Guohuayanliao Making Craftsmanship
01 · Historical Records
Since the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Suzhou Wu School of painting has produced a succession of celebrated masters, increasing the demand for traditional Chinese painting pigments.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Jiang Sixu Tang painting pigments and ink-paste for calligraphy and painting of Suzhou are traditional cultural articles with a distinct Chinese national style, enjoying a special prestige among China's 'four treasures' of the scholar's studio. Toward the end of the Ming and the beginning of the Qing, a Jiang-family shop called 'Sixu Tang' making traditional pigments opened at Duting Bridge by the Changmen gate. Because of its complete range, careful selection of materials, fine grinding and washing, and excellent manufacture, many pigments used in celebrated extant masterpieces by modern famous painters such as Ren Bonian, Wu Changshuo, Xu Beihong, and Qi Baishi came from the mortars of Jiang Sixu Tang. The raw materials for Jiang Sixu Tang painting pigments fall into five major categories: mineral, vegetable, animal, gold-and-silver, and chemical-synthetic. The different materials call for different manufacturing methods: some must be pounded and ground, some soaked, some reduced to their essence, and some only require skimming the floating cream. Even for the same material, because of superior and inferior grades, the artisan must select carefully; the production process then comprises more than a dozen steps—crushing, water-flotation, grinding, gluing, settling, foot-removal, boiling, spreading into paste, cutting the paste, cold-drying, weighing, and packaging—making the work fairly complex. Jiang Sixu Tang painting pigments are characterised by bright and pure colour, a smooth lustre, a fineness like dust, instant dissolution in water, easy blending with ink, good adherence to paper, resistance to flaking through repeated mounting, and lasting colour that does not change. The ink-paste for calligraphy and painting, for its part, is characterised by not weeping oil, not clogging the seal, resisting sunlight, and a dignified tone. Most of its craft relies on handwork, making it a distinctive manual manufacturing technique.
Process-Step Record
Even for the same material, because of superior and inferior grades, the artisan must select carefully; the production process then comprises more than a dozen steps—crushing, water-flotation, grinding, gluing, settling, foot-removal, boiling, spreading into paste, cutting the paste, cold-drying, weighing, and packaging—making the work fairly complex.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The craft of making painting pigments is rooted in the Duting Bridge area by the Changmen gate in Suzhou, where the Jiang-family Sixu Tang opened its shop at the end of the Ming and the beginning of the Qing, taking over the colouring of the Wu School's celebrated paintings through careful material selection and fine grinding and washing. The pigments are divided into five lines—mineral, vegetable, animal, gold-and-silver, and chemical-synthetic—and the process varies with the material: mineral colours must be pounded and ground, vegetable colours soaked, and the depth of grinding and washing directly determines the hue.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Qiu Qingnian (per the official archive of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born March 1944, from Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province. A representative inheritor of the fifth national-level batch of the Making Craft of Painting Pigments (Jiang Sixu Tang Painting Pigment Making Craft), a national intangible cultural heritage item. A manufacturing technician of Jiang Sixu Tang painting pigments. He has long been engaged in the research, design, and production of traditional painting pigments and ink-paste. He has mastered all the manual techniques of painting pigments such as mirror-finish eight-treasure ink-paste. He developed a non-fading frost-green pigment, bright and clear in colour, lasting and unchanging, resistant to flaking through repeated mounting, and stable in storage for a thousand years. He published the book 'Research on Traditional Chinese Painting Pigments.' He has taken on several disciples. He has consistently given knowledge lectures for art academies, calligraphy and painting associations, seal-engraving associations, temples, primary and secondary schools, and other institutions across the country. He was engaged by the Central Academy of Fine Arts as an academic advisor to its traditional printmaking department. The brocade-box set of Chinese painting pigments he developed won an excellence award at the Chinese Folk Art Exposition organised by the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Chouqingnian 05-2883
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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