Huangyang Wood Carving
01 · Historical Records
Shanghai-style (Haipai) boxwood carving is a carving art that arose in the period when Shanghai opened as a treaty port; after more than a century of development it gradually formed a mature Haipai wood-carving artistic style. In the 1920s and 1930s, Xu Baoqing, who had studied at the Tushanwan Craft Institute, tempered his art over more than seventy years and developed a Haipai boxwood carving system with regional characteristics; he and his disciples thereby became the leading figures of Haipai boxwood carving. The continuation of the craft has relied on the community and the arts-and-crafts institutions around Changqiao, transmitted through master-apprentice instruction and training classes.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Haipai boxwood carving is a carving art that arose in the period when Shanghai opened as a treaty port; after more than a century of development it gradually formed a mature Haipai wood-carving artistic style. In the 1920s and 1930s, Xu Baoqing, who had studied at the Tushanwan Craft Institute, tempered his art over more than seventy years and developed a Haipai boxwood carving system with regional characteristics; he and his disciples thereby became the leading figures of Haipai boxwood carving. Haipai boxwood carving combines Western realist sculptural techniques with traditional Chinese carving methods, giving equal weight to traditional and realistic contemporary subjects, emphasizing the expression of meaning, and excelling at capturing vivid moments from real life, reflecting a rich flavor of daily life and national culture. Haipai boxwood carving has rich artistic substance and extremely high cultural refinement, and can provide an important reference for the study of Haipai culture.
Xu Baoqing at Tushanwan
Trained at the Tushanwan orphanage workshops, Xu Baoqing forged a distinct Shanghai style over seventy years.
East meets West
Western realist modelling is married to Chinese carving technique, with traditional and contemporary subjects given equal weight.
Treaty-port origins
The craft arose in treaty-port Shanghai and matured over more than a century into a recognisable local style.
Slow-growing boxwood
Boxwood is tough, fine-grained and slow-growing, hence the saying that a thousand years will not make it a cypress.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Haipai boxwood carving combines Western realist sculptural techniques with traditional Chinese carving methods, giving equal weight to traditional and realistic contemporary subjects, emphasizing the expression of meaning, and excelling at capturing vivid moments from real life, reflecting a rich flavor of daily life and national culture. The Changqiao Subdistrict Office of the People's Government of Xuhui District, Shanghai, is the protecting unit; it uses community transmission, exhibitions of works, and school and community courses to broaden the reach of the craft. Its works possess both the warm subtlety of Chinese folk carving and an observational perspective on modern urban life, and can provide an important reference for the study of Haipai culture. Haipai boxwood carving takes its material from boxwood produced around Huangpi in Hubei; the wood is fine-grained, densely textured, and of moderate hardness, well suited to rendering the skin of figures and the folds of their clothing. Because boxwood grows extremely slowly, there is a saying that 'even a thousand-year boxwood can hardly match a cypress'; large works are therefore mostly assembled into form by splicing, mortise-and-tenon joining, and inlay techniques, and the finished pieces are mostly used for desk-top display and as architectural decorative fittings. Since Xu Baoqing began taking disciples and teaching his art in the Changqiao area, a lineage of transmission has formed, passing from master to apprentice and continuing through family learning; the style of the works has gradually shifted from the early realist modeling that fused Chinese and Western elements toward subject expression centered on figures and scenes of life.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Yueqing Huangyang Wood Carving.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
In recent years, under the impact of the market economy, the purely handmade Haipai boxwood carving has been impeded in its development because of its long production cycles and low economic returns, and a crisis of transmission has emerged; there is an urgent need for relevant parties to adopt protective measures to help it emerge from its trough and flourish anew.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Wang Duchun 03-1246
- Gao Gongbo 04-1788
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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