Clay Sculpture

01 · Historical Records

Dawu village in Fuyang town, Chao'an County, Chaozhou City, Guangdong Province, is known together with Yangliuqing in Tianjin and Huishan in Wuxi, Jiangsu, as one of the 'three great hometowns of clay sculpture'. The history of Fuyang clay sculpture can be traced back to the first year of the Jiaxi era of Emperor Lizong of the Southern Song (1237), more than 770 years ago. From the middle of the Qing dynasty to the early years of the Republic of China was the heyday of Dawu clay sculpture: clay-sculpture workshops were spread throughout the village, and more than a hundred clay-sculpture artisans emerged, represented by Wu Panqiang.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

The production process of Dawu clay sculpture divides into five stages: digging the clay, refining the clay, pinching the form, firing the body, and painting. The principal technical means are carving, modeling, pinching, appliquéing, incising, stamping and coloring, with the appliqué, stamping and coloring techniques closely integrated; this gives the craft its outstanding local artistic character and distinguishes it from other folk clay sculptures and from sculpture in general. The subjects of Dawu clay sculpture are drawn either from the plots of Chaozhou opera, from folk legends or chapter-novel stories, or directly from everyday life. However, this precious folk art has never developed into an industry, and under the impact of the market-economy tide its room for survival has grown ever smaller.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

The imagery of the works falls into five major categories. The first is opera figures, specifically the traditional local role types wenshen, wujing, chenjing, dafupi and wencun; the second is opera masks, children's heads, puppet heads and lantern heads; the third is portraits of real people; the fourth is images of gods and Buddhas; the fifth is children's toys, also called 'zajin' (a miscellaneous assortment), such as animals, chubby babies and carp boys. Dawu clay sculpture vividly displays the local folk customs and historical-cultural conditions and is an important object of study for the local culture of Guangdong.

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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

At present the older clay-sculpture artisans of the area are advanced in years and there is no one to succeed them; the prospects for the development of Dawu clay sculpture are not optimistic, and the relevant authorities urgently need to carry out active and effective protection work so that it can be passed on successfully. Wu Guangrang (from the official archive of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in January 1948, native of Chao'an County, Guangdong Province. At sixteen he studied sculpture and appliqué modeling under his father, and has rich experience of more than fifty years in clay-sculpture work. He has fully mastered the family-inherited clay-sculpture techniques passed down through his line — pinching the body sections, inlaying the hands, applying the garments and painted decoration — and his skills in pressing clay into sheets and pleating sheets into garments are exquisite. His works have won awards many times, and a number of his appliqué-modeling works have been collected by the National Art Museum of China, the China Agricultural Museum, the Guangdong Provincial Museum and the Guangdong Museum of Art. He actively teaches his skills, enabling Dawu clay sculpture to continue its transmission. He is a representative inheritor of clay sculpture (Dawu clay sculpture), a national-level intangible cultural heritage item of the third batch. Wu Weiqing (from the official archive of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in April 1956, native of Chaozhou City, Guangdong Province. He has practiced the art for more than forty years, devoting himself throughout to the study of traditional forms, pigments and materials. He excels in the making of traditional pigments for Dawu clay sculpture; building on the traditional colors handed down for generations and through dedicated research, he has created an original pigment formula that neither fades nor cracks over time; applying traditional painting methods, he enables works to retain their color effect for the long term. For many years he has devoted himself to collecting, organizing and researching Dawu clay-sculpture materials, actively carrying out publicization and promotion, talent training and skill transmission for the craft, and has cultivated a group of successors. He is a representative inheritor of clay sculpture (Dawu clay sculpture), a national-level intangible cultural heritage item of the fifth batch. Several of his works have won national and provincial awards and have been collected by institutions such as the National Art Museum of China; he is strongly representative and influential within the field.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:

• Yu Xianglian 01-0108
• Wang Nanxian 01-0109
• Hu Shen 01-0110
• Wang Xuefeng 01-0111
• Wu Yucheng 03-1251
• Wu Guangrang 03-1252
• Xu Xingguo 03-1253
• Yang Qihe 03-1254
• Nie Xiwei 04-1791
• Shuangyan 05-2622
• Zhu Wenqian 05-2623
• Xu Shuzhang 05-2624
• Wu Weiqing 05-2625
• Wang Dengshu 05-2626
• Hu Xinming 05-2627
• Yang Jianian 05-2628
• Liu Chengyin

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

1. Clay Sculpture (Chaoan, Guangdong) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Wu Guangrang · National Representative Bearer Archive
3. Wu Weiqing · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗