Jiaxing Zaotouhua
01 · Historical Records
However, judging from the transmission history of Zhao Xiangsong, an eighth-generation bearer of a Jiaxing stove-head painting family, Jiaxing stove-head painting had already been circulating by at least the middle of the Qing dynasty. Jiaxing stove painting has a broad popular base. Before the 1980s Jiaxing had 1,112 villages, and every village had two or three stove-painting artists (masons). They were born and raised in the countryside, and their craft was passed from father to son and from master to apprentice.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Stove painting, also called "stove-head painting" (zaotou hua) or "stove-wall painting" (zaobi hua), refers to the various auspicious patterns and written motifs that folk artists paint with soot, watercolor, and pastel pigments on the firewood stoves of rural households. It is a typical rustic art of the Jiangnan region. Jiaxing stove painting has a distinctive style of its own, and it has influenced related artistic styles in the neighboring areas of Hangzhou, Huzhou, and Shaoxing, as well as Jinshan and Fengjing in Shanghai, and Wujiang and Rudong in Jiangsu. In the Jiaxing countryside, the custom of using firewood stoves is still preserved today. When a farming household builds a new dwelling, it must build a new stove in the kitchen. The stove must be built by a mason with blue brick, paper fiber, and lime on a day chosen by the household, and the stove painting on the stove is likewise painted by the mason. For a long time, stove painting was regarded as a folk art unfit for refined occasions, and it is rarely recorded in documents. Jiaxing stove painting is carried out on the stove as its carrier. On a stove wall of roughly three square meters, the folk artist draws in accordance with the stove and shapes the forms to fit it, usually combining several pictures on a single stove so that its content is richer and more colorful. The painting must be done while the stove wall is half dry and half damp. Generally the pigments are mixed with white liquor (baijiu); the modeling is done mainly with black outlines, filled in with red, blue, white, black, and other colors.
Many scenes on three square metres
Working on about three square metres of stove wall, the painter fits many scenes to the stove's shape to enrich the whole.
Painted while half dry
The mason builds the stove of grey brick, paper fibre and lime, then paints it while the wall is half dry, mixing pigment with spirits and outlining in black.
Soot, watercolour and powder pigment
Called stove-head or stove-wall painting, it uses soot, watercolour and powder pigments for auspicious motifs and characters, a classic Jiangnan folk art.
Painters in 1,112 villages
Before the 1980s Jiaxing's 1,112 villages each had two or three stove painters; the eighth-generation line of Zhao Xiangsong suggests the art reaches back to the mid-Qing.
Harvest motifs and auspicious words
Themes of abundant grain and livestock and prosperous households are paired with the characters for fortune, emolument, longevity and joy.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Its subjects and content are for the most part abundant harvests of the five grains, thriving domestic animals, festivity and abundance, and peaches and plums filling the sky, accompanied by the auspicious words fortune (fu), emolument (lu), longevity (shou), and joy (xi), reflecting the local people's aesthetic ideas and tastes in life. The influence of Jiaxing stove painting extends throughout the neighboring areas of Hangzhou, Huzhou, and Shaoxing, as well as Jinshan and Fengjing in Shanghai, and Wujiang and Rudong in Jiangsu. Masons in different places influenced one another as they moved about for work, so that the subjects, layout, and coloring of stove painting share a common general scheme while each carries its own local rustic character.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Today, with the evolution of rural ways of life, stoves and ranges in the countryside are mostly made of cement and ceramic tile and are no longer painted with stove-head paintings. At the same time, the older generation of stove-head painting artists has died one after another, and the folk artists engaged in stove painting are steadily decreasing. The development of Jiaxing stove-head painting faces a serious crisis, and vigorous protective measures are needed.
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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