Cao Yongsheng

01 · Lineage & Regional School

In 1983 he studied wood carving under Fang Shitian, and in 2001 he founded the Huangshan Huizhou Carving Research Institute and served as its director. Within the regional tradition and school record of Huizhousandiao in Huangshan, Anhui: Its origins can be traced back to the Tang dynasty. With the rise of Huizhou merchants in the Ming and Qing periods, 'Wuyuan Three Carvings' reached its zenith on the strength of Huizhou-style architecture; the relevant skills are distributed mainly in certain towns, townships, and villages such as Jiangwan, Sikou, Longshan, Tuochuan, Zheyuan, Qinghua, Duanxin, and Zhentou. The carving on the 'Minister's Mansion' (Shangshu Di) built at Likeng, Tuochuan, Wuyuan County, in the 24th year of the Wanli reign of the Ming dynasty (1596) by Yu Maoxue, Vice Minister of Revenue and Minister of Works, may be regarded as the earliest example of 'Wuyuan Three Carvings'; later, Yu Maoheng, Minister of Personnel of the Ming dynasty, also built the 'High Minister's Mansion' (Shangguan Qing Di) at Likeng in the sixth year of the Tianqi reign (1626).

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Male, Han ethnicity, born in September 1969, a native of Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province. He is a senior arts and crafts artist, a Master of Chinese Arts and Crafts, and an expert receiving the special government allowance of the State Council. His works are original in conception, ingeniously composed and profound in artistic conception; in execution he blends full-round carving, openwork, deep relief and intaglio carving, with a consummate and seasoned command of the knife. In his creations, which unite inheritance and innovation, Huizhou carving displays an enduring vitality. Within the documented technical tradition of Huizhousandiao in Huangshan, Anhui: The territory of ancient Huizhou included what is today Huangshan City in Anhui Province and Wuyuan County in Jiangxi Province. 'Huizhou Three Carvings' is the collective name for three crafts practiced in ancient Huizhou: wood carving, brick carving, and stone carving. All are decorative carvings on Ming and Qing architecture of the ancient Huizhou region, with a strong local cultural character. Ancient Huizhou buildings consist mainly of dwellings, official residences, ancestral halls, temples, covered bridges, and memorial archways; whether building components or household furnishings, they have a strong regional style and attach great importance to carved decoration. Wood carving is generally used to decorate such parts of the house as crescent beams, architraves, dougong bracket sets, sparrow braces, beam humps (commonly called 'yuanbao', or ingots), flat plate heads, tenon ornaments, hook hangers, the lattice hearts of partition doors and windows, skirt panels, taohuan (border-strip) panels, lotus doors, window lattices, window rail panels, balustrades, gazebo ceilings, upper-floor edge guard boards, and hanging meshwork, while the furniture displayed inside the house — beds, couches, chairs, cabinets, tables, dressing stands, and occasional tables — is likewise adorned with fine wood carving. Brick carving mainly decorates the gate towers and door canopies of dwellings; stone carving is used chiefly for the stone balustrade panels of ancestral halls, the foundation stones of dwelling entrance walls, leak windows (openwork windows), and the decoration of stone archways. The 'Huizhou Three Carvings' are matched to the architecture as a whole with great tightness and security; the craftsmanship of their layout, the ingenuity of their structure, the beauty of their decoration, the refinement of their construction, and the depth of their content are awe-inspiring. Whether in wood, brick, or stone, the three carvings employ multiple techniques together — relief, openwork, round carving, and line engraving — from which one can trace the lineage of China's architectural decorative carving since the Han and Tang dynasties. At the same time, they reflect the influence of other art forms within Huizhou culture — such as the Xin'an school of painting, Huizhou woodblock prints, Huizhou seal carving, Huizhou inkstone carving, and ink-mold carving — on the style of Huizhou architectural decorative carving. The production procedures of the 'Huizhou Three Carvings' differ according to material, tools, and techniques. For example, the procedure for brick carving includes preparing the brick, laying out the design, blocking out the rough form, refining the detail, polishing, and repairing; the traditional tools are mainly charcoal sticks, chisels, brick planes, pry bars, wooden mallets, whetstones, emery cloth, bow saws, palm-fiber brushes, and hand drills. The procedure for wood carving includes selecting the material, laying out the design, blocking out the rough, medium, and fine forms, polishing, and applying oil and lacquer; the traditional tools are mainly small axes, hardwood mallets, chisels, carving knives, wire saws, whetstones, and emery cloth. The procedure for stone carving includes processing the stone, drafting the design, rough hewing, coarse dressing, hollowing out recesses, and fine finishing; the traditional tools are mainly chisels, wedges, flat chisels, engraving knives, hammers, axes, chopping axes, 'hazi' and 'duozi' chisels, and grinding heads. The traditional production skills of the 'Huizhou Three Carvings' have long circulated widely among the folk building and carving trades. After 1979, a number of ancient-architecture and garden construction enterprises were established one after another, some veteran 'Three Carvings' artisans were reorganized into teams, and they began to take on apprentices and pass on their skills. However, owing to changes in building materials and tools and to the calculation of construction costs, the traditional carving skills — which consume much time, labor, and material and whose knife techniques are difficult to master — were gradually excluded from practical use, and many skills have already been lost. 'Wuyuan Three Carvings' refers to the brick carving, stone carving, and wood carving found in Ming and Qing ancient buildings within Wuyuan County, Jiangxi Province. It belongs to a branch of Huizhou-style architectural art, and its products are used mostly as decorative components on buildings such as dwellings, official residences, ancestral halls, temples, covered bridges, and memorial archways. In the 16th year of the Shunzhi reign of the Qing dynasty (1659), Yu Weishu built the 'Sima Mansion' (Sima Di), marking the entry of 'Wuyuan Three Carvings' into an entirely new stage of development. In the 20th year of the Kangxi reign of the Qing dynasty (1681), the 'Hundred-Pillar Ancestral Hall' was completed at Huangcun, Gutan Township, in northern Wuyuan County; in the first year of the Qianlong reign (1736), a cluster of merchants' residences was built at Sixi and Yancun in Wuyuan County. The decoration of these buildings shows the 'Wuyuan Three Carvings' at the height of its prosperity. Although 'Wuyuan Three Carvings' is subordinate to Huizhou-style architecture, it fuses aesthetics, mechanics, mathematics, history, and ecology in a single crucible, possessing profound cultural substance and extremely high artistic value. The materials for 'Wuyuan Three Carvings' are chosen with great strictness: bricks must be locally produced water-polished black bricks; stone must be 'Yixian black' from Anhui, or Qingtian stone from Zhejiang and Chaqing stone from Chun'an; large wood carvings must use timber of maple, camphor, cypress, or chinquapin more than a hundred years old; fine wood carvings use nanmu, jujube, poplar, peach, and other woods with a fine, dense grain. The various knife techniques are the key to 'Wuyuan Three Carvings': their hallmark is that no single method is adhered to — they are mixed and used together so that the works attain an effect of airy transparency. Round carving, relief carving, shallow carving, deep carving, and openwork carving are therefore extremely common. Beginning with Liu Sanyuan, whose sobriquet was 'Carver of Three Carvings' (Diao San Diao), the skills of 'Wuyuan Three Carvings' formed a lineage of their own; at present, however, like 'Huizhou Three Carvings', they face the danger of being lost and urgently need rescue and support. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Where the wood carving goes": Carving covers beams, brackets, spandrels and window panels alike, as well as beds, chairs, cabinets and dressing stands indoors. "Brick and stone carving uses": Brick carving adorns gate towers and gate hoods, while stone carving serves ancestral-hall balustrades, footings, pierced windows and arches. "The brick-cutting sequence": Brick carving proceeds through trimming, setting out, blocking out, refining, smoothing and mending, using chisels, planes and bow saws. "The wood and stone sequences": Wood carving runs from stock selection through blocking and smoothing to oiling and lacquering; stone carving from dressing to fine cutting.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

National representative bearer of Huizhou three carvings, a fourth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. His works "Small Town", "Returning Home in Glory" and "Unity of Heaven and Man" won gold awards at the China Arts and Crafts Hundred Flowers Awards, and a book, The Huizhou Carving Art of Cao Huangsheng, has been published.

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. Cao Yongsheng · National Representative Bearer Archive