Stone Carving

Ⅶ-56Traditional Fine ArtsFuping, ShaanxiBatch 4 (2014)Extension Item

01 · Historical Records

Stone-carving remains and county gazetteers from the Tang dynasty through the Ming and Qing dynasties can attest to the development of Fuping stone carving. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the types of carving were diverse, developing in a popular and practical direction. Since the 1990s, under the leadership of veteran artisans, the craft of Fuping stone carving has undergone a revival.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Fuping stone carving is a traditional stone-carving art that uses stone quarried from the northern mountains of Fuping County, Shaanxi Province, as its principal raw material, and employs multiple carving techniques including line carving, relief carving, and round carving. Fuping County lies at the meeting point of the Guanzhong Plain and the Loess Plateau of northern Shaanxi. Its carving stone comes from the area of the Qiaoshan mountain range in the north, where limestone, marble, and other mineral deposits are abundant. The stone is ink-dark in color; in ancient times it was called moyu ('black jade') and qingshi ('chimestone'), and it is also known as qingshi ('bluestone'). It has long been prized as a first-class carving material. Fuping black jade has a dense, compact structure; even the finest carved lines can be rendered clearly and completely. It resists corrosion and weathering, and can pass through a thousand years without changing color. Within Fuping County there are numerous stone-carving artifacts and remains. County gazetteers record that the Yongxi Buddha image of the Northern Wei dynasty is the earliest extant Fuping stone carving with a definite date, with a history of more than one thousand years. Fuping stone carving has a Chinese national character, humanism, and local distinctiveness. The main carving techniques fall into three categories — round carving, relief carving, and line carving. Its process steps are mainly stone quarrying, rough blocking, and carving; different types of carving involve somewhat different steps. The application and variation of certain technical elements — 'yin and yang' treatment and knife methods — depend entirely on the master's oral transmission and the artisan's painstaking accumulation, summed up as a body of experience covering tool preparation, stone breaking, rough blocking, transferring the design, and carving. Owing to the superior quality of its raw material, the exquisiteness of its works, and the distinctive character of its technique, Fuping stone carving has had wide influence and spread throughout the country. Fuping stone carving is a witness to art and history, and an important carrier of Chinese culture.

Archival Record of Process Steps

The main carving techniques fall into three categories — round carving, relief carving, and line carving. Its process steps are mainly stone quarrying, rough blocking, and carving; different types of carving involve somewhat different steps.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

By subject and function it can be divided into tomb carving, folk-custom carving, ancestral-temple carving, and commemorative carving, among others. In form it inherits the archaic simplicity, conciseness, and bold massiveness of Han and Tang stone carving, emphasizing the expression of spirit and ideals; it is especially renowned for the incising of characters on steles.

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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

The documented lineage of transmission begins in Gongli Town during the Guangxu reign of the Qing dynasty. Transmission of the craft is loose, mobile, and social in character: mostly master-to-apprentice, supplemented by family transmission. Its social and cultural value is expressed in many respects — historical, artistic, religious, educational, and economic. Protecting and transmitting Fuping stone carving is of positive significance for promoting local traditional culture and the craftsman's spirit, strengthening cultural confidence, and beautifying modern life. Yang Jianming (from the official file of the associated representative inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born November 1962, a native of Fuping County, Shaanxi Province. Born in a land of stone carving, he was influenced by his family from childhood and developed a love of stone-carving art. He has fully mastered the stone-carving methods of carving, polishing, incising, grinding, and modeling, as well as the formal conventions of stone carving for all purposes. He is especially skilled at carving steles, memorial arches, stone lions, and tombs, and at incising characters; he has also applied stone-carving technique to the fields of urban sculpture and traditional garden architecture. His works are grand and majestic in spirit, bearing the manner of the Han and Tang dynasties. Setting aside the family concept that art should not be taught outside the family, he has devoted himself to the social transmission of the craft, widely recruiting young people and personally training more than twenty apprentices, easing the crisis of a gap in skilled talent. He is a representative inheritor of Stone Carving (Fuping Stone Carving), a national-level intangible cultural heritage project of the fifth batch.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

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

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗

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