Seasonal toys
Shanxi seasonal festivals and traditional temple fairs in the folk toys, often reminiscent of the early childhood period of the New Year's Eve and the first day of the first month of the Chinese New Year in the memories of interesting events. New Year's Eve, the first day of the first month of the point "drip gold"; Lantern Festival lanterns, play lanterns; February 2, the dragon's head of the ancient temple, cloth dragons, face dragons, bamboo snakes, paper snake toys, can move the structure to them to seduce force, attracted the children to smile and laugh, and scramble to buy; March 3, on the Festival of the clay whistle whistle, the sound of the pleasant sound; before and after the Qingming Festival kite-flying; Dragon Boat Festival to wear a bag of incense, playing ai leaf tiger. There is also that little windmill, seven sound whistle, leather tiger, grass woven grasshopper cage, enough to make the children excited.
Lantern toys
Children's lantern toys to portable. They are usually made of gabion paper and filled with small red candles. Traditional small lanterns in rural areas, with sorghum poles tied frame, hemp paper paste surface, with color paintings of people's favorite animals or mythological stories, or printed on the woodblock prints, or pasted on the folk paper cuttings, inside the small oil lamp. Now the development of bamboo frame construction, colored paper or silk cloth paste, filled with candles. In the production technology is not pure, but rough and powerful, without artifice. Whether it is the shape, materials, colors and production style have a lively atmosphere of local life and strong local characteristics.
Cotton plastic toys
A cotton plastic only a handful of cotton, a few peeled sorghum sticks and a little glue. The production of simple, the first few sorghum rod core tied into the skeleton, will fluff up the cotton gently wrapped around the skeleton, and then glued plastic shaping, glue coated with more coated less, can be molded into different shapes. Finally in the shape of the surface evenly coated with a layer of glue to fix the shape, and then dyed with color, a cotton plastic animals or characters are made. It is inserted in the pre-prepared porphyry drums, is a toy that can be set up to appreciate and play with the sound and shape of the toy. Cotton plastic toys with less material, low cost, and can be locally sourced, so artists are often now doing now, while performing and selling. Cotton plastic toys have chickens, sparrows, magpies, swallows, cranes and other flying birds, but three or five inches long, but six or seven inches high. Characters mainly in the "Journey to the West" in the elf Sun Monkey, naive sand monk, silly pig and charity of the Tang Monk, a lifelike, love.
The folk art of dyeing, weaving and embroidery actually includes several categories such as printing and dyeing, hand weaving, embroidery, brocade and woof.
Printing and dyeing are crafts closely related to folk costumes and daily living room decorations, mainly batik, tie-dye, blue printed cloth, color printed canvas, etc., which are mainly used in clothing, hats, bedding, bed ornaments, curtains, wrapping cloth and so on, and they are very widely used cloth arts.
Embroidery includes four famous embroideries, folk embroideries and minority embroideries. The four famous embroideries are Hunan embroidery, Suzhou embroidery, Shu embroidery and Guangdong embroidery, and the representative ethnic folk embroideries include Miao embroidery, Tu embroidery, Manchu pillow top embroidery (embroidered on both ends of the pillow), Hubei flower picking, and Shaanxi, Shanxi and Henan folk hand embroidery.
Traditional Embroidery
Embroidery
Traditional embroidery in China is categorized into folk embroidery and the Four Famous Embroideries according to the differences in users, regions, and the degree of sophistication of craftsmanship.
Folk embroidery is a folk embroidery craft commonly found throughout China, as opposed to the Four Famous Embroideries, which are characterized by their palace culture and literati style of painting. Traditional Chinese embroidery has a long history and has existed with the creation and development of silk. As early as 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, embroidery has been an important means of decoration in the "uniform system". Embroideries unearthed from the Mawangdui Tomb in Changsha more than 2,000 years ago already had a rich variety of different stitches. It can be seen that the embroidery process had already appeared a fixed process of different needlework programmed. 1982 from Hubei Jiangling Mashan No. 1 Chu Tomb, unearthed in the Warring States period of embroidered coverlet (quilt) and Zen (single) clothes, embroidered with dragons, phoenixes, tigers and flowers and other patterns, both in shape and spirit, colorful.
The poem "Southeast Flight of the Peacock", a Han Dynasty poem, contains the line "Concubine has an embroidered waist jacket, and the Weiwei is full of light". At the end of the Han Dynasty and the Sixth Dynasty, figures appeared in the embroidery subjects, which set a precedent for the later figure embroideries. During the Tang and Song dynasties, literati began to participate in the design of embroidery paintings. The poetic realm, calligraphy and painting elegance expressed in literati paintings influenced the creation of folk embroidery, which began to develop in the direction of refinement and literatization. In the Song Dynasty, embroidery became one of the most common and important women's crafts, and the embroidery creations of many cultured women from rich families made the embroidery craft even more delicate and exquisite. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, numerous embroidery workshops appeared in cities and towns across the country. Especially in the Ming Dynasty, firstly in Shanghai, there appeared the "Lu Xiang Yuan Embroidery" such as "Gu Embroidery" with fine embroidery work and skillful use of needles, which was famous for its personal style, and specialized in embroidery of flowers, birds, beasts and other paintings, pages, scrolls and other furnishings, which indicated that the traditional Chinese embroidery became an artwork to be appreciated independently from a decorative means attached to the clothing. The Qing Dynasty saw the emergence of several important embroidery schools, such as Beijing's Beijing Embroidery, Kaifeng's Bian Embroidery, Shandong's Lu Embroidery, etc., as well as the Four Famous Embroideries, which were honored by later generations.
In the late Qing Dynasty, folk embroidery crafts with local characteristics and skills emerged everywhere. But for a long time, the official culture and elite culture, the emergence of folk embroidery craft in various places rarely pay attention to, let alone record and comment. Folk embroidery is basically in the position of an ordinary "handicraft" that is completely integrated with daily life, but it is this art of life that has made folk embroidery spontaneously preserved from generation to generation, and become the most wonderful, the most graphic and the most culturally rich intangible cultural category of traditional art that we see today.
Folk Dyeing and Printing
The traditional folk dyeing and printing in China include tie-dyeing, batik, blue printed cloth and colored printed cloth.
The first three are the crafts of coloring and revealing flowers by printing and dyeing, using indigo extracted from the decomposition of the plant Polygonum cuspidatum as the dyestuff, which is also known as blue-dyeing and blue-printing in folklore. Color printing cloth is a multi-plate color printing process. According to the Records of the Grand Historian, Year of the Bamboo Clerk, and other ancient records, as early as the beginning of the 26th century B.C., "Emperor Huang Di made the Xuan Guan and yellow clothes, and dyed them with the juices of grasses and trees to form the color of the text. Xia, Shang, Zhou era, has been used to dress printing and dyeing colors, decorations to distinguish between inferiority and superiority level of the provisions. After the Qin and Han Dynasties, the openwork version of the printing method is prevalent, and then the variety of colors and varieties, printing and dyeing process has been perfected.
Chinese brocade
Chinese brocade has a long history, according to archaeological discoveries, as early as in the pre-Qin period has produced "Ho diamond pattern brocade", "fill flower Yan pattern brocade", "on the dragon on the phoenix pattern brocade" and other multicolor jacquard brocade. By the Han Dynasty, brocade with beautiful patterns could be woven on complex and precise jacquard machines. After the Tang and Song dynasties, the brocade satin and the flower satin made of various colors of silk threads and gold and silver threads were so colorful and magnificent that they were referred to as "brocade with flowers".
Shuhu brocade produced in Sichuan, mainly in Chengdu, Chengdu is also known as the city of brocade and brocade official city. In addition, Nanchong, Langzhong, Leshan, Mianyang, Xindu and other places also produce Shu brocade. Shu brocade still follows the dyed silk weaving, tough texture, colorful, rich in unique local style. Song brocade because of the origin of today's Suzhou, so it is also known as "Suzhou Song brocade", known for its simplicity and elegance in the world, is now facing the endangered situation of interruption of skills. Cloud brocade originated in Nanjing, because of its magnificent brocade pattern like clouds, so named. Its layout is rigorous, decorative, and more gold thread flowers or twisted edges, colorful, perfect to the extreme, is China's royal brocade, representing the highest technical level of brocade craftsmanship.
Plastic arts
Plastic arts refers to the pinching, molding, piling, and other methods of production of folk works of art, which includes clay sculpture, face sculpture, ceramic sculpture, sugar sculpture, rice flour kneading products, papier-maché patterning, glazing and glass and other plastic arts. Plastic arts often rely on artists to perform their art by hand, relying on manual methods of modeling, due to the use of different creative techniques with the carving, their artistic effects are different. Plastic arts are also often combined with painted decorative methods, in the shape and then painted to increase the appreciation of the artwork, symbolism and auspicious and peaceful atmosphere. Typical works of clay sculpture are "hand-pinched opera script" of Huishan, Jiangsu Province, "clay dog" of Huaiyang, Henan Province, "noodle soup" of Beijing, "noodle man Lang's works, etc.; nano-molded toys, such as clay meat and potatoes, mud toys in the juggling goods, "Afu", Fenghuang clay sculpture, Beijing rabbit, Mid-Autumn Mooncake, Qiaoguo, sugar man, etc. are typical of the folk art of plastic arts. Some folk faces and artifacts are made of papier-maché, while glass and sugar figures are blown while hot, also belonging to the plastic arts.
Mud sculpture
Mud sculpture
Mud sculpture is an ancient folk art in China. It uses clay as raw material, and is shaped by hand kneading or knocking the mold into clay, either plain or colored, with figures and animals as the main ones.
Neolithic era to the Han dynasty, China's archaeological excavations in a large number of cultural relics in a large number of terracotta figurines, ceramic beasts, ceramic carriages, ceramic boats and so on. Among them, there are hand-kneaded and molded. Han Dynasty ancestors in the funeral customs of a large number of use of clay idols as funerary objects. By the Tang Dynasty, the art of clay sculpture reached its peak. Yang Huizhi, who was known as the sage of sculpture, was an outstanding representative. The development of clay art to the Song Dynasty, not only the religious themes of large-scale statues continue to prosper, small clay toys also developed. There are many people specializing in clay figure production, as a commodity for sale. After the Yuan Dynasty, through the Ming, Qing Dynasty, Republic of China, clay art in the community is still circulating plastic, both ornamental furnishings, but also for children to play. Tianjin, Wuxi, Jiangsu Huishan, Guangdong Dawu, Shaanxi Fengxiang, Henan Junxian, Huaiyang and Beijing is still an important place of origin of traditional mud sculpture.
Face sculpture art
Traditional Chinese food culture has a long history, according to the literature, the Han Dynasty has long existed in the face sculpture. The Song Dynasty "Dream Liang Records" recorded the custom of using the face sculpture in the Spring Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, Dragon Boat Festival and wedding birthday celebrations. The earliest surviving ancient face figures are the face-made female figurine head, male figurine upper body statue and face pig found in the tomb of Astana in Turpan, Xinjiang, which was unearthed in the fourth year of the Tang Dynasty's Yonghui period (653 A.D.). During the Qing Dynasty, craftsmen who made noodles for a living appeared, and to this day, the craft and custom of noodle-making is still preserved in most parts of northern China.
Face sculptures are generally divided into ornamental face sculptures and edible face flowers (or ceremonial buns). The ornamental ones are usually made of refined flour, glutinous rice flour, salt, preservatives and sesame oil, while the edible ones are made of clarified flour and raw flour. The difference in materials makes these two kinds of noodle molds slightly different in the production process.
Noodle molding
The production of edible noodle flowers is simple and depends on women's dexterity. The method is to roll and knead white flour into dough, and then use scissors, kitchen knives and combs to shape the dough. To make ornamental and decorative dough figurines, the materials are made by pouring boiling water into flour, glutinous rice flour, and preservatives and mixing them with chopsticks, then kneading the dough repeatedly to make it even. Then the colors of magenta, magenta yellow, magenta blue, white powder, pot-smoke black and so on are added to the noodles to make a variety of colorful noodles, and then kneaded, rubbed, cut, picked, pressed, glued and other methods to shape the image. You can also use some feathers, cotton, etc. to decorate the hair, beard and so on, so that a complete image will appear.
The edible noodle flower or festival ceremonial buns are popular in the northern part of China where noodle eating is the mainstay, and along the Yellow River basin in Qinghai, Gansu, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Shandong provinces, as well as in Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, the Northeast and other places in the countryside are all edible noodle flower. The main places of origin are Beijing, Shandong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Beijing has the highest level of face molding art.
Puppet art
Chinese puppet art from different sides reflect the characteristics of the profound Chinese culture, from the texture of the material, manipulation methods, the puppet art has a line, staff, palm, iron branch, medicine hair, water and other forms; from the performance of the repertoire of historical legends, myths and legends, fables, etc., the sky and the world, the Chi fantasy into the devil, and realistic sketches, so to speak, can be said to be diverse! From the shape can be as big as the same height as a person (the Han Dynasty large puppet height of 193 cm), and can be less than a foot, even the head can be built to the size of a thumb and can be carved and painted with proper features, accurate proportions, proportionality, colorful lines, and bright colors. For example, the staff-head puppets in western Guangdong, the scholar Chen Qiulin in "Hibiscus Fairy", and the pig and ox demon king in "The Monkey King Beating the White Bone Demon", even though they are exaggerations of the gods and monsters, they still maintain the proportion of the right degree.
Modern Yuexi puppets can move freely with both eyes, and make movements according to the needs of expression such as open, all night, look at, instant, etc., which is easy to use, looking and looking at, etc.; Ji'nan's Wuqiao folk puppets are exaggerated and concise, unique; some are close to the Tang ladies and Dunhuang colorful sculptures; some are close to the face of opera, but they can be changed to make it more interesting, and use it flexibly.
On the other hand, puppetry is also a reflection of social life, many emperors, writers have been touched by the heartstrings, issued a heartfelt sigh. For example, during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, the former Lord of Shu, Shunzheng Gong Wang Diffracted a lot of feelings after watching puppets, and tasted cloud:
"Cutting off the geometry of life! The one who has a part to play is a puppet."
Cutting and engraving art
Cutting and engraving refers to the folk art category which is mainly produced by cutting, engraving and chiseling methods. It includes paper-cutting, paper-carving, shadow-carving, scrapbooking, gourd-carving
wood-carving
lu, iron painting, stone-carved line painting, porcelain-carved painting, etc. The art of cutting and carving is also known as the folk arts. A large number of cutting processes are also used in the production of ethnic clothing and cloth. The order of modeling of these works of art is often from large and small, the material used generally has a broad and hard texture, such as paper, leather, bamboo, wood, stone, ceramics, ivory and so on. Scissors carving tools often used in the shears, knives, chisels, burins and some auxiliary tools, scissors carving as a means of modeling, good at showing the details of the work, reflecting the delicate skills, such as carving works can be achieved as fine as a hair (Yueqing, Zhejiang Province, is an example of fine grain paper carving), wood carving to achieve the texture of the art effect of appearing, into the wood (such as the texture of the fine poplar wood carvings, ivory carvings and so on)
Paper-cutting and paper carving
Paper-cutting
Paper-cutting is widely spread in Chinese folklore, and according to historical records and unearthed objects, paper-cutting has a history of at least nearly 1,500 years. The appearance of paper-cutting should be after the invention of paper-making in the Han Dynasty, which provided favorable conditions for the appearance of paper-cutting. In the Tang Dynasty, the art of paper-cutting developed greatly, and it was one of the most important folk customs at that time to cut paper to invoke souls. In folklore, paper-cutting patterns were also widely used in woodblock carving, bronze decoration, cloth printing and dyeing, and other artistic fields. The Song Dynasty paper industry matured, the increase in the variety of paper products for the popularity of paper-cutting provides the conditions, such as the emergence of folk window, lanterns and tea decorations on a variety of different forms of expression, so that the use of folk paper-cutting than the Tang Dynasty to expand the scope of application. Southern Song Dynasty, there have been to paper-cutting as a professional artist. The Ming and Qing dynasties were the heyday of the art of paper-cutting, and paper-cutting became an important home decoration, such as door paper, window flower, cabinet flower, roof flower, etc. Paper-cutting has also become an indispensable decoration for folk activities. China's paper-cutting originated in the period from Han Dynasty to the North and South Dynasties, but really flourished after the mid-Qing Dynasty. Ancient paper-cutting more in the countryside, to scissors hinge out the main, simple and natural interest, are from the hands of peasant women; paper-cutting into the city, not only the public interest and ideals of life to be involved in the art of paper-cutting, and tens of thousands of families crowded together, each other into practice, the need for a huge; paper-cutting artists in order to save work, a knife more than one will be changed to carve knife carving based on the style of the shift to the subtle, the artists are not just women. However, the change of the times, life changes and aesthetic transformation, traditional folk art gradually can not adapt to the needs of reality, so the modern emerging paper-cutting art was born.
Paper Carving
Wood Carving
Paper Carving is also a common form of folk crafts, paper-cutting and paper-cutting, although the final form of both the same, but the production techniques are different. Paper-cutting is an art that uses paper as the object of processing and scissors as the tool for creation. Carved paper requires the use of mat board, carving knife, pointed awl, nails and other tools, first the original look on 20 or 30 sheets of thin paper, and then they will be placed on the mat board and fixed with nails, with a carving knife from the inside to the outside of the layer of the carving, carving patterns, carved, paper carving will be completed. Generally speaking, paper-cutting pays more attention to originality and is not limited by carving knives and paper, and the modeling is more free and casual. Carved paper, on the other hand, is more suitable for expressing delicate picture effects, such as Zhejiang's fine-grained carved paper is as fine as a hair, which is marvelous. Carved paper somehow makes up for the shortcomings of paper-cutting, but in terms of creation, it is subject to more restrictions.
Styles from around the world
The art of paper-cutting in China can generally be divided into two main types, the northern style and the southern style, and even so, paper-cutting in each region has different characteristics.
Shanxi paper-cutting is more representative of the northern paper-cutting art, widely used in the Spring Festival window, wedding flowers, a large number of funeral paperwork decoration, props in the fire show, temples in the creation of religious atmosphere, etc., a variety of folk activities can not be separated from the paper-cutting. In addition, paper-cutting is also used for embroidery and other works of art production of the base sample. Most of the forms of paper-cutting are monochromatic, simple, spontaneous, rough, focusing on exaggerated deformation, and the contents are mostly based on traditional flowers, animals, characters, and plays.
Hebei Weixian stained paper cutting is a typical Chinese art form of paper cutting, which has a history of two hundred years, and is especially famous for its window flowers. Later, the woodblock floating watermarked window flowers from Wuqiang County in Hebei Province were imported, and the paper-carving process drew on its color characteristics, imitated its transparent effect, and carved instead of cutting, forming the unique style of paper-carving in Weixian County. Wei County paper-carving is mainly based on "Yin-carving" and "Color Dyeing", so it is said that "three parts work and seven parts dyeing". The themes are mostly taken from opera characters, but there are also auspicious images of flowers, plants, fish and insects, birds and animals.
The rest of the Shandong paper-cutting, Hubei paper-cutting, Zhejiang Pujiang opera paper-cutting, Zhejiang Yueqing fine grain paper-cutting, Guangzhou Foshan paper-cutting and so on.
Shadow
Chinese shadow
Chinese shadow, the north to Luanzhou shadow representative, the shadow man structure is divided into seven major parts: head, upper body, upper arm (two pieces) and the lower arm (two pieces), the hand (two pieces), the lower body, the legs (feet and legs are connected to the legs, two pieces), **** 11 components. The center control is the neck bar. Manipulated by pole. Shengdan's face is skeletonized, while Jingshou's is painted, with an angular face, pointed chin, and flat forehead. The form is small, generally around 25.4 cm to 30.4 cm, with a maximum of 40.6 cm. Most are carved from donkey hides. The Shanxi shadow puppets made of yellow cowhide are also divided into 11 components.
The southern system is represented by the Chengdu Lantern and Shadow Theater, which has large, medium and small shadow puppets. The large shadow puppets are 60-80 centimeters tall, with some as tall as 1 meter, the medium ones are 40-60 centimeters tall, and the small ones are 24-30 centimeters tall. Chengdu lampshade body **** 14 joints:
cap, head, chest, abdomen, lower limbs two, upper arm two, forearm two, palm two. The head can be inserted into the neck with fine wire wrapped in a leather ring. The rest of the joints are connected with fine twine. A well-dressed shadow man in three sections: hat for a section, head for a section, collectively referred to as "hat" (the north called "head eba"), clothing *** for a section, collectively referred to as "handle" (the north called "poke").
Chinese shadow joints are flexible, under the manipulation of excellent artists, line sitting and looking around, end belt and robe, dancing and waving swords, driving fog and clouds, fighting and horse, out of the ordinary, amazing, playing a variety of legendary stories, shaping the life, Dan, Jingshou, Chou, God, Buddha, spirits, monsters, beasts and all kinds of inconceivable image of the shadow window, and become the art of harnessing the spirit of the object.
Carving and engraving art
Carving and engraving refers to the bamboo, wood, jade, metal and other media above the carving method, carving and engraving class refers to the use of this way of production works, such as our common carving plate, carving lacquer, carving, bas-relief, etc., as well as with the combination of sculpture sculpture and molding works of art, etc.. Carving and engraving are often in the hard interface and semi-dry state of the solid interface, while the plastic needs to be carried out in the soft material, which is carved and engraved and plastic different. We are familiar with such works include carved bamboo brush holder, jade jewelry and ornaments, metal jewelry, Wuhu iron painting, carved on the brick brick carving, stone carving works. Carving and engraving works are often used in the creation of knives, chisels, drills and some auxiliary tools.
Jade Carving
Jade carving is one of China's traditional carving art forms. As early as the Neolithic era, fish and dragons were carved in jade in the Yangshao and Longshan cultures. Jewelry such as turquoise and agate were found in the Yinxu culture of the Shang Dynasty. It can be seen that China's jade culture has a history of more than 5,000 years.
Woven Fabrics
Jade was regarded as a ritual object with important ceremonial functions because of its precious raw materials and demanding carving techniques. At the Jinsha site in Sichuan, a 4,000-year-old jade cong was unearthed. From the Shang Dynasty to the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods, various types of jade ritual objects and ornaments were used to worship the gods, all of which were vividly shaped, exquisitely carved, and of the highest quality.
During the Han and Tang dynasties, jade carvings became the favorite crafts of both the folk and the court as decorations, as exemplified by the emergence of the Golden Wisps during the Western Han Dynasty. During the Song and Yuan dynasties, the craft of jade carving was emphasized and developed at a high speed, and the Jade Academy in the palace was set up specifically for the purpose of carving jade objects. Shoushan stone carvings from Fujian Province were created in large quantities at that time, and their value was recognized by the imperial court. The Ming and Qing dynasties were the heyday of the development of jade carving. Suzhou was famous for its exquisite jade carvings, and the court used a great deal of jade as decoration and objects of use and play. The carving process became richer, with the emergence of exquisite crafts such as round carvings, and the representative "Jade Shanshi of Dayu's Ruling of the Water" is one of the largest jade pieces in the world. The modern era was also a period of prosperity for jade carving, with the emergence of a number of famous jade carvers, such as Pan Bingheng, in Beijing. Chinese jade carving of the "four national treasures" a Daiyue wonders, Qunfang Rangsheng, containing the fragrance of the gathering within and the four seas Tenghuan, is an example.
With the disappearance of traditional skills, the jade carving industry has experienced difficulties in the carving process due to hard work and backward concepts. In this regard, we should learn some scientific and reasonable memories and techniques from the West on the basis of inheriting the tradition, which is what the jade carving industry is now eagerly waiting for.
Wood carving
Wood carving crafts refers to the fine texture, tough, not easy to deform the tree as the raw material, the carving method for the creation of a variety of ornamental, rich in the beauty of the form of practical decorations. The earliest wood carving found in China is a wood carving of a fish unearthed at the Hemudu site, which was made 6,000-7,000 years ago. During the Warring States period, the wood carving process had developed from the simple carving of patterns and engraved panels used in pottery production during the Shang Dynasty to the three-dimensional round carving process. The level of wood carving in the Han Dynasty has been improved compared with the previous generation, and the wood carving animals unearthed in the Han tombs have a natural and vivid image, and the knife method is concise and decisive, showing the high level of wood carving artists at that time. Since the beginning of the Tang and Song dynasties, the art of wood carving began to realistic and exquisite direction of the party exhibition, to the Ming and Qing dynasties, small ornamental wood carvings, architectural and folk utility appliances on the level of decorative wood carvings have reached its heyday. the early 20th century after the liberation of China, the art of wood carving for the more and more people to know and love, become ornamental and collection of hot, but also become the industrialization of the practical and decorative arts.
There are many kinds of wood carvings in China, spreading all over the north and south of the country, the most famous ones are Zhejiang Dongyang wood carvings, Guangdong Golden Lacquer wood carvings, Wenzhou boxwood wood carvings, Fujian Longan wood carvings, which are called the "Four Famous Carvings". Other types such as: Qufu Kai wood carving, Nanjing antique wood carving, Suzhou red wood carving, Jianchuan cloud wood carving, Shanghai white wood carving, Yongling Birch wood carving, Quanzhou color wood carving ...... These wood carvings are due to the place of origin, selection of materials or craft characteristics and name, some have a long history, with a high level of craftsmanship and traditional characteristics, skilled craftsmen all over the world, the rising stars! Wood carving techniques are becoming more and more exquisite, modeling is also perfect, with distinctive local characteristics.
Wood carving carving techniques are round, relief, carving, etc., generally in the carving process, a variety of techniques are mixed use, due to the wood carving is perishable and easy to moth, so some works have to apply color, lacquer. Like all carvings, wood carvings can be roughly categorized into two forms, one is "free-standing" and the other is "dependent". The former refers to round sculptures that can be placed freely and can be seen from any direction and from any angle in three-dimensional space art, and are usually used as interior furnishings or desk ornaments; the latter refers to bas-relief sculptures that are used to decorate fixed spaces such as interior walls of buildings or doors and windows. The most famous wood carvings are produced in Dongyang, Zhejiang Province, Yueqing, Zhejiang Province, and Chaozhou, Guangdong Province. In addition, Huizhou wood carving, wood carving art of ethnic minorities are also outstanding achievements of wood carving art form.
Stone Carving
China's stone carving art has a long history. The stone human head unearthed at the Magishan Cultural Site in Wuan, Hebei Province, is a Neolithic artifact dating back to 7,000 years ago. During the Qin Dynasty (221-207 B.C.), giant stone carvings of the stone unicorn appeared. A pair of stone figures found in the northwestern suburbs of Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, have been identified as stone carvings from the era of Emperor Wen of the Western Han Dynasty (179-157 B.C.E.), with a deep and grandiose spirit and a simple, mellow style. Buddhism was introduced to China during the Eastern Han Dynasty, and China developed faster in both religious stone carvings and mausoleum stone carvings. The famous Yungang and Longmen Grottoes and other stone carvings can be illustrated in the Six Dynasties, Tang and Song dynasties, the level of stone carving art. After the Song and Yuan Dynasty, the art of stone carving developed towards secularization and diversification. Ming and qing dynasties, delicate and exquisite craft stone carving and with the hitching post in the countryside of han and tang dynasty stone carving temperament, ZhenZhuang beasts and other folk carvings, become the main body of stone carving art in the Ming and qing dynasties. Folk small craft stone carvings, generally named after the stone origin or stone characteristics, from the stone origin, Anhui Huizhou, Zhejiang Qingtian, Hebei Quyang; named according to the stone, Shoushan stone carvings in Fujian, Hunan Liuyang chrysanthemum stone carvings, Guangyuan, Sichuan, white flower stone carvings. Areas famous for stone carving artwork include Longdong area in Gansu (Zhenzhuang beast), Weibei area in Shaanxi (hitching post), northern Shaanxi (hitching wagons), Fangcheng area in Henan (stone monkeys), Yexian area in Shandong (slippery stone monkeys), Jiaxiang area in Shandong (stone unicorns, etc.), and Leizhou area in Guangdong (stone dogs), and so on.
Folk small crafts stone carving production pays great attention to the varieties of stone, color and texture selection, advocating for the arts, the pursuit of sculpture, the pursuit of carving, the use of relief, round carving, sculpture, carving, line carving, and a variety of techniques to create. Stone carving production process is more or less the same, generally: First, phase stone, according to the shape and texture of the stone, color to determine the subject matter to be carved. Second, with a pen on the stone carving parts, and then chisel out the rough, and then carve the general body. After carving the general part, repair and carve the fine part, and finally faceted, repaired light, waxed to complete the work.
Brick carving
Brick carving appeared in China during the Warring States period, when flower bricks appeared. Han Dynasty portrait bricks have been developed quite mature, with the most famous tomb brick carving, but the production of most of them are molded into the Tang Dynasty bricks using molded and then after the carving process, to create a rich sense of three-dimensional decorative relief works. Brick carvings on the figures of animal figures prominent and are set off by scrolling cloud pattern, structural full, vivid form, presenting a complex and rich artistic style. Song, Jin period, tomb brick carving popular, mostly secular life as the theme, has a strong flavor of life, which the Song dynasty brick carving in the image of proportionality, gesture vivid, neat and clear contours, carving clothes, knife sharp, is a refreshingly simple style of art. To the Jin Dynasty, brick figures robust, thick and simple, relief lines are generally rough and concise, interesting. Ming and Qing dynasties, brick carving is mainly used to decorate homes and temples and monasteries, rich in performance content, complex composition, production in addition to single-layer relief, there are multi-layer relief, stacked bricks and other performance techniques. Pattern patterns have a complete decorative effect, works of art picture has an independent form of composition.
Beginning of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, brick carving art gradually from the building's ancillary decorative development of an independent folk brick carving works of art, brick carving production team development and growth, the country almost have their own brick carving origin, including Huizhou, Tianjin, Beijing, Weixian, Shandong, Suzhou, Guangdong, Gansu, Taiwan, and so on the most famous.
The art of brick carving in the south and north of the Ming and Qing dynasties gradually formed its own style, but the process of folk brick carving production is still roughly the same, generally speaking, is divided into six steps. (1) repair brick (2) on the sample (3) engraved sample (4) playing billet (5) out of the fine (or called publication light) (6) grinding. Generally speaking, the northern brick carving art style is more thick, the southern brick carving art in favor of the show fine, but they are full of folk local flavor of China.