Wuhu Tiehua Forging Craftsmanship
01 · Historical Records
Iron picture (tiehua) began in the Kangxi reign of the Qing dynasty, developed through the mutual spurring of the Wuhu ironworker Tang Peng and the Wuhu painter Xiao Yuncong, and has a history of more than 340 years to date. According to the "Preface to the Song of the Iron Picture" recorded in the Wuhu County Gazetteer of the Qing dynasty: "Tang Tianchi lived next door to a painter, and every day he watched the painter's ink-splashing technique, until the painter drove him away in anger." Wuhu iron picture derives from Chinese painting, bearing the artistic characteristics of the Xin'an school of painting — lean, forceful, and economical brushwork with a cold, austere, and rugged style — and is produced entirely by hand forging. In 1958, Mao Zedong and Liu Shaoqi successively viewed Wuhu iron pictures at the Anhui Provincial Museum, praising the exquisite artistry of iron picture and calling for it to be further developed. Between 1959 and 1960, the veteran artist Chu Yanqing and several of his disciples produced the large iron pictures Welcoming Guests Pine and Meishan Reservoir, together with the iron calligraphy "Qinyuan Spring — Snow," which were displayed in the Great Hall of the People.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Wuhu has had a flourishing iron industry since ancient times and enjoys the reputation that "when iron reaches Wuhu it turns to steel of itself"; the craft of making Wuhu iron pictures was developed on this foundation. Wuhu iron pictures take the hammer for a brush and forge iron into painting — of devilish workmanship and natural spirit, consummate in skill. Peng, stung by the humiliation, was roused to effort, and forged iron into mountain-and-water screens, with cold sandbars and lonely islets, all full of vivid life. It is made with wrought iron as the raw material; after heating in the red-hot furnace, it is worked by forging, drilling, lifting, pressing, welding, filing, chiseling, and other techniques. Wuhu iron pictures possess both the spirit of Chinese painting and the three-dimensional beauty of sculpture, while also expressing the suppleness and ductility of iron and steel; they are works of art of a uniquely distinctive style. Wuhu iron pictures have successively taken part in the Paris World Exposition in France and the Budapest Plastic Arts Exhibition in Hungary, and have been exhibited in more than twenty countries and regions including Japan, Kuwait, Italy, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and Hong Kong. Through more than three hundred years of transmission and development, Wuhu iron pictures have gone beyond the traditional forms of small-scale scenery, painted lamps, and screens to create such new varieties as three-dimensional iron pictures, bonsai iron pictures, porcelain-plate iron pictures, and gilded iron pictures; they have formed five major series — table screens, murals, calligraphy, decorative furnishings, and gifts — comprising more than two hundred varieties, and stand apart in the art world with their distinctive style and charm.
Hammer for brush
Hammer in hand, the picture is forged in hot iron: the eye's image leads the hammer through heating, striking, drilling and joining.
Iron made in Wuhu
Wuhu's long iron trade, where it was said that iron came into its own steel here, supplied the metal for the art.
Painting and sculpture
A landscape panel is laid out in iron plates and then hammered into depth, distance given by the density of the marks.
Workshops on the water
The old workshops by the lake and Iron-Picture Street still show the layout of furnaces set beside water.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Wuhu has had a flourishing iron industry since ancient times and enjoys the reputation that "when iron reaches Wuhu it turns to steel of itself"; the craft of making Wuhu iron pictures was developed on this foundation. The technique is concentrated in the iron-picture workshops and artists' families of Wuhu City and the surrounding counties, transmitted chiefly within families down the generations; the sites of the old workshops in the Jing Lake and Iron Picture Street area can still be recognized for their layout of forges set beside the water. Apothecary shops of the Beijing Tongrentang type adjoining iron-picture shops also once formed a feature of the local street scene.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
However, the profit drive of today's market economy continually affects the quality of iron pictures, and with a generational break appearing among iron-picture artists who combine accomplishment in Chinese painting with literary cultivation, Wuhu iron pictures face the predicament of deformation and loss of the technique, and urgently need support and assistance from the state. Yang Guanghui (official archive record of an associated inheritor): Male, of the Han ethnic group, born in 1932, a native of Wuhu, Anhui. Representative inheritor of the Wuhu Iron Picture Forging Craft, a project in the first batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage, and a Master of Chinese Arts and Crafts. He has practiced the art for more than fifty years, taking part in the creation of the iron picture "Welcoming Guests Pine" for the Great Hall of the People and six other works; on the basis of inheriting the traditional craft, he has continually explored and boldly innovated, further promoting the art of iron picture. Yang Guanghui's iron pictures are of a simple and dignified style, stressing freehand conception and the conveyance of spirit, and endow iron picture with a lasting artistic mood. His representative works include Galloping Horse, Welcoming Guests Pine, and Ancient Phoenix, among others. He has actively taken on apprentices, and dozens of his disciples have now become technical backbone in the iron-picture industry. Chu Jinxia (official archive record of an associated inheritor): Female, of the Han ethnic group, born in November 1945, a native of Zongyang County, Anhui Province. Representative inheritor of the Wuhu Iron Picture Forging Craft, a project in the fourth batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage. A Wuhu iron-picture forging technician and a Master of Chinese Arts and Crafts. She took part in the creation of the six giant iron pictures for the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, including Welcoming Guests Pine, Wonders of Huangshan, and Ode to China. She established the Chu Jinxia Iron Picture Studio, actively takes on apprentices, and dozens of her disciples have become a vital force in the iron-picture industry. She has introduced many innovations in the iron-picture rendering of figures, flowers and birds, and landscapes; her original quenching technique exploits the color difference of the instant of temperature change to give iron pictures an artistic effect of "ink dividing into five colors," for which she received the China Arts and Crafts Cultural Creativity Gold Award, presented at the China (Shenzhen) International Cultural Industries Fair, among others.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Yang Guanghui 01-0159
- Chu Jinxia 04-1841
- Zhang Jiakang
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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