Stone Carving
01 · Historical Records
The turquoise mining belt in northwestern Hubei was worked from very early times, and the documented history of turquoise carving can be traced back to the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period more than three thousand years ago; through successive dynasties the stone was used as ornament jade and tribute jade. In modern times the craft has been developed in concentrated fashion in arts and crafts enterprises in Wuhan, Shiyan and other places, and the Hubei Research Institute of Arts and Crafts has served as the principal center of creation and transmission.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Turquoise carving is a traditional carving art that uses turquoise, a specialty of northwestern Hubei, as its raw material, applying distinctive stone-reading design and demanding traditional techniques to finely carve a wide range of artistic forms and exquisite objects. Its documented history can be traced back to the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period more than 3,000 years ago. Turquoise carving carries a strong Jingchu cultural style; both its design and its processing are quite distinctive, and the difficulty is considerable. Its craft process includes the creative maxim of "one reading of the stone outweighs nine labors," shaping the design to suit the material's natural qualities. Through the painstaking efforts of several generations of artisans, the difficult problems in the carving design and fabrication of turquoise have been gradually resolved, and the craft has been continually innovated, refined and raised to higher levels in the course of its development. Turquoise carving employs a great variety of techniques, with three-dimensional carving as the mainstay, combined with high relief, low relief, openwork carving, incised and raised line work and others; "clever carving" that exploits the stone's natural colors has become one of its signature techniques. Its works cover many categories, including figures, flowers, flower-and-bird subjects, animals, mountain rockeries and vessels. Its carving tools are quite distinctive: commonly used are blade discs (tuo pian) of different diameters, various jujube-pit and rod-shaped tools for deep modelling and the finest details, needle points and hook blades for openwork, and specially prepared Sichuan wax, which together enable the carver to deal effectively with variations in the hardness of the jade material during carving. Historically, turquoise carving was transmitted mainly through the master-apprentice system. Turquoise carving is a traditional handicraft unique to China; it carries forward several thousand years of Chinese civilization and possesses important historical and cultural value. As the craft has been continually innovated, refined, matured and improved in the course of its development, the related mining, production, processing, trade and art collecting have grown ever more prosperous, contributing to the sustainable social and economic development of the local area.
Archival Record of Process Steps
Its craft process includes the creative step of "one reading of the stone outweighs nine labors," shaping the design to suit the material's natural qualities.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
It is now distributed mainly in Wuhan, Shiyan, Xiangyang and Jingzhou in Hubei. Turquoise resembles a pine cone, varies endlessly and comes in many colors, and is streaked with a web of iron lines; when designing, the artist must therefore make full use of the natural form of the rough stone — its high points, broad areas and thickness — carefully weighing each piece, mastering its structure, grain and color in order to work out the form, and cutting away flaws and cracks.
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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Turquoise resembles a pine cone, comes in many colors and is commonly streaked with a web of iron lines; the blocks are small and the tonal range complex, so a single work often takes several months or even a year or more to complete, and few artisans master the full set of techniques. Historically turquoise carving was transmitted mainly through the master-apprentice system, and the craft has circulated between Wuhan and Shiyan. Today, relying on arts and crafts research institutes and producing enterprises, the priority is to preserve the stone-reading design stage — "one reading of the stone outweighs nine labors" — and the clever-carving approach built on three-dimensional carving combined with high relief, low relief, openwork carving, incised and raised line work, while the mining, processing and art-collecting markets are used to sustain employment in the craft.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Qian Gaochao 03-1272
- Gongbaocaidan 03-1273
- Wang Guoqing 05-2657
- Cao Mingzhu 05-2658
- Tang Jun 05-2659
- Shi Yongen 05-2660
- Yang Jianming 05-2661
- Bao Wuwen 05-2662
- Yuan Jiaqi
- Liu Nengfeng
- Wang Shilin
- Ye Meisan
- Yin Guoan
- Hu Yang
- Liangbinggong
- Caidanjia
- Chen Jiwu
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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