Jiwuwuqie

01 · Lineage & Regional School

He began practising the craft at the age of eight and received the true transmission of the art from his father, Jiwu Lipa, becoming the sixteenth-generation inheritor of the Yi folk lacquerware handicraft. Within the regional tradition and school record of Yi Lacquerware Decoration Craftsmanship in Xide, Sichuan: The transmission of Xide lacquerware centers on Yiluo Village, Yiluo Township, and the Ji Wu family has transmitted it continuously for nineteen generations there, forming a pattern in which the full set of steps from selective log felling to shade drying is not passed outside the family. In recent years, driven by prefecture- and county-level protection units (such as the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture Civil Affairs Ethnic Handicraft Factory), the local practice has begun to spread from within the family to surrounding villages; the azalea, rosewood, and camphor woods used are mostly taken from local mountain forests, and the material-selection habits are directly tied to the mountain vegetation conditions, which also makes it hard to replicate the same set of steps elsewhere. In terms of transmission form, Xide Yi lacquerware is still mainly family oral transmission supplemented by workshop production; the division of labor in the process steps is not fine—selection, blank forming, and decoration are often done by one person from start to finish, so the finished style varies by person, and the same wine bowl shows differences in different craftsmen's hands. The black-ground with strong red-yellow contrast coloring, the varied vessel types (wine bowls, dining plates, crucibles, tobacco pipes, quivers), and so on also constitute the recognizable shared features of this school. The origins of lacquerware around Xide can be divided into several layers: at first wood was simply carved into containers to meet the needs of cooking and storage; later a coat of black lacquer was applied to the surface to prevent the wood from rotting; only after that were cinnabar and orpiment mixed with raw lacquer to paint red and yellow patterns over the black ground. Each shift corresponded to a change in way of life—from the camp-cooking utensils of hunting-gathering societies to the household wares of settled farming, and the number, forms, and decorative density of objects grew accordingly. The more than 1,700 years were not a straight line: works before the Qing dynasty were mostly plain lacquer with sparse patterns; only after modern times, when wedding rituals and festival gift wares increased greatly, were the stronger red-yellow contrasting patterns used repeatedly, and painted lacquerware took shape in the everyday wares of the Xide area. The practice of using black lacquer as a ground with added red and yellow painting is precisely the result left after this stage of selection.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Male, of Yi ethnicity, born in May 1953 in Xide County, Sichuan Province. National representative bearer of Yi Lacquerware Decoration Craftsmanship, a third-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. The lacquerware he makes retains a traditional character in everything from the wooden body and its raw material to the pigments and the decorative patterns. He has expanded Yi lacquerware from the several dozen types known in tradition to nearly a hundred today, developed traditional utilitarian articles into modern handicrafts, and extended the technique into fields such as interior decoration and architecture. Within the documented technical tradition of Yi Lacquerware Decoration Craftsmanship in Xide, Sichuan: Xide County, the 'home of Yi lacquerware,' lies in the north-central part of the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture of Sichuan Province, where lacquerware making has a history of more than 1,700 years. From making the crude wooden household utensils of ancient times, to lacquering daily articles with black lacquer, and then to using natural raw materials such as raw lacquer, cinnabar, and orpiment to make exquisite painted lacquerware, the Yi lacquerware decoration craft has continuously developed and improved through its long evolutionary history. Yi lacquerware selects high-quality azalea wood, rosewood, camphor wood, and the like as raw materials, and involves more than forty process steps—selective felling of logs, drying, blank forming, sanding, ash filling, water polishing, grounding, decoration, cleaning, and shade drying. Decoration generally uses black lacquer as the ground color, over which yellow and red patterns are added to form various designs; the strong color contrast displays a distinctive ethnic style. The Yi lacquerware decoration craft of Xide County, Liangshan, has many advantages: the lacquerware it produces is finely worked, varied in form, and elegant; it is non-toxic, odorless, resistant to acid and alkali, high-temperature resistant, and non-deforming. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Documented Process Record": Yi lacquerware selects high-quality azalea wood, rosewood, camphor wood, and the like as raw materials, and involves more than forty process steps—selective felling of logs, drying, blank forming, sanding, ash filling, water polishing, grounding, decoration, cleaning, and shade drying.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

At the same time he broke the traditional Jiwu family rule that the craft be transmitted only within the family and never outside it, and only to daughters-in-law and never to daughters, teaching it instead to his own daughter and to other women of the family. He has trained more than 120 apprentices, including members of the Apo, Jike, Jiguo and Ayu clans.

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. Jiwuwuqie · National Representative Bearer Archive