Bamboo Carving

Bamboo, pine and plum, which called "three good friends in the cold years", are always popular among the people, including the poets, artists and handicraftsmen, etc. The common bamboo gives us a super beauty sense. Therefore, collecting the arts of bamboo carving is the hobby of Chinese people since long time ago.

It was few bamboo carving came down before the Ming dynasty. But since the middle of Ming dynasty, the bamboo carving became a professional type in the industrial arts and more and more artists began this work, which made the character changed from its practice to a kind of artwork for people's enjoying. Jiading and Jinling area which teemed of bamboo were the two centers of the bamboo carving arts in the Ming and Qing dynasties. The Jiading faction has the representative of Zhuhe, Zhuying, Zhu Zhuizheng, three generations. They were all good at the techniques of painting, embossment and round carving, among which the embossment consists of bass and high embossment. They had high culture with the crambo skill, painting, calligraphy and seal cutting technique, so all of the characters on the bamboo were carved vividly. Under the effort of Family Zhu, Jiading faction became the biggest branch in the world at that period with another outstanding person such as Hou Xiaozeng, Shen Dasheng, Wang Yongfang, Wang Zhiyu, Wangzhi, Wu Zhifan, Shi Tianzhang, Zhoupo and Gu Zhangyu. Jinling faction had another style, which paid no attention to the exquisite carvings, pursued the nature taste with little cut and polish. The main technique is the concave carving in the bamboo, which the excellence was more sentiment could be embodied with not only the line, but also the side inlay on the carving of the landscape. Jinling faction set up in the middle of Ming dynasty, Pu Zongqian was the founder. Actually, it was extremely pity that no one of his relation continued the artworks after he died.

The other two carving of "peel then carve" and "carve then peel" appeared on the basis of the Ming dynasty. The first one was saw the bamboo into bamboo tube, remove the burl and the green surface, then glue and inlay the wood and bamboo after cooking, basking and pressing, finally, polish the surface and carve the pattern on it. Oppositely, the second one was that keep the green surface to carve the pattern on it, then remove the surface out of the pattern, the real bamboo body appeared. It set up in the middle of Qing dynasty.