Copper Carving Craftsmanship
01 · Historical Records
Hangzhou copper carving is a continuation of ancient bronze-casting; it developed substantially during the Wuyue and Southern Song periods and reached its zenith in the Qing dynasty, with a history of over a thousand years to the present day. When the Wuyue and Southern Song dynasties established their capitals in Hangzhou, large numbers of copper artisans moved there with them, and Hangzhou thereby became a major production center of copper handicrafts in the country. After the Tongzhi reign of the Qing dynasty, the Hangzhou copper-carving craft represented by "Zhufu Copper Art" (Zhufu Tongyi) gradually matured; passed down through four generations to the present, it has a history of about 130 years.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Datong Lane (Datongxiang) was where the copper workshops were concentrated, and the place name has been preserved down to the present. Hangzhou copper carving perfectly combines traditional art with modern social life and has won high praise from all quarters. Its products cover architecture, sculpture, calligraphy, murals, interior decoration and other fields, with an extremely broad scope. By category, Hangzhou copper carving mainly includes copper pagodas, copper halls, copper bridges, copper boats, copper gates, copper statues and the like. In production, Hangzhou copper carving employs traditional techniques such as openwork piercing, layered inlay, annealing, patina-making, lost-wax casting and point engraving, enabling the finished works to achieve a perfect artistic effect. Built with these traditional techniques, the Hangzhou Leifeng Pagoda, the copper hall of Lingyin Temple, the pagoda of Tianning Temple in Changzhou, Jiangsu, the Mahavira Hall of Mount Emei in Sichuan, the Jintan Patriarch Temple in Taichung City, Taiwan, as well as the large copper reliefs "Buddha Subduing Demons" and "Xuanzang Seeking the Dharma," are all representative works of Hangzhou copper carving and possess very high artistic value. As a variant of China's bronze ware, Hangzhou copper carving represents the advanced level of Chinese copper art; this precious historical heritage cannot be replaced by modern technology. At present, because the techniques are difficult to master and apprenticeships take a long time, young people are unwilling to learn the traditional copper-carving craft. With the changes in social life, daily-use items such as copper kettles have gradually been eliminated, and the practice of copper-carving production has fallen into stagnation. Moreover, due to a lack of scientific research on this fine traditional handicraft, only a few of a series of techniques such as gold inlay and layered inlay can continue to survive.
Lost-wax casting
A wax model is encased in clay; the wax is melted out and the cavity filled with bronze.
Inlay and openwork
Layers of differently coloured copper are built up and inlaid; openwork cut into panels forms the latticed windows of towers and halls.
Patination
The surface is chemically aged to a green patina, its depth set by the length and number of applications.
Annealing and pecking
Repeated heating and hammering relieves the metal's brittleness; pecking finishes the fine calligraphic detail.
Multi-stage etching and imitation casting
A modern etching process layered onto traditional casting to reproduce lost antiquities.
Building bronze pagodas and halls
From hammering individual members through assembly and riveting to finishing, a pagoda runs to hundreds of parts.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Hangzhou copper carving gathered its artisans around Datong Lane within the city; the lane name survives to this day and remains an external landmark for identifying the concentration of the copper trade. In terms of transmission, two distinct paths coexist on the same street: one is the architectural copper work of the Zhufu Copper Art lineage, passed down through four generations, focused on the construction of pagodas, halls and gate-houses, on a large scale and with long cycles; the other is the object-oriented copper work of various small workshops, producing mostly display pieces and architectural components such as copper pagodas, copper halls, copper bridges, copper boats, copper gates and copper statues, smaller in size and with shorter delivery times. The Leifeng Pagoda, the copper hall of Lingyin Temple, the Tianning Temple pagoda and the Mahavira Hall of Mount Emei follow the construction-oriented path, while the large copper reliefs "Buddha Subduing Demons" and "Xuanzang Seeking the Dharma" came from the object workshops; the two kinds of work do not communicate with each other.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The Hangzhou copper-carving craft is already in an endangered state, and it is extremely necessary to protect and rescue it. Zhu Bingren (per the official archive of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in November 1944, from Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province. Representative inheritor of the copper-carving craft, a national-level intangible cultural heritage project in its third batch. Over the decades he has diligently studied the family's handed-down craft and actively explored modern technology, developing sixty-two national patents including multi-layered forged-and-engraved copper reliefs, multi-layer etched imitation-cast copper, purple-gold engraved copper carving, and high-contrast ground-pattern techniques. He pioneered molten-copper art, and his works are refreshing and novel. He rebuilt and undertook the construction of more than a hundred copper buildings or copper decorations, including the Leifeng Pagoda, the Lingyin copper hall, the summit of Mount Emei, and the Wuxi Fan Palace. His works have been collected by the National Museum of China, the Great Hall of the People, the Palace Museum, the building of the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee, the Xuanzang Memorial Hall in India, the University of California in the United States, and others. In 2008, together with his son Zhu Junmin, a Zhejiang arts-and-crafts master, he founded the brand "Zhu Bingren · Copper," dedicated to letting copper culture coexist with people's lifestyles. He is a China arts-and-crafts master, the fourth-generation successor of Zhufu Copper Art, a researcher at the Chinese National Academy of Arts, a member of the Xiling Seal Society, and a recipient of the National May 1 Labor Medal.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Zhu Bingren 03-1377
- Zhu Junmin
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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