Huang Xiaoming

01 · Lineage & Regional School

In 1980 he entered the Dongyang Wood Carving General Factory, where he studied under the Chinese Arts and Crafts Master Feng Wentuo. Within the regional tradition and school record of Dongyang Wood Carving in Dongyang, Zhejiang: It is mainly distributed across the townships and towns of Dongyang, extending to neighboring counties and cities, and has spread into Jiangsu, Shanghai, Jiangxi, Anhui, Fujian, Guangdong, Hubei, Henan, Jilin, Sichuan, and Chongqing, as well as Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao, reaching as far as Singapore, Thailand, Mongolia, Albania, and Canada. The Lu family tomb and the tomb of Shu Yuanyi — a jinshi (successful imperial examination candidate) and chancellor of the Yuanhe era of the Tang dynasty — were both robbed in the early 20th century, and finely carved funerary wooden figurines were unearthed from each, showing that already before the Taihe era of the Tang dynasty, Dongyang wood carving had developed to a certain degree. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, Dongyang wood carving was widely applied to the decoration of architecture and furniture, forming a complete set of techniques and a mature style. Still extant are Ming-Qing ancient buildings such as the 'Suyong Hall' of the Lu Residence, the 'Wuben Hall' of Baitan, and the 'Yijing Hall' of Mashangqiao, as well as furniture such as the 'Thousand-Labor Bed' (qiangong chuang) and the pieces of the 'Ten-Mile Dowry' (shili hongzhuang). The 'Renyi Factory' opened in Hangzhou in 1914 was the earliest manufacturer of Dongyang wood carving, which subsequently developed step by step toward Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, and other places. After the 1950s, factories for producing Dongyang wood carving were also established in various parts of China.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Male, Han ethnic group, born in July 1964 in Dongyang City, Zhejiang Province. He is a senior craft artist and a Chinese Arts and Crafts Master. His wood carvings blend the classical and the modern, and he is equally accomplished in monumental works and small pieces, with a distinctive style and superb technique; building on traditional methods he has created new forms of expression such as sketch wood carving, hyper-realist wood carving, bamboo-slip wood carving and viewfinder wood carving. He has repeatedly received national awards in the fields of wood carving and arts and crafts, and dozens of his works have been collected by institutions including the National Museum of China and the National Art Museum of China. From 2005 to 2007 he successfully reproduced the Qianlong throne in the Hall of Supreme Harmony of the Palace Museum in Beijing, and he created large wood carving decorations for the main venue of the G20 Leaders' Summit in Hangzhou and the main venue of the SCO Qingdao Summit. In addition he has directed the design of wood carving decoration projects for the Mount Jiuhua Dayuan Cultural Park, the wall hanging of the Leifeng Pagoda in Hangzhou and the Beijing Hotel, and nearly one hundred of his works have obtained design patents. His representative works include The Nine Elders of Xiangshan, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter and Three Friends, among dozens of others. In particular, Gemuyuan, which he built over four years in Dongyang, integrates contemporary wood carving with real living space and may be regarded as a masterpiece of contemporary Dongyang architectural wood carving. Within the documented technical tradition of Dongyang Wood Carving in Dongyang, Zhejiang: Dongyang wood carving is named after its geographical association with Dongyang. Dongyang City lies in central Zhejiang, in a setting described as 'three mountains enclosing two basins, two basins holding two rivers'; it has much mountainous land and little arable land, and in former times droughts and floods alternated along the two rivers to the north and south, causing suffering to the people, who were forced to make a living by their crafts. Dongyang wood carving is one of the more outstanding of these crafts. According to the Kangxi New Gazetteer of Dongyang, during the Taihe era of the Tang dynasty the brothers Feng Su and Feng Ding of Fenggaolou Village, Dongyang, served successively as Minister of Civil Office and Minister of Works; of their residence it is said that 'the painted balustrades of the high tower dazzled the eye, and the corridors below stretched nearly half a li'. The surviving statues of Sudhana (Shancai Tongzi) and Guanyin Bodhisattva, carved in the second year of the Jianlong era of the Song dynasty (961), are of an elegant and dignified form, fully demonstrating the level and style of Dongyang wood carving at that time. At the beginning of the 20th century, Dongyang wood carving began to shift from folk architecture and furniture decoration to the production of crafts for export. Traditional Dongyang wood carving is ornamental carving, dominated by plane relief; its types include thin relief, shallow relief, deep relief, high relief, multi-layer stacked relief, openwork double-sided carving, saw-cut openwork, full-ground carving, colored-wood inlay carving, and round-log relief — rich in layering yet retaining the basic character of plane decoration. Its coloring is light and clear, with no dark lacquer applied, preserving the natural grain and color of the wood; of an elegant style, it is known as 'white wood carving' (baimu diao). Dongyang wood carving selects its materials strictly, mostly using basswood, white peach wood, camphor wood, and ginkgo wood. Its craft falls into two categories — freehand carving without a drawn design and carving after a drawn design — both emphasizing originality and 'painterliness', and both of high artistic value. In the past twenty years, people's lives have changed enormously; traditional wood carving is no longer used to decorate modern buildings, and Dongyang wood carving's consummate and exquisite manual skill, ingenious and lively conceptions, and rich traditional content have lost the environment on which they depended, gradually declining. Young people today find it hard to devote themselves wholeheartedly to traditional techniques, so there has emerged a phenomenon of practitioners with unrefined skills and widespread attrition. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Suyong Hall and the thousand-work bed": Ming and Qing halls such as Suyong and Yijing survive with the thousand-work bed and bridal sets of furniture. "White wood carving": Plane relief in many depths, left unpainted to show the natural grain, earned it the name white wood carving. "The Renyi factory": Opened in Hangzhou in 1914, Renyi was the earliest workshop, later extending to Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore. "Feng Wentu's thirteen techniques": Feng Wentu created half-round, self-shaped and bark carving and was first to codify thirteen Dongyang techniques.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

National representative bearer of Dongyang Wood Carving, a fifth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project.

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. Huang Xiaoming · National Representative Bearer Archive