Zhejiang Yueqing Sandiao boxwood carving

Boxwood carving has a long history and simple style. It is a folk handicraft with boxwood as carving material. It, together with Dongyang woodcarving and Qingtian woodcarving, is called Zhejiang Three Carvings, and its main producing areas are Wenzhou and Yueqing in Zhejiang Province.

Yueqing City is located on the southeast coast of Zhejiang Province, facing Wenzhou across the river. Yueqing boxwood carving is an ornamental round carving art with boxwood as the main material, which is mainly popular in Houheng Village, Nanjie Village, Liushi Town and Lecheng Town of Pan Yang Town in Yueqing City, and spread to Wenzhou, Yongjia, Hangzhou and Shanghai.

In 2208, Xiangyang Town of Yueqing City was re-rated as "the hometown of folk culture and art in China" with boxwood carving. Boxwood carving is named after the carved wood is boxwood. Boxwood grows slowly, and its diameter is only about 15 cm in 40 or 50 years. Therefore, it is difficult for boxwood to grow for a thousand years, and it is difficult to make a beat (a kind of beat in musical instruments). According to legend, it was first discovered by a folk artist who carved statues and Buddha statues. By chance, boxwood is tough and smooth in texture, delicate in texture, yellow and ivory in color, darkened with age, simple and beautiful, and moderate in hardness. It is the best material for carving small round carvings.

According to legend, boxwood carving was invented by a cowherd named Ye at the end of Qing Dynasty. Ye is from Yueqing, Zhejiang. One day, he was playing in a temple at the head of the village and saw an old man carving a Buddha statue in the temple. He was immediately attracted by the old man's skills. He simply ran out of the temple, tied the cow to a tree, dug up a sticky piece of mud, sat at the door of the temple and secretly learned to make plastic. The old man is a famous local folk artist. Seeing that Ye is clever and studious, he accepted him as a disciple and taught him five skills, such as round carving, clay sculpture, painting, gilding and relief. He made rapid progress, and a year later, he mastered this skill. One day, Ye saw the plastic Buddha statue in Baotai Mountain, Yueqing County. A Taoist in the temple broke a boxwood and asked him to carve a wishful hairpin out of boxwood. In the process of carving, Ye found that boxwood is tough, delicate in texture and inferior in color to other wood, so it is a good material for carving. From then on, he began to carve works with boxwood. In this way, the modern boxwood carving of Ye Jia in China Folk Art Garden was born.

Yueqing boxwood carving was founded in Song and Yuan Dynasties and prevailed in Ming and Qing Dynasties. Yueqing woodcarving has a complete range. On the basis of adhering to the tradition and maintaining the original style and charm of boxwood carving, we will make bold breakthroughs and bring forth the new. From single carving to group carving, from ordinary round carving to split carving and root carving, the skills are more exquisite and the works are more perfect.

Boxwood carvings are mainly produced in Wenzhou and Yueqing, Zhejiang Province, where Yueqing is the birthplace. Boxwood carving originated from a small carved Buddha statue decorated with wooden dragon lanterns during the popular Lantern Festival. By the end of the Qing Dynasty, it had developed into an exquisite craft appreciation product known for its exquisiteness, which was used to decorate people's desks. Influenced by the modeling style and lines of literati paintings in the late Qing Dynasty, the works have the characteristics of simple and round knife work, fine and smooth, both physical and mental description of characters, realistic structure and poetic. Most of the contents and themes show the characters in China folk myths and legends, such as: Eight Immortals, Shouxing, Guan Gong, Maitreya Buddha, Guanyin and so on.

Because Wenzhou is close to the mountain forest, artists can draw materials nearby, which greatly facilitates and promotes the development of boxwood carving. Through the continuous efforts and research of artists from generation to generation, excellent traditional styles and techniques of boxwood carving have finally been formed, among which the hollowing-out technique is the most typical one, which is the main technique to form vivid and exquisite boxwood carving works. In astronomical scattering, red silk dance and Ina,

The famous Wenzhou folk sculptor Zhu Zichang (1876- 1934) inherited the traditional carving skills, combined with the characteristics of boxwood and used unique techniques to create many excellent works, which greatly promoted the development of boxwood carving. His hide-and-seek, Wuzi Happiness and Amitabha, and Bag Monk are all masterpieces with vivid images, rich expressions and exquisite simplicity. 1909, his work "Ji Dian Monk" won the first prize in Nanyang Persuasion Competition. Later generations praised his work for its smooth knife work, light clothing lines, vivid modeling and fresh and carefree characters.

Wenzhou is located in the southeast coast, and its overseas transportation is very convenient. Since 1876, the Sino-British Yantai Treaty has been opened as a trading port, and foreign trade has been active. At that time, Wenzhou had set up an export handicraft purchasing bank with a large scale of operation. In addition, Yueqing, Yongjia, Xianju and other places are rich in boxwood resources, and the conditions for supply, production and sales are all available, and the development of boxwood carving has seen a new situation. Gradually formed a group of artists engaged in boxwood carving and an art school represented by Zhu Zichang.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, boxwood carving developed rapidly and outstanding works emerged constantly. On the basis of inheriting and carrying forward excellent traditional skills, he created various round carving techniques such as patchwork carving, group carving and mosaic carving, and skillfully combined relief and round carving to produce many excellent works. There are also several Yueqing boxwood carving families represented by famous artists such as Wang Fengzuo, Zheng Xiangkui and Ye Runzhou. The inheritors mainly include: 1 person who has won the honorary title of inheritor of national intangible cultural heritage list, he is king; The four people who won the honorary title of China Master of Arts and Crafts were Gao Gongbo, Yu, Wang and Yu; The five people who won the title of Zhejiang folk artists were Wang, Wang, Zheng Shengning, Zheng; He was awarded by Zhejiang arts and crafts masters Wang, Zheng Shengning, Mou, Wang Du Cai, Ye Shenglong, Wu and Zheng.

However, in the old society, boxwood carving, like other folk crafts, was seriously damaged because of the plight of local people who were eager to learn, poor workers, businessmen who were trapped in money and farmers who were lazy to plow. Artists have been exploited and oppressed, and their livelihood is difficult and they are displaced from place to place. There are really thousands of ink noodles without Artemisia. On the eve of liberation, boxwood carving was on the verge of extinction.

After liberation, boxwood carving in a quiet place, like a dead tree in spring, has regained its vigorous development. 1955, with the support of the party and the government, nine unemployed artists from Yueqing County and nine folk artists including Wang, Ye Runzhou, Wang Du Cai and Ye set up a boxwood carving production team headed by Wang in Wengyang, Yueqing. It soon expanded into an art sculpture factory, and many old artists began to do the same. In order to improve the artistic level of artists, the state often sends experienced professors and experts to the factory for counseling, and has also sent 19 young artists from the factory to Beijing Central Academy of Arts and Crafts, Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, Zhejiang Academy of Arts and Crafts and other institutions for further study. Yueqing boxwood carving artists are constantly engaged in technical research, and on the basis of traditional techniques, they break the old and backward expressions, from single-person three-dimensional garden carving to patchwork and group carving. During the period of 195 1, Yueqing boxwood carving artists boldly created large-scale overseas exhibits combining garden sculpture with relief. They skillfully combined traditional relief with garden sculpture to boldly reflect the harvest scene in the form of group images, which broke through the old expression techniques and made the famous Yueqing boxwood carving technology take a step forward. After the downfall of the Gang of Four, the factory set up a creative group, opened an amateur art school for workers, and organized young sculptors to learn painting, sculpture and other skills, which greatly improved the technical strength of young artists. Many artists' works have also participated in national and foreign exhibitions and won good reviews. The output value of wood carving in the factory has increased by more than 70 times compared with that when the factory was established. Their products are sold to more than 30 countries and regions on five continents. Boxwood is the main material of Yueqing boxwood carving, and it is a low-growing evergreen shrub. As the saying goes, it is difficult to plant boxwood in a thousand years. According to Compendium of Materia Medica, boxwood is difficult to grow. It is only one inch long when it is one year old, and it will shrink back when it leaps. There are similar records in Yueqing county annals. In leap years, retrogression and shortening describe its growth retardation. Boxwood generally needs to grow for forty or fifty years before it can be used for carving. Most of this wood is only about 3~5 inches in diameter, which is suitable for carving small people for desk appreciation. Boxwood has tough texture, smooth surface, fine texture, moderate hardness and bright yellow color. Boxwood is finely carved and can be compared with ivory carving. Especially with the passage of time, the color changes from shallow to deep, giving people a simple, beautiful and unique feeling.

Woodcarving tools include mud hammers, sculpture stands and clay plastic boxes, as well as calipers, scrapers and various forms of plastic knives. Tools used for rough machining include saws, wooden hammers, hammers, etc. The main tools for carving are chisels, which have various types and complete functions, and are divided into oblique chisels, triangular chisels, flat chisels, round chisels, steel chisels, reverse chisels, reverse chisels, oblique chisels, needle chisels and hand saws. Its operation is more detailed, and it is divided into more than ten processes, such as sketching, molding clay draft, selecting wood, operating rough blank, carving solid blank, carefully trimming, grinding and polishing, finely carving hair lines, waxing and polishing, and matching foot basin. Among them, the wisp carving technique is the most exquisite skill in wood carving, which can make the work ethereal, exquisite, elegant, beautiful and dynamic.

There are three types of boxwood carvings in Yueqing, with different modeling concepts, techniques and procedures. One is the traditional class, which is mainly based on single character modeling, and there are also group carvings or patchwork carvings; The second is root carving, which uses natural boxwood root blocks as materials and adopts root carving modeling; The third kind is split carving, which splits the wood blocks that can't be used for figure carving and takes the natural texture after splitting to carve, so everything is natural and doesn't need careful carving. Traditional sculpture has a figure model, and the material type should be adapted to it, so there are procedures such as clay sculpture drafting, material selection, blank knocking and shaping, and solid blank freezing. Root carving is resourceful and flexible in conception, and it doesn't have to be made of clay, but attention should be paid to maintaining the unique modeling significance of roots, while split carving turns its attention to the modeling of texture.

Famous artists in boxwood carving include Wang Fengzuo, Zheng Xiangkui, Ye Runzhou and Wang. Their works have different styles, some pay attention to simplicity, simplicity and vividness, and their artistic techniques are more realistic, while others are good at exquisite carving skills. Gao Gongbo in Yueqing, as a new generation of woodcarving artists, has developed a brand-new technology of boxwood carving while engaging in the research of boxwood carving and tree root carving, which is known as getting out of the embarrassment of boxwood carving for hundreds of years. Yueqing boxwood carving fully demonstrates the wisdom of folk craftsmen, showing many different styles in the historical development process, such as the round, concise and smooth cutting method of wood carving in Ming Dynasty; The woodcarving in Qing dynasty is clear and smooth. The technological process of boxwood carving is complex, and the fineness and technological requirements of each process are incomparable to other carvings and irreplaceable by modern technology.

Nowadays, there is a crisis in the source of materials in Yueqing boxwood carving. At the same time, the brain drain of professionals is serious, newcomers are unsustainable, and individual workshops are scattered, making it difficult to have an impact. All these conditions affect the development of boxwood carving skills, and it is urgent for relevant parties to formulate plans to rescue and protect this characteristic skill.

The state attaches great importance to the protection of intangible cultural heritage. On May 20th, 2006, this heritage was approved by the State Council to be included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage list.

Yueqing boxwood carving's "Good Year Scenery" (Zheng's works) was selected as the 2005 New Year's greeting (award-winning) postcard of China Post by the State Post Bureau.