Arts and Crafts

China has a wide variety of arts and crafts with exqui-site workmanship. They can be classified into special and folk types.

Special arts and crafts, such as ivory carving, jade carving and Shoushan stone carving use precious or special materials, and undergo elaborate designing and processing. They are elegant and expensive.

The following are famous special arts and crafts.

The major ivory carving centers are Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai. Beijing is mainly famed for ivory carvings of figures of ladies, as well as flowers and birds. Guangzhou is well known for its exquisitely carved ivory balls. Shanghai is famous for its delicate ivory figures. The ivory carvings are exquisitely executed and lifelike. However, the technique of ivory carving is gradually declining for lack of materials.

Jade carving takes into consideration the natural lines, luster and colors of jade. Craftsmen ingeniously integrate the colors with the shapes of the art works, fully displaying the glory of nature.

Stone carving is created using various rare types of stone, such as the Shoushan Stone and Tianhuang Stone.

Carved lacquerware, shaped like bottles, pots and large screens, is created out of pure lacquer. Usually bright red, it is classically elegant and beautiful.

Cloisonne is a kind of handicraft well known at home and abroad. The blue glaze produced during the reign of Emperor Jingtai of the Ming Dynasty is considered the best. Created by mounting copper strips and plating gold and silver on the surface of a copper roughcast, it looks resplendent and magnificent. The products include bottles, bowls, and cups used as prizes, etc.

Chinese folk arts, with a broad mass foundation as well as a long history, contain profound cultural and historical connotations. They can stimulate people.s aesthetic sense and appreciative taste. Throughout the ages, Chinese folk arts have had a strong local flavor as well as a national style, different in postures and beautiful beyond appreciation.

In technique, Chinese folk arts fall into the categories of cutting, bundling, plaiting, knitting, embroidering, carving, molding and painting.

Cutting includes papercuts, paperengravings, papercut silhouettes, paperfolding, paper sculpture, and leather-silhouettes, all of which evolved from papercuts.

Bundling includes kites and colored lanterns bundled up with paper, silk or bamboo.

Plaiting, a popular folk art, includes various straw or thread plaited articles. The products include cloth tigers, cool pillows, cushions, tiny fragrant bags, colored silk balls, shoe-pads, and velvet flowers and birds.

Knitting, including wax printing, bandhnu, color printing, drawnwork and flower knitting, is created by weaving, knitting or stitching.

Embroidering includes picture weaving in silk, printing and dyeing. China.s four famous styles of embroidery are those of Suzhou, Hunan, Guangdong and Sichuan.

Carving includes art depictions of various shapes, such as masks, puppet heads, figures, animals and flowers, which are created with bamboo, wood, jade, or horn.

Molding includes dough modeling, clay sculpture, frozen butter sculpture and pottery sculpture. The products serve not only as ornaments but also as children.s toys.

Painting involves such techniques as hand painting, incision, patchwork, and pyrograph, each having a style of its own.

Painting

The roots of Chinese painting can be traced back to paintings on Neolithic pottery, such as figures of fish, frogs, deer, birds, flowers, tree leaves and dances, 6,000-7,000 years old. The earliest Chinese characters were pictographs. Since similar tools and lines were used for the earliest painting and writing, painting is said to have the same origin as calligraphy. Thus, Chinese painting has an outstanding characteristic, that is to say, poetry or calligraphy are inscribed on paintings so that the three are integrated, giving people a keener enjoyment of beauty. 

Liaoning Art Gallery.

Many ancient Chinese paintings were executed on walls or decorative screens. Today, murals can be seen in the tombs of the Han, Tang and other dynasties. Gu Kaizhi, a famous painter of the Jin Dynasty, was good at presenting historical themes. His painting The Nymph of the Luo River portrayed poet Cao Zhi.s meeting with the goddess. The Tang and Song dynasties were the golden age of Chinese painting. The Tang painter Wu Daozi, called the .Sage Painter,. was an expert at figure and landscape painting. Riverside Scenes at the Qingming Festival, a genre painting of significant historical value done by the Northern Song Dynasty painter Zhang Zeduan, depicts the bustling scene in the then capital during the festival. The Tang painters Li Sixun and Li Zhaodao, who were father and son, used mineral substances as pigment to paint landscape paintings, which were called .magnificent landscapes.. Wang Wei practiced watercolor painting with vigorous strokes depicting floating clouds and flowing water. Flower-and-bird painting is also an important traditional Chinese painting genre.

Contemporary painters have specialties. Some only paint figures of ladies, and some only paint animals, or even one kind of animal, such as cats, donkeys, or horses. As a result, the more they paint, the better their paintings become.

The Chinese painting world is very active. The China Art Gallery and other art galleries hold individual or joint art exhibitions year in, year out. Also, exhibitions of traditional Chinese paintings have been held in Japan, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Different from Western oil paintings, traditional Chinese painting attracts foreign virtuosos and collectors with its Eastern artistic beauty.

Calligraphy

Chinese characters evolved from pictures and signs, and the unique Chinese calligraphy came into being during the development of writing. Using fine paper, brushes and ink, calligraphers have evolved a richly varied tradition of calligraphic styles, which have been handed down from generation to generation.

Great calligraphers came to the fore in each dynasty. Their calligraphy and styles thus became representative of their time. The best-known of them was the .Sage Calligrapher. Wang Xizhi of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. His cursive script is handsome, bold and unrestrained, and has been described as .like dragons flying and phoenixes dancing.. His son, Wang Xianzhi, was also a famous calligrapher. The Tang Dynasty was a brilliant age of calligraphy. Ouyang Xun, Chu Suiliang, Yan Zhenqing and Liu Gongquan were the great master calligraphers of that time, and their works have been models for students of calligraphy to this day.

The modern master calligrapher is Wu Changshuo. His work often appears on paintings, in a seal-like format.

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