Dongyang Wood Carving
01 · Historical Records
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 · Core Techniques & Process
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.
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.
Hundred Birds and Splendid China
Lu Guangzheng made over four hundred works; his Hundred Birds and Splendid China hang in the Great Hall of the People.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
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.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Dongyang wood carving has numerous schools, with family inheritance and master-apprentice inheritance as its main modes of transmission; its present principal inheritors include Lu Guangzheng and others. Faced with the endangered techniques of Dongyang wood carving, rescue and protection must be carried out as soon as possible. Lu Guangzheng (record from the official file of an associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in 1945, from Dongyang, Zhejiang. Representative inheritor of Dongyang wood carving, a first-batch national-level intangible cultural heritage project; master of Chinese arts and crafts. In 1965 he pursued further study at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts; afterwards he was in charge of design work at the research institute of the Dongyang Wood Carving General Factory, and in 1985 he became director of the Dongyang Wood Carving General Factory and concurrently principal of the Dongyang Wood Carving Technical School. Lu Guangzheng has diligently pursued the art of wood carving for more than forty years, mastering many carving techniques; he excels at the overall and figurative design of architectural wood decoration, and changed the historic problem that Dongyang wood carving could not produce large-scale works. He created more than four hundred artistic treasures on various themes, winning high acclaim at home and abroad. His representative works Birds Paying Homage to the Phoenix (Bai Niao Chao Feng) and Splendid China (Jinxiu Zhonghua) are displayed in the Zhejiang Hall of the Great Hall of the People, and Three Heroes Battling Lu Bu (San Ying Zhan Lu Bu) is held in the collection of the China National Museum of Arts and Crafts. Feng Wentu (record from the official file of an associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in 1944, from Dongyang, Zhejiang. Master of Chinese arts and crafts. While inheriting traditional techniques, Feng Wentu emphasized innovation and development, originating a variety of techniques and forms suited to the style of the times, including 'half-round carving' (banyuan diao), 'self-form wood carving' (zixing mu diao), 'bark-cell carving' (shupi bao diao), and 'root-stone carving' (genshi diao). Feng Wentu excels at figure and animal carving; the decorative components of ancient architecture that he carves are rich in layering, and their content mostly reflects local customs and conditions. Representative works include: The Eighth Sister Yang Touring in Spring (Yang Ba Jie You Chun), The Heroic Spirit of China (Huaxia Xiong Feng), and Spring in Xishuangbanna (Xishuangbanna de Chuntian), among others. Representative inheritor of Dongyang wood carving, a first-batch national-level intangible cultural heritage project. He was the first to make a theoretical summation of the thirteen carving techniques of Dongyang wood carving, and has trained a large number of representative inheritors of wood carving.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Lu Guangzheng 01-0103
- Feng Wentu 01-0104
- Wu Chuwei 04-1789
- Huang Xiaoming 05-2615
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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