and slim. Furthermore, it asks precise and careful work when carving the floral windows, the lattice of doors, pavilions, and railings. When working on the film, craftsmen should first design various patterns according to different modeling of each product. Each part of the wood carved boat should meet the requirements of easy dismantlement and precise structure. Nowadays, Hubei wood carved boats are exported to a dozen countries such as Japan, Canada, America, and France.
Hainan coconut carving
Hainan coconut carving enjoys a long history. As early as the Tang Dynasty, people began to work out wine cups using coconut shell. When the late Tang Dynasty period came, Lu Guimeng, a poet, wrote down a famous poem concerning the coconut wine cup. In the Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty, Hainan Province sent yearly tribute of coconut carvings to Beijing.
Hainan coconut carving is the craftwork out of the coconut shell made by carving craftsmen in Hainan Island. The coconut carving is in different patterns, simple and elegant color, specific artistic style. As early as the end the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, coconut carving craftwork reached a high standard. In the following 300 years, craftsmen gradually developed the craftsmanship into perfection after their continuous hard work, and finally formed their own specific style.
The carving skills for Hainan coconut carvings are composed of surface relief sculpture, tridimensional relief sculpture, reversible pattern relief sculpture, as well as shell-beset carvings. There are more than 300 different kinds of coconut carving products, such as the table ware, tea set, wine set, smoking set, and vase, as well as various hanging screens and standing screens. They are practical with fresh patterns, refined designs, simple styles, and good texture.
Hainan coconut carvings also consist of display for appreciation, hanging pieces and some daily items with both artistic quality and practicality. Recently, craftsmen develop the coconut paintings with simple patterns, smart conceptions, and funny modeling, which refresh the traditional coconut carving techniques.
Quanzhou puppet
Quanzhou puppet, a kind of folk craftwork, was named after Quanzhou in Fujian Province, its production place. Craftsmen carve the head out of camphor wood, cover it with puddle, smoothen it, paint it and then clothe it. Quanzhou Muppet has distinct head outline and refined lines, which are inherited from the sculpture and painting styles of the Tang Dynasty and the Song Dynasty. In terms of the manufacture of puppet head, in addition to the reference to the traditional techniques, craftsmen attach great importance to exaggeration and change, especially the characterization and expressive force. It is a valuable kind of folk art famous at home and abroad.
Bamboo Carving:Because the places to the south of the Yangtze River (Kiangnan area) are rich in bamboos, so bamboo carving art prevails in the following provinces as Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hunan, Guangdong, and Sichuan and so on.
Shanghai bamboo bark carving
Bamboo carving has been collected by loyal families and litterateurs since ancient times. Bamboo carving skills fall into four categories of circular carving, openwork carving, bark carving and shallow carving. Among the four techniques, bark carving, also known as the green-left carving, is the most difficult one. Bark carving is to carve designs out of the surface bark of bamboo. During the carving procedure, craftsmen can choose how much the surface bark should be left in order to present the different levels as well as darkness and brightness of bamboo. Bark carving can work out more tridimensional products than shallow carving. Up to now, bark carving has become a specialty of Changzhou. Hence the hometown of the Xu family, Mingfeng County, is honored as the 'hometown of bamboo carving' by Jiangsu Province. At the first Chinese Souvenirs Designing Contest, the bamboo pen container series and the bamboo paperweight series produced by Xu Bingyan Bamboo Studio won the second place and the prize for excellent works respectively.
Huangyan bamboo carving
Huangyan bamboo carving is a kind of bamboo arts and crafts with refined sculpture, elegant modeling, and bright yellow color. It can be used for both pure artistic appreciation and decoration.
The carving skills for Huangyan bamboo carving are very special: first, craftsmen should choose the best bamboo produced in Huangyan (these bamboos should be cut in winter), cut off the green bark, put the inner bamboo ring into boiling water, flatten and agglutinate the boiled bamboo, then decorate the bamboo by carving various landscape, flowers, birds, and figures, and finally shape and wax the carving.
At present, Zhejiang Huangyan bamboo carving is not only very popular all over China, but also is exported to more than 80 countries or areas overseas.
Other Carvings:Shell carving
Shell carvings are made of shells. They are a kind of arts and crafts carefully processed by craftsmen. However, the skill of widely using varieties of shells and creating special shell carvings craftwork was gradually developed after Chinese liberation. Shell sculpture designs are worked out by skillfully making use of the original color and shape of different shells after several complicated processing procedures such as meticulously designing the painting, selecting the material, carving the shell, and assembling parts. After polish, carving, and chemical treatment, shells are rich in latent colors. And when using the latent colors, you can choose to use one of them or all of them simultaneously to work out magnificent pictures. Shell sculpture craftsmen can produce wonderful and special shell craftwork with simple and dignified designs borrowing ideas of generalization from the creation of Chinese paintings, the skills of sculpture modeling as well as the techniques of embroidery, and meanwhile taking advantage of the characteristics of shells.
In China, shell sculptures are mainly produced at Qingdao in Shandong Province, Dalian in Liaoning Province, Beihai in Guangxi Province, Qinhuangdao in Hebei Province, in Zhejiang Province and in Jiangsu Province. They vary from each other in artistic style. The shell sculptures consist of hanging screen, standing screen, screen, tridimensional shell sculpture and the reading lamps as well as caskets with practical utility.
Nut carving
Nut carving is a kind of folk art only found in China. Nut carvings are exquisitely carved out of the peach nut, almond, olive nut and hickory nut. People always honor the skills of nut sculpture as a miracle because it is difficult to carve on the tiny nut. Some foreign collectors greatly treasure the nut sculptures and would like to make great efforts to get one of them.
In the broad sense, nut sculpture skills belong to the tiny sculpture techniques. However, limited by the small sizes of nuts, the sculptures are generally relief carving, and tridimensional carving which greatly depend on the shape, grains, texture. When carving nuts, craftsmen will present their skills and carefully design the products according to the different materials. When carved, the hard texture nuts will tinkle. And after carefully carved, the nuts should be smooth and bright. If the nut sculpture is held in hands for a long time, it will seem shiny.
When sculpturing the olive nut, it especially demands the craftsmen to perform their skills according to the natural shape of nut. For example, making full use of the slightly bent olive nut, craftsmen sculpture the body of the god of longevity into the gesture of slightly crookbacked, exaggeratedly giving prominence to the broad and bare forehead and the graceful eyebrow and beard of the longevity god who takes a dragon head crutch in his left hand and holds up a birthday peach in his right hand. The whole olive nut sculpture vividly presents an image of an amiable old man with smile.
Ivory carving
In the history of Chinese ivory sculpture, the art of ivory sculpture originated from the He Mu Du culture and the Da Wen Kou culture in the Neolithic Age. At present, the skills of ivory sculpture have reached great heights. Ivory is in refined and hard texture. It is not easy to break and hence is suitable to be carved. So many craftsmen choose ivory as the raw material to make ivory sculpture. By means of ivory, they not only carve the landscape and figures but also the flowers, plants, fishes, insects as well as some charming pastoral scenes. The pastoral land is not only the resource of people\'s food and clothing but also the places of daily life. There are many famous ivory sculptures up to now, such as the ivory sculpture kept in the Imperial Palace, 'Yueman on Journey', created in the period of the reign of Qianlong emperor of the Qing Dynasty, is a refined colored ivory carving imbedded with diamonds presenting the scenes of ladies on tour of appreciating plum blossom at courtyard in January, passing the summer in a leisurely way beside the pool in May, appreciating moon at higher platform in August, which all concern the pastoral life of the noble. Besides, there are many other refined ivory works full of pastoral quality, such as the well-known 'through-carved floral round box' of the Qing Dynasty, 'Marigold' of the Qing Dynasty, 'Da Ji Gourd Floral Stove' of the Qing Dynasty, and the 'Quail Box' of the Qing Dynasty. The ivory sculptures become more precious after the international animal protection organization forbids the hunting of elephants time and time again.
Ivory sculpture in Beijing is famous all over the nation for its elegant, dignified, and solemn style; Shanghai ivory carving skills are good at creating the small-scale ivory sculptures with exquisite lines and decorative designs; and Guangzhou is rich in refined carved ivory balls.
Coal carving
Coal carving is a kind of folk craftwork originating from the ancient town of Datong, the production place of coal in China. The raw materials for coal carving are dug from the mines 300 meters from the underground. They are formed at the Jurassic period which is 140 million years from now. The texture of coal is neither humid nor dry, neither soft nor hard. The folk craftsmen will carve the coal referring to some places of interest such as the historic Yungang statues, Liaoning Huayan sculptures, Henshan ancient temples, nine-dragon screen of the Ming Dynasty, famous paintings at home and abroad, and figures of leading characters. Craftsmen will mainly use the techniques of shadow carving and relief carving to create coal carvings, so that the craftwork is in special artistic style of smooth lines and vivid images. Many people are fond of coal sculptures and would like to present it to their friends.
Clay sculpture
Clay sculpture, also known as painted sculpture, is a kind of traditional folk sculpture craftwork in China. When producing the clay sculpture, craftsmen will first blend some cotton fibers into clay, mix well and then make up various semi-finished figures, and finally paint those semi-finished articles with colors and powders after they are dry in the shade.
The mainstream of the products of Chinese clay sculpture is to display the scenes that ancient people are buried alive with the dead and people prostrate the Buddha figures; and some folklore that strolling players give sideshows and so on. When the Tang Dynasty and the Song Dynasty came, the art of clay sculpture developed to its utmost with some very famous clay sculptures such as the figure of Bodhisattva in Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, Gansu Province, and the maid in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province. In the Qing Dynasty, the art of clay sculpture is divided into the north school and the south school: in the north, the representative is the Clay Zhang; while in the south, the clay sculpture prevails in Huishan, Wuxi. The Clay Zhang mainly refers to the Zhang family in Tianjin. The beginner was Mr. Zhang Changlin, whose works were characterized by the lifelike gestures, appearance, clothes and adornments of figures. Mr. Zhang\'s son and grandson inherited and developed his career and made great contribution to Chinese painted sculpture. As to the Huishan clay figures mainly fall into two categories: the figures for children\'s interest represented by the figure of 'Big A Fu' with lively and simple appearance and bright colors and profound provincial quality; and the figures in drama who have exaggerative modeling and manner of Jiangnan characteristics presented by refined techniques, simple and thick colors. The specialists of clay sculpture are Hu Xinming, Wang Zhongfu, Yu Qingcheng. Meanwhile, the major manufacture places of folk clay sculpture are Fengxiang in Shanxi Province, Baigouhe in Hebei Province, Huqiu in Suzhou.