Wood Carving

Ⅶ-58Traditional Fine ArtsTongshan, HubeiBatch 4 (2014)Extension Item

01 · Historical Records

Tongshan wood carving has a long history; from the Wei and Jin dynasties through the Song and Yuan periods, with the introduction of Taoist and Buddhist culture, its works were predominantly religious.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Tongshan wood carving is one of the schools of Chinese folk wood carving, circulating in Tongshan County in southeastern Hubei Province and the surrounding area. Tongshan County lies at the junction of Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi provinces, anciently part of the land of the "Three Miao"; its territory is densely forested and produces many kinds of timber, providing abundant resources for wood carving. Tongshan wood carving's technical system is built on a carving method centered on relief together with techniques that exploit the wood's own grain and color; its compositions are full and bold, its layers rich and fine, its images realistic and lifelike, its workmanship meticulous, and its style fresh and elegant. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, Han opera and tea-picking opera drove the development of Tongshan wood carving: opera stories and characters began to appear as wood-carving subjects, deep relief and multi-layered openwork techniques emerged, and the carving skill matured steadily. The principal process steps of Tongshan wood carving are drafting the design, preparing the material, transferring the drawing, rough blocking out, fine carving, and sanding and waxing. The carving subjects are rich, drawing chiefly on traditional themes beloved by ordinary people, with a strong local flavor and regional character — "pictures full of drama, never tiring of the sight." Its works are grounded in practicality and suitability, rooted in the needs of ordinary people, and fall into three main categories: architectural decorative carving, furniture carving, and wood-carving ornaments and religious objects. In carving technique it borrows scattered-perspective composition, with flat relief as the mainstay, coordinated with line carving, incised carving, relief, openwork, openwork relief, round carving and double-sided openwork carving; it combines line and plane, retains flat areas appropriately, leaves small patches of ground, and stacks layers one by one for a lofty, layered effect, bringing out the grain and streaks of the wood. The forms are vivid and simply archaic, the cutting broad and forceful, the lines fluent, the layers rich and fine; near and distant views overlap without becoming muddled, and the theme stands out clearly. Tongshan wood carving reflects the level of productive development in different historical periods and mirrors the social relations and folk customs of the people of Tongshan; it is the accumulated deposit of the cultural ideas and aesthetic tastes of generations of Tongshan wood-carving artisans, records the local history, culture and ancient, simple folkways, and has considerable social and cultural value.

Archival Record of Process Steps

The principal process steps of Tongshan wood carving are drafting the design, preparing the material, transferring the drawing, rough blocking out, fine carving, and sanding and waxing.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

Its subjects include the traditional opera stories of the local Han opera and tea-picking opera, as well as folk literature such as novelized romances, myth and legend; there are themes depicting scenes of daily life, such as the fisherman, woodcutter, plowman and reader, landscapes, and love between men and women; and there are symbolic patterns rich in auspicious meaning.

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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

Tongshan wood carving is transmitted mainly through family inheritance and the master-apprentice system, represented by the Ye and Xiong family lineages; it has now been passed down through five generations. Today the locality has intensified its protection of Tongshan wood carving, conducting productive protection centered on wood-carving factories. Xiong Yinghua (official archival record of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in August 1951, a native of Tongshan County, Hubei Province. He has taken part in the restoration or carving of wood decoration for more than twenty timber dwellings and ancestral halls, including the Xiong family ancestral hall in Tongshan, the Cheng family old house and the archaic-style dwellings of Jiugong Mountain. His work Spring Leaps the Carp was exhibited at the "Sino-Russian Friendship, Jingchu Spirit" Hubei intangible cultural heritage exhibition held in Moscow, Russia, and his research work Tongshan Wood Carving was included in the Hubei intangible cultural heritage series. He has long taught apprentices at the Tongshan wood-carving base and has trained more than sixty pupils to date. He is a representative inheritor of wood carving (Tongshan wood carving), a national-level intangible cultural heritage item of the fifth batch. In 1996 he founded the Xiong Wood Carving Factory in Jiugongshan town, where he has both trained inheritors and concentrated on studying the carving techniques of the Tongshan display cabinet (kanchu).

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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