Jiang Min

01 · Lineage & Regional School

He studied under Yu Shuqin and received guidance from Wei Zhirong. With more than fifty years in block engraving, he has comprehensive and solid fundamental skills, attaining a level at which the knife substitutes for the brush and the blade itself conveys the eye's intent. He has great mastery in making douban (assembled colour blocks) and gonghua (embossed relief blocks), and is especially accomplished in carving dry-brush blocks that reproduce the brushwork and spirit of the original painting. Within the regional tradition and school record of Mubanshuiyinjiyi in Shanghaishuhuachubanshe: The silk-based works are delicate and elegant, the paper-based works antique, remote, and richly moist; together with Rongbaozhai's woodblock water-printing they stand as the two great schools of Chinese woodblock water-printing, known as "Duoyunxuan of the South and Rongbaozhai of the North". The traditional woodblock water-printing craft of "carving images in wood and printing them on plain paper" originated from China's ancient carved-block printing and is an important component of traditional Chinese culture. As early as the Tang dynasty, the woodblock water-printing craft was already fairly mature. Since the Song and Yuan dynasties, woodblock-printed book illustrations became popular; after the Ming dynasty this fashion reached its zenith.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Male, Han ethnicity, born in July 1941 in Shanghai. He is a national representative bearer of Woodblock Water-printing Technique (Mubanshuiyinjiyi), a third-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. He is a woodblock water-printing technician. Within the documented technical tradition of Mubanshuiyinjiyi in Shanghaishuhuachubanshe: In the late Ming, complex overprinting techniques such as "douban" (separate-block) and "gonghua" (embossing) were widely adopted, and woodblock water-printing achieved great technical progress. This technique then spread widely among the people, used to print letter-paper albums and folk New Year pictures, becoming a traditional reproduction and printing craft unique to China. Since its founding in the 26th year of the Guangxu reign of the Qing dynasty (1900), Shanghai Duoyunxuan has inherited the traditional woodblock water-printing craft; after more than a century of making, research, and development, Duoyunxuan's woodblock water-printing has become a re-creative art integrating painting, block carving, and printing. Its works are finely and delicately made, with carefully selected materials, emphasizing style, brushwork, and flavor, possessing a refined, elegant, and gracefully moist style. From its founding in the 26th year of the Guangxu reign of the Qing (1900), Shanghai Duoyunxuan has treated woodblock water-printing as a craft requiring constant emulation of ancient methods; over more than a century, the three tasks of carving, printing, and painting have merged in the hands of one group of artisans into a re-creative art. The douban and gonghua that became popular since the late Ming are methods of splitting a painting into many color plates printed in separate passes; the number of plates and the accuracy of registration directly determine the vividness of the finished product. Its two appearances — the delicate and elegant silk-based works and the antique, remote, and richly moist paper-based works — together with the northern Rongbaozhai are called "Duoyunxuan of the South and Rongbaozhai of the North", showing that woodblock water-printing is not a single carving method but two branches differentiated by material and purpose. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Dividing the painting into colour blocks": Engraving the image on wood and printing it on plain paper begins with splitting the painting into colour blocks, one colour to each block. "Cutting the blocks": The image is reversed onto the wood before cutting; the pressure of the knife sets the tone and the depth of the cut sets the ink. "Register-printed colour blocks": Douban is the process of registering many colour blocks onto one sheet in turn, widely used from the late Ming. "Blind embossing with gonghua": Gonghua presses a relief pattern onto the printed sheet without colour, the hardest layer of work beyond colour printing.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

The Shizhuzhai Shuhua Pu (Painting and Calligraphy Album of the Ten Bamboo Studio), which he chiefly engraved, received the national grand prize at the 1989 Leipzig International Book Art Exhibition. Xu Wei Za Hua Tu Juan (Xu Wei's Album of Miscellaneous Flowers) fully conveys the ink spirit of the original and received a special prize at the 1984 Shanghai Outstanding Books Awards held by the Shanghai Publishers Association.

04 · Associated Heritage Item Dossier

05 · Fellow National Bearers Lineage

National representative bearers recorded under the same item code, ordered from the first to the sixth batch. Batch order is not a teacher–student relationship.

06 · Archival Sources & Bibliography

1. Jiang Min · National Representative Bearer Archive