Arts and Crafts

Calligraphy and painting, the two quintessential Chinese arts, share the use of brush and ink in their execution, with brushwork first done on silk and later on paper as well. Whether the result is hung on the wall as a mounted scroll, unrolled section-by-section as a scroll on a table, or viewed as a fan or album held in the hand, both calligraphy and painting are among China’s most revered artistic traditions. The carving of jade and ivory, which are rare and precious natural materials, as well as of common stone, brick, wood, and bamboo, has bequeathed countless unique objects, many of which are featured as masterpieces in museum collections, just as they once were found in abundance in the imperial palace collections. Tourists today find replica trinkets, crude copies made with baser materials, readily available throughout the country. While both lacquerware and embroidery can be enjoyed as art, they also comprise utilitarian objects crafted for use at home. Knotting and paper cutting are decorative folk arts, handicrafts whose appeal ranges from villages to palaces. Cigarette posters, a symbol of twentieth-century modernity, and Mao memorabilia, emblems of revolutionary fervor, were mass-produced commodities that over the decades have become objects of pop art and highly prized collectibles. In recent years, Chinese authorities have highlighted the need to preserve such arts and crafts as embroidery, painting, and papercuts as noteworthy components of China’s intangible cultural heritage, which also extends to music, painting, dance, medicine, and rituals.

Scroll Paintings

Hanging scrolls and handscrolls, as well as albums and fans, are distinctive forms of Chinese painting that can be conveniently stored yet quickly made available for viewing. While Western paintings are hung flat on a wall to be enjoyed by a group or individual, those painted by Chinese artists are usually best viewed by only one or two persons, sometimes with the painting in hand. Whether hung vertically or horizontally, a hanging scroll typically has a limited theme when compared to the complex narratives possible with handscrolls, which must be manipulated to be enjoyed. With a hanging scroll, a viewer can move close to scrutinize detail or move away to grasp the full image, while a true connoisseur will only examine a section of a handscroll at one time.

Until the invention of paper, silk was the preferred medium for Chinese painting and calligraphy. Both paper and silk vary significantly in texture, absorbency, and receptivity to the ink held on a Chinese brush, among other qualities. As discussed above, papermaking in China traditionally utilized a range of plants as raw material including hemp, mulberry, reeds, rattan, bamboo, rice, and various trees, and their diverse fibers produced paper of differing quality. Painters and calligraphers since the Tang dynasty have acclaimed Xuan paper, whose essential raw material is a type of elm bark found in Xuanzhou in today’s Anhui Province, as China’s highest quality medium for painting and calligraphy. Xuan paper is sometimes erroneously called rice paper, even though the rice plant contributes only some minor portion to its manufacture. Shengxuan or “raw xuan” is noted for its ability to absorb water and ink, allowing artistic blurring. Shuxuan or “ripe xuan” paper, by contrast, is made with a thin coat of a concoction of potassium alum and crushed bone that resists moisture absorption. Banshuxuan, literally “half-ripe xuan,” is a partially processed paper that absorbs at an intermediate level.

This tiger with two cubs appears to pounce forward from the recesses of this vertical scroll painting.

Receding landscapes that evidence great spatial depth are a common theme in chinese paintings.

While a Chinese artist might execute a painting directly on paper attached to a pair of wooden end pieces, it is more likely that a painting be done independently of the scroll on which it is later mounted. The mounting of a painting is a multistep process that involves affixing paper to silk brocade using an adhesive paste applied with a smoothing brush. If done poorly, creases, even bubbles, will form and the painting will deteriorate. The first step is to affix a larger backing paper to the painting in order to stiffen and reinforce it. Next, silk strips, compatible in color and texture, are attached to the adjacent sides and top of the painting before another backing is attached to strengthen the overall form. A semicylindrical rod placed at the top, together with a silk ribbon in the shape of a triangle, facilitates suspending a hanging scroll. At the bottom, a heavier cylindrical roller rod provides weight that will help keep the hanging painting straight and flat. The bottom roller rod is at the core of a hanging scroll when it is rolled up.

All scrolls are fashioned to be rolled up for storage. While of course hanging scrolls must be unrolled for display, with handscrolls the action of unrolling is part and parcel of the enjoyment of the painting, both visually and physically. In museums today, handscrolls are usually displayed fully extended, a practice that underscores their length and narrative complexity yet masks the traditional way of viewing them. Moreover, exhibiting them this way obscures the delight that occurs as one or two people slowly unroll a painting to take it in. Each handscroll presents a continuous narrative that embodies both time and space, encapsulated in a length that varies from three feet to almost fifty feet. Within this narrative, the artist can display activities occurring simultaneously across a far-flung area or a journey that traverses the represented space progressively over a time period. A handscroll is unrolled from right to left so that only a shoulder’s-breadth portion is visible at one time. As one enjoys the emerging visual narrative of the painting, the previously viewed section is rerolled and concealed. In some ways, one encounters a handscroll in the way one does a book. With a handscroll, one section is revealed as another is rerolled, while in a book a page is turned to move a narrative forward. With both a handscroll and a book, there is a fixed beginning and end, a characteristic very different from a relatively static hanging scroll. Some handscrolls in fact are calligraphic texts that should be read sequentially. At the beginning of most handscrolls is a title panel, while at the other end is a colophon panel made up of inscriptions and the seals of the artist as well as others who have owned or admired the painting.

Museum conservators and collectors today agree with Ming dynasty connoisseurs like Wen Zhengheng, who argued in his seventeenth-century Treatise on Superfluous Things that scroll “paintings should be stored in caskets of fir wood, with absolutely no use of lacquer or glued paper linings internally, lest they seep out and stain the picture. In the fourth or fifth month, you should unroll every piece and give them a brief sight of the sun, then return them to their boxes at a distance of ten or so feet from the ground level, to prevent foxing. Generally, when displaying pictures, they should be changed every three to five days, to prevent both fatiguing the eye and damage by dust. When taking them down, first whisk the dust off both sides of the scroll, so that the surface will remain undamaged” (Clunas 1991: 42).

With firm grasp of the brush, this calligrapher is able to adjust the intensity of the stroke as he writes each chinese character.

The pussy willow–like plant in this painting is an auspicious motif that is especially appropriate to hang at the new Year.

Birds and flowers are a common subject matter in chinese painting, not only portraying naturalistic scenes but also suggesting deeper meanings.

With examples of his paintings and calligraphy behind him, this artist adds ink to his brush before beginning.

Fans, like handscrolls, provide a means to manipulate a scene for viewing.

Calligraphy Paraphernalia

The writing brush (bi), ink stick (mo), ink slab or ink stone (yantai), and paper (zhi)—indispensable paraphernalia for calligraphy and painting—are known by all Chinese as wenfang sibao, “the four treasures of the study.” Although these items are produced throughout China, Huizhou, a remote prefecture in southern Anhui Province, gained fame as early as the twelfth century for the high quality of its scholarly equipment. The importance of the civil service examination system from the Song dynasty (960–1279) onward spurred the demand for these products. Many of the old firms producing wenfang sibao are still active, even drawing Japanese and Korean artistic connoisseurs to their shops.

Chinese writing brushes are usually made of a bamboo shaft with a pointed tip of animal hair and whiskers from rabbits, goats, horses, ermine, mice, or tigers, among many others, including humans. Brushes vary in size and hardness, and instead of bamboo some have handles made of wood, lacquer, porcelain, ivory, and jade. Calligraphers and painters have always developed individual writing and painting styles and consequently pay great attention to the sharpness of the tip and its responsiveness to the force they exert on it.

This studio of gratifying discourse in the Minneapolis institute of Arts includes on the table objects such as a small screen to block blowing air and an armrest needed to avoid smudging while doing calligraphy.

Traditionally, ink was not initially in liquid form, making ink sticks and ink slabs complementary elements to the brush, The solid rectangular ink stick needs to be rubbed against the slab to produce a fine ink powder, which is then mixed with water to produce fluid ink. By means of this practice, the artist is able to adjust the density of the ink, varying either the ink powder or water. The manufacture of ink sticks is a specialized craft that begins usually with soot from old tung oil or pine trees, which is generally called lampblack. This basic ingredient is bound with diverse substances according to secret recipes that vary from place to place—animal glue produced from boiling connective tissue, deer horns, varnish, pork fat, musk, lotus root—before being kneaded and molded into sticks, octagons, ovals, and round shapes. Drying takes at least a month and sometimes even a one year before gold or silver calligraphic and pictorial engraving is added directly onto one side of the stick. The Hu Kaiwen Ink Stick factory, in operation since the eighteenth century in Tunxi, is said to be the oldest continually operating workshop producing ink sticks. However, most of the ink sticks found elsewhere in shops throughout China today are low in quality, merely serviceable and without either the luster or the endurance of high quality ink. Bottled prepared ink, termed dead ink, is in fact more popular than freshly prepared ink using an ink stick and stone, which by contrast is called live ink.

Brushes used to execute washes on large paintings.

A porcelain container in which to store brushes.

An ink slab, while essentially only a container on which to grind an ink stick and mix the powder with water, is usually a richly ornamented and elegant object. Stone is the most common material for the slab, but some old ink slabs are made of pottery, roof tiles, fired bricks, celadon, and precious stones like agate and black jade. The material used must not only be hard but also sufficiently dense that it does not absorb the liquid. Each ink slab is usually much larger than functionally necessary and has a carved cover. Huizhou ink slabs are said to have a ringing sound when they are knocked, while another renowned type from Duanzhou in Guangdong Province has a purple hue said to remind artists of clouds.

Paper, which is considered as one of the “four great inventions” of ancient China, comes in infinite variety. Before the discovery of paper early in the first millennium CE, tortoise shell, bone, bamboo slips, and silk, among other materials, were pressed into service for writing and painting. The fibers of ramie and hemp were probably the first materials used in making paper, followed by tree bark, cloth, rice, mulberry, and bamboo. Xuan paper, known for its strength, luminosity, texture, and durability was produced by the time of the Tang dynasty, eventually becoming the preferred medium for calligraphy and painting. Initially made of elm bark, it was later mixed with rice, bamboo, mulberry, and other ingredients in a multistage process that is still secret. There are different grades of Xuan paper due to variations in the ingredients and production processes, which contribute to differences in water absorbency as well as the bleeding and fastness of the ink.

Inkstones from shexian, Anhui province are noted for the detailed carving along their sides and top.

An array of brushes, each with a different purpose.

Set in a hexagonal case, this ink block incorporates calligraphy and a scene.

An artisan gilding the ornamentation along the sides of ink sticks, Anhui.

Going beyond the traditional black ink sticks, today it is possible to buy sticks in a variety of colors for watercolor painting.

Shallow jade vessel for mixing ink and water.

A calligrapher or painter will use his personal seal, such as is shown here, to “sign” his artwork.

Blank paper scrolls are stored in this tubular vessel for later use by the calligrapher.

Cigarette Posters

The 1920s and 1930s were a glamorous era in Shanghai, then a cosmopolitan metropolis populated by foreigners from many nations as well as Chinese urbanites who were yearning for China’s advancement as a modern nation. So new and powerful was the word modern that it was absorbed into the Chinese language as the two-character word pronounced “modeng,” just as lipstick, high heels, bobbed hair, and cigarettes, among other innovations, became necessary components of Shanghai fashion. Consumption of what at first were foreign imports surged as local production increased and as advertising enticed even the most reticent to become consumers of products identified as glamorously modeng.

The popularity and ubiquity of cigarettes—even in rural areas and small towns—stemmed in large part from their promotion via advertising campaigns that have bequeathed us with a distinctive class of collectibles—cigarette cards, cigarette posters, and cigarette calendars. One measure of the success of advertising is that cigarette consumption in China swelled from 300 million in 1900 to 87 billion in 1928; by comparison, in the United States the growth was only from 2.5 billion to 100 billion during the same period (Cochran 1980: 234). Although cigarettes were new to China, the smoking of tobacco in pipes was not. In fact, tobacco, like other New World imports such as rice, peanuts, and potatoes, became a staple crop throughout China from the sixteenth century onward. The replacement of supposedly “coarse” pipe smoking with suave cigarette smoking was one mark of Shanghai’s burgeoning consumer culture between the two world wars.

During the first three decades of the twentieth century, the British-American Tobacco Company (BAT), a multinational corporation with headquarters in New York and London, dominated the cigarette market in China, competing with Chinese-owned firms such as the Nanyang Brothers Tobacco Company. Both of these companies created extensive distribution networks, deploying agents and salesmen to market their products. Their advertising campaigns utilized printed material to help promote cigarettes, with Western managers preferring newspapers, posters, and cards. Chinese managers, on the other hand, exploited “a variety of other advertising media—scrolls, handbills, calendars, wall hangings, window displays, attractive and strong cigarette packing cases (whose wood and nails were reused by the Chinese), cotton canvas covers for the tops of carts, and small rugs to serve as footrests in rickshaws” (Cochran 1980: 35). In “selling happiness,” as discussed by Ellen Johnston Laing in her book of that title, the British-American Tobacco Company employed a stable of artists who “produced inventive, attractive, and, at times, lavish advertisement calendars and posters” (2004: 172)

Examples of antique cigarette posters found in shanghai.

Chinese cigarette posters especially have become a popular collectible in recent years, partially because of their ubiquity but mainly because of their beauty. While Westerners created some of the early advertisements, both Chinese commercial artists and fine artists were enlisted to create culturally appropriate forms. Sensitive to what would resonate with Chinese of all classes, these artists at first often featured legendary figures generally known by most Chinese, such as personages in historical novels and operas, as cultural touchstones and backdrops. Original designs featuring women and cigarettes became the norm and the conjoined symbols of modernity, presented in a manner that complied with local tastes. With coiffed hair, delicate makeup, high heels, and a stylish dress, an elegant woman required a lighted cigarette between her fingers. Yet, in many cases, the mere presence of a beautiful woman wearing a chic dress and poised playfully without a cigarette in hand was sufficient to draw attention to the cigarette packages in an adjacent panel. Sometimes posed seductively, the woman would be shown with a man who was treating her as an apparent equal. To print these fantasies of the modern, Chinese workers were trained to operate the imported lithographic presses that were employed in the mass-production of paper advertisements.

Besides posters, illustrated calendars called yuefenpai increasingly became a popular medium to advertise cigarettes, partially because they were freely given as gifts by merchants at the turn of the new year. They then were hung on walls in homes and often kept there as decoration even after the coming of the following year. Hanging Western-style calendars with modern themes was an extension of the tradition of woodblock-printed pictorial calendars. In addition to calendars, small “cigarette cards” were placed inside soft packs of cigarettes as objects to collect, swap, and sometimes accumulate in order to exchange for prizes. Cigarette cards have also become contemporary collectibles. Posters advertising other goods such as soaps, sugar, medicines, makeup, perfumes, oil, whiskey, cloth, teas, and meats, while often as sophisticated as those popularizing smoking, are available in various markets but strangely are less admired as current collectibles.

Embroidery

Embroidery is one of a number of Chinese arts and crafts with a millennia-old history. Many believe embroidery developed subsequent to silk production. Whether its techniques originated first in the homes of villagers as a handicraft or were begun and refined by skilled artisans within palaces or the sumptuous homes of wealthy merchants or officials is impossible to determine, and indeed is probably irrelevant. What is undeniable is that the Chinese today continue to produce matchless embroidered articles, some of which are expensive high quality pieces of art for display while many others are simply beautiful utilitarian cloth objects. The quality of Chinese embroideries varies significantly, ranging from those that are exquisitely hand-embroidered, appearing like fine paintings, to others produced by computerized machines that crudely mimic hand embroidery, sometimes even with printed backgrounds. The range of embroidered items is incredibly broad, including cloth-enshrouded cases, boxes, handbags, slippers, hats, lamp shades, bracelets, pillows, and an array of curios, including Christmas ornaments in addition to clothing, scarves, framed wall hangings, freestanding screens, and tabletop displays in many sizes. To meet the demand from foreigners, embroidered linen and linen-like tablecloths, napkins, place mats, and table runners are now common in the embroidery shops in China.

There are four major centers of embroidery production in the country, each with characteristic stitches, distinctive themes, and unique textures that are employed by artisans with skilled hands, fine eyesight, and enhanced powers of concentration. All are in areas where villagers not only grow mulberry bushes and breed silkworms but also weave cloth and ornament it with embroideries. In each center is an Embroidery Research Institute and Museum dedicated to preserving traditional techniques while innovating with products that meet the needs of contemporary consumers.

Dragons and birds are common themes in chinese embroidery.

While as many as forty different stitches are sometimes claimed, there are actually four common ones with many variants: the satin stitch, couching stitch, stem stitch, and seed stitch. The satin stitch is preferred when the intent is to create a smooth surface with attention to simulating a kind of surface shading. A couching stitch, which is essentially invisible, is one whose purpose is to anchor other stitches, especially gold and silver threads that cannot be sewn directly onto the fabric. Stem stitches involve the looping of a thread around another thread to heighten its presence, as for example in creating a prominent flower stem. The intricate seed stitch, which appears in many variants, is referred to as the Chinese knot and sometimes the forbidden stitch or blind stitch because it is said to have ruined the eyes of young girls. This intricate stitch involves wrapping silk floss around a needle and then stitching it down on the fabric. The Chinese knot rarely appears alone but instead is worked in rows or patterns so as to leave a finely textured surface of small rings. While the base cloth to be embroidered traditionally varied in weight from satin to gauze, today synthetic materials are often used as well.

As in chinese painting, bird and flower motifs employ colors that are even more vibrant than in nature.

Double-faced embroidery renders a lifelike portrait of a young Miao woman. tiny, nearly invisible stitches with thread that is often split to create shading is among the techniques employed by the artist.

An unfinished piece of double-side embroidery on the frame.

Embroidered pillows with a stylized shou or longevity character.

It is not surprising that the best-known of the four centers of Chinese embroidery is in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, an area renowned for its production of silk. Here, the specialty is silk embroidered pictures, which are usually referred to as thread painting and embroidery painting, since many resemble the textured surface one sees in an oil painting. Some of the pictures actually look like fine photographs because of their shading. Double-sided embroidery, also a well-known art in Suzhou, is accomplished by skilled artists who split individual thin threads of silk into even thinner filaments, or floss, that are then threaded into needles employed for various stitching patterns. “Suzhou embroidery is famous for its flat surfaces, neat edges, delicacy, closely packed stitches with even thickness and spacing, and harmonious colors,” all executed with meticulous craftsmanship (Stalberg and Nesi 1980: 148).

Hunan embroidery emphasizes shading in the creation of realistic depictions of landscapes and life-like images of animals, especially tigers and lions, usually on a base of transparent chiffon silk. With hair-thin silk floss in colors that range from black to white, animal fur is rendered in true-to-life textures that are three-dimensional owing to the mixing of stitches and knots. A special type of Hunan embroidery replicates traditional monochrome ink-and-wash paintings by deploying silk floss in shades of black, gray, and white. Guangdong embroidery is judged by many to be showier than either Suzhou or Hunan styles. With a palette of principal colors such as vibrant reds, yellows, and blues, in addition to black and secondary colors, as well as gold and silver, it should not be surprising that peacocks, butterflies, and floral arrangements are common themes. Sichuan embroidery flourishes in the western region of the province around the city of Chengdu. Here, colored silks are used as the base material since many of the embroidered objects serve as heavily ornamented quilt covers and pillowcases. The most common embroidery themes seen in shops throughout Sichuan are a group of pandas enjoying a meal of bamboo and a school of varicolored fish swimming in a pond.

Ethnic minorities, among them the Bai, Miao, Zhuang, and Tibetans, are also skilled embroiderers, each with their own style. Tibetans are known for their embroidered wall hangings with sacred Buddhist symbols on them. Thanka, which usually depict a deity, mandala, or scene within a geometric frame, are generally painted on silk or cotton but also are sometimes embroidered or appliquéd. The Bai generally embroider on cotton cloth using cotton threads. Zhuang embroidered balls are seen often in shops as well as dangling from sticks held by itinerant merchants in southern China. Made of colored silk cloth sewn over a core, these once were made by young girls to present to a prospective suitor. Today, they are essentially showy ornaments. The Miao, who are found in Yunnan, Guizhou, and Hunan Provinces, embroider their jackets with narrative tales. Using techniques employing two needles simultaneously as well as braids of multiple threads, their auspicious designs on jackets, bags, blankets, and baby carriers are quite bold in both color and texture.

Heavy metallic thread was used to embroider the scenes shown here.

Carved Ivory

Excavations in northeast, northwest, and western China reveal that elephants and rhinoceroses once roamed widely throughout the country, although by the second millennium CE, elephants were only found in southern China, where there still was tree cover. Mark Elvin’s environmental history of China chronicles the Chinese struggle against elephants and other animals over 4,000 years as peasants cleared old-growth woodlands and domesticated their landscapes. In the wake of frontier settlement, elephants and other wild animals were slaughtered, forcing those that remained to retreat into rugged marginal habitats. Today, only some 300 wild elephants still roam the uplands between China’s Yunnan Province and neighboring areas of Laos and Burma, where they enjoy the status of a protected species.

Ivory figurines and scepters.

Carved ivory card case.

Yet, even as elephants and rhinoceroses competed with humans for limited land for several thousand years and thus faced extermination as a result of pressures from humans, they also were natural resources that contributed to enriching human life as food, medicine, transport, and clothing. In addition, the tusks and horns of these creatures provided an extraordinary medium from which exquisite artifacts were fashioned (Elvin 2004: 15–16).

Ivory carving is an age-old art practiced in China as well as elsewhere in the world, such as in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India. Using elephant tusks brought from Africa, even artists in Europe created exquisite liturgical, devotional, and everyday items during the Middle Ages and Renaissance that are prominently displayed in museums today. It should not be surprising that the Chinese similarly valued the glossy sheen, malleable surfaces, and pleasing feel of the elongated, creamy incisors of elephants, which we call ivory tusks.

Carved ivory pieces in China date back 7,000 years to the Neolithic Hemudu site in Zhejiang. However, it was from the Yuan period onward that artisan households began to create ingenious ivory objects ranging in size from those that could be held in one hand to larger-scale panoramic scenes. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, utilizing tusks imported by ship in great numbers from India and Africa, ivory carving reached an aesthetic high point that led to an explosion of ornamental ivory curios. In addition to the age-old method of shallow intaglio carving on the surface or in the round, new techniques were developed. Interlaced lattice-like fretwork, cleaved slices that could be plaited, as well as the inlaying of carved ivory with other materials all became common methods of transforming ivory into ornamental objects. Employing these methods, lithe figures of women, cylindrical filigreed tubes, concave wrist rests, sturdy folding screens, delicate flower baskets, and true-to-life models of boats and buildings, among many other themes, all became common. From the sixteenth century onward, the Portuguese and others introduced Chinese carved ivory objects to European connoisseurs, a process that accelerated during the final century of Qing rule in the nineteenth century.

Carved in ivory, a lifelike pair of young children with painted features.

Two pages of an illustrated book with tiny chinese characters on one leaf are carved on this curved ivory tusk.

Beijing and Guangzhou are the two principal ivory carving centers today in China, each with its own history and style. Lifelike human figures, often with a curved back that replicates the natural arc of a tusk and painted with colors, are a specialty of Beijing as are realistic landscapes. Guangzhou artisans have long specialized in producing concentric spheres made up of multiple layers of hollowed-out rotatable balls, each carved with fine fretwork, as well as elaborate flower boats and ornate landscapes. Although most of the concentric balls have less than ten layers, some have many more. Working on the creation of free-moving spheres involves drilling diagonal holes into the solid piece of ivory, and then working layer-by-layer from the inside out. Once each layer rotates freely, the artisan returns to carve the surface of each of the spheres with relief sculptures. Where once artisans used only hand tools and worked for months, even years, on perfecting a fine object, craftsmen today turn out mass-market brica-brac collectibles using electric tools.

Ivory carving thrived in China until the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) led to a moratorium on the exporting of elephant tusks from Africa beginning in 1990, which was subsequently relaxed. As can be witnessed in shops throughout the world, however, the production and sale of expensive ivory art objects, principally from China, persists at high levels. Yet, because of limited supply and elevated prices, there is much fakery. Newer pieces are transformed to appear like antiques, so that what seems aged is sometimes nothing more than ivory exposed to smoke or bathed in strong tea or coffee. Tourists searching for inexpensive ivory carvings are likely to find only objects made of bone, imitation man-made “ivory,” and even treated wood.

Jade Artifacts

Confucius valued jade highly in comparison with soapstone, stating: “A gentleman always carries a jade pendant.” Indeed, the attributes of jade corresponded with the virtues expected of a junzi, a gentleman, whom Confucius considered a noble human, an exemplary person:

Soft, smooth, and glossy, it appeared to them like benevolence; fine, compact, and strong—like intelligence; angular, but not sharp and cutting—like righteousness; hanging down (in beads) as if it would fall to the ground—like (the humility of) propriety; when struck, yielding a note, clear and prolonged, yet terminating abruptly—like music; its flaws not concealing its beauty, nor its beauty concealing its flaws—like loyalty; with an internal radiance issuing from it on every side—like good faith; bright as a brilliant rainbow—like heaven; exquisite and mysterious, appearing in the hills and streams—like the earth; standing out conspicuous in the symbols of rank—like virtue; esteemed by all under the sky—like the path of truth and duty. (Legge 1885: 464)

The term jade is a capacious descriptor for a versatile ornamental gemstone that exists in many forms. Jade is rare, revered, and thus costly but paradoxically is found in such abundance in countless Chinese street stalls as trinkets that the stone is often perceived as commonplace and cheap. While Westerners usually seek out luminescent green jade as being the only authentic form, Chinese connoisseurs appreciate a broader range of colors, including black, blue, pink, and a translucent white or light yellow form known as “mutton fat” since it is said to resemble lard, in addition to various shades of emerald green. The Chinese word yu is usually translated into English as jade, but this single character alone does not distinguish between the two metamorphic rocks with interlocking crystals that are commonly called jade—nephrite and jadeite, which differ in their chemical composition, crystalline structure, translucence, and colors. The Chinese refer to common nephrite as ruanyu, “soft jade,” even though its value on the Mohs scale of hardness is quite close to that of jadeite, which is called ying yu, “hard jade.” This distinction has been known only since the nineteenth century.

Pieces of polished imperial jade.

Nephrite jade has long been the dominant form found in China from Neolithic times to the present, a vast span of time during which artisans crafted it into items ranging from ceremonial and ritual artifacts to common utilitarian objects of great beauty. Called the imperial stone and the stone of heaven, and said to be more precious than silver, gold, and other gemstones, nephrite traditionally was mined in the lower Yangzi watershed and gathered from streams in remote areas of Xinjiang in the northwest portion of the country. Jadeite jade, which is rarer than nephrite, is prized for its iridescent emerald and pale apple-green color, which the Chinese refer to as feicui or “kingfisher feathers jade.” Strange as it may seem, jadeite is not mined within China but only began to be imported into the country during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from neighboring Burma, where it is found in a remote area in the shadows of the Himalayas along the Thai-Burma border. Over a short period of time, however, the imperial court came to prize jadeite. Thus, most of the vivid emerald-green artifacts seen in museums today date to no earlier than the late Qing dynasty in contrast to the very old pieces of jade that have different colors. Even in the present, remote mines in Burma, now renamed Myanmar, are a major source of the world’s jadeite, painstakingly excavated from pits by heroin-addled workers.

White jade carved into a bottle shape with removable cap, a swirling fish, and a flower.

This single piece of multihued jade was carved into the shape of a reclining horse with mottled markings.

Whether made of nephrite or jadeite, traditional jade objects comprised both small ornaments to be worn as charms and amulets and larger ceremonial and ritual objects with cosmological significance. Pendants, hairpins, and belt hooks, among other decorative items, in addition to statues of Buddhist deities in time expanded the creative utilitarian repertoire.

Although at one time only textual references suggested that jade burial suits were once considered a means of preserving the dead, the discovery of at least six complete suits in various areas of China since 1968 has led many archaeologists and historians to conclude that they were probably quite common during the Han dynasty. Even today, among Chinese there is an aura surrounding the ownership and wearing of jade. Worn next to the skin, jade is a cool stone. It is said to bring good fortune to those wearing a wrist bangle as the bangle becomes smoother. Some Chinese in the past consumed powdered jadeite in the belief that doing so fostered longevity, while to the same end others favored carved jade for the mouthpieces of opium pipes.

Many tours to China include visits to workshops where jade artifacts of many types are fashioned using modern equipment to recreate traditional designs. Even the casual tourist will stumble across markets replete with faux jade artifacts fashioned out of other stones, especially soapstone, serpentine, quartz, and even manufactured glass. It is not unusual for inexpensive “jade” objects to have been enhanced by chemical bleaches and impregnated with stains and dyes. When purchasing inexpensive decorative objects said to be carved pieces of jade, a buyer must assess several factors before making the purchase: Is it really jade? Is it old? Was it created by an artist or an amateur? Connoisseurs assert that the best way to tell true jade is by handling it, since the “feel” is key, but this takes much experience to perfect. Since both nephrite and jadeite are comparatively hard, they do not nick or scratch easily, whereas most pseudo-jade articles can be scored with a sharp blade. Although many jade pieces in the marketplace appear old, most are actually new, and often crude, reproductions. Whether an intentional copy or a fake fraudulently passed off as ancient, any jade curio must first satisfy the buyer in terms of design, craftsmanship, and price. Athletes who excelled at the 2008 Beijing Olympics discovered that their medals included jade inserts on the back: pure white nephrite for the Gold Medal, pale green nephrite for the Silver Medal, and a dark green nephrite for the Bronze Medal. Gram for gram, the finest jade out-paces even gold in monetary value.

Carved jadeite beads, triangles, and circles are set with precious metals to produce a necklace and earrings.

A tiger and a resting water buffalo are carved from variegated dark jade.

Detailed carving along the side of a large jade boulder.

Chinese Knotting

Knotting, like so many Chinese folk arts that evolved into a fine art, had its roots in antiquity. Because of the perishability of fibrous plant and animal materials, however, the best archaeological evidence of this handicraft is old needles as well as images on bronzes, sculptures, and later paintings. Jade pendants, scepters, and beads with holes merely suggest the complexity of knots that once bound them together. Glossed by Chinese dictionaries as “the joining of two cords,” knotting evolved from being simply a functional product to multifaceted forms of decorative embellishment. During the Qing dynasty, knotting reached an apex of creative ingenuity, technical skill, and refined aesthetics before sliding into relative obscurity in the second half of the twentieth century. A revival of interest in Taiwan in the late 1970s led to a renaissance in the art form not only on the island but more recently throughout East Asia at about the same time that decorative macramé gained renewed popularity in the West.

Chinese knots are normally tied using a single red cord about three feet in length and are fashioned into a symmetrical body that is tightly bound, three-dimensional, and complete on both sides. Cords traditionally were made of cotton, flax, silk, and leather, in addition to gold and silver. Knotting guides today typically present more than a dozen basic designs, each of which has many variations and permutations: cloverleaf knot; round brocade knot; pan chang knot; constellation knot; good luck knot; Buddha knot; double connection knot; plafond knot; flat knot; creeper knot; double coin knot; button knot; cross knot; and tassel knot. Four fundamental techniques are employed to tie them, including pulling and wrapping outer loops; using single flat knots; overlapping outer loops; and, knotting semi-outer loops (Chen 2007: 17ff). Rudimentary knots become complex by duplicating the original knot or by adding a different knotting sequence. While knowing the sequence of tying a knot is fundamental, it is the tightening of the knot in order to even out its structure that elevates the resulting form to an art object.

Hanging with double tassels, this is a variant form of the good luck knot.

A selection of ornaments in various media using knotting as inspiration.

Knotting provides a means to communicate a full range of auspicious ideas at weddings and birthdays. Propitious designs were commonly used in bridal chambers, where the knots were strung together alongside canopy beds as a form of ornamentation. Mentioned in poems and novels, a specific conjoined knot came to symbolize love and was used often in the marriage ceremony, on sedan chairs, and in the bedroom. Traditional men’s and women’s garments employed button knots and ornamented sashes to fasten pieces of cloth. In museums, it is often easy to overlook knots since they are usually subordinate to other objects on display, appearing only as accoutrements on frayed and faded tassels.

Traditional knotting simply required the dexterity of two hands, nimble fingers, and a cord. Today, many also use pushpins, tweezers, sewing needles, and nail polish to facilitate their knotting. In addition to traditional knots, craftspeople in China and abroad have become creative in fashioning nylon knotting cord into three-dimensional objects as tabletop centerpieces and large wall hangings that diverge significantly from the smaller, exquisite traditional forms.

Crafted of color stones, this knot enhances the irregular pavement in a suzhou garden.

The tight button knot is both decorative and functional once stitched to a garment.

This perforated window along a corridor in a suzhou garden is in the shape of a knot.

The pan chang knot is here set within another knot.

Lacquerware

Lacquer is an ingenious raw material —a naturally occurring polymer—that can be used to create objects said to equal porcelain in durability and lightness as well as lustrous appearance. Archaeologists have unearthed lacquer-covered black pottery objects from the Neolithic period, which gives Chinese lacquerware a history of more than four thousand years. Some of the most remarkable examples of lacquerware in China were excavated between 1972 and 1974 at Mawangdui in Hunan Province at a site that was exposed when the People’s Liberation Army was building a factory. The tomb of the Marquis of Dai and his wife, which dates to the fifth century BCE, included not only exquisite silk garments, banners, and maps but also an extensive array of lacquerware that included nested coffins, artifacts that highlight the skill levels at that time.

Lacquerware was among the most esteemed products carried by Portuguese and Dutch traders back to their home countries from the fifteenth century onward. As these products became increasingly fashionable, Europeans learned the secrets and formulas of their manufacture, thus permitting them to imitate the Chinese forms. The eighteenth century was a golden age for lacquer production in Europe, especially in Italy, Germany, and France, where the products expressed an evolution of tastes, especially for lacquered furniture.

Lacquer is first a clear sap harvested from the trunk of the appropriately named lac or lacquer tree, a species found in China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia, where the production of lacquerware objects is well developed. In its initial state, the sap is watery, but after being stirred and excess moisture is evaporated to thicken it, raw lacquer turns into a darker, viscous liquid. Thinning with oils, such as tung oil, imparts new properties to the liquid, while the addition of natural pigments multiplies the color possibilities. Lacquer is applied to a core of wood, bamboo, or cloth layer-by-layer, either by brush or by dipping the object. Each layer is allowed to dry in the dark, forming a hardened skin on the surface, which becomes even more durable as additional layers are added and cured. Lacquerware objects have always been made in workshops, because their production requires multiple steps, each involving the techniques and tools of specialized craftsmen, many of whom did not possess the full range of secrets involved in the craft.

Lacquerware includes objects for daily use such as plates, bowls, cups, spoons, chopsticks, ladles, pillows, and lidded boxes as well as musical instruments, chariots, furniture, thrones, and even coffins, besides a broad range of purely decorative objects. While much lacquerware is smooth with a pearl-like luster that some say is as radiant as porcelain, other pieces are richly ornamented, either through painting or engraving. Incised or engraved lacquerware emerged as exquisite craftwork during the Yuan and Ming dynasties and remained popular throughout the Qing dynasty. After scores and perhaps even a hundred coats of lacquer were applied by dipping or by brush, three-dimensional scenes could be carved into the object. In order to accentuate the pattern, the color of different lacquer coats could be varied. Sometimes incised lines were filled with silver powder or gold leaf. While most incised lacquerware objects are vermilion in color, which results from employing cinnabar, many others are green or yellow, while still others reveal diverse colored layers, especially alternating red and black

Engraved lacquer vase reveals levels of incision.

Polished lacquerware pitcher.

Lacquerware with inlaid woods and stones.

Lacquerware embedded with lustrous mother-of-pearl, sea shells, ivory, coral, jade, gold, silver, and copper is called hundred-treasures inlays. This embedded ware provided a rich medium for the artist to mix textures and colors to create images that appear lifelike. Employed not only on small objects to be displayed on a table or desk, this technique is also used for folding and hanging screens, cabinets, and benches. Bodiless lacquerware is a unique form produced only in Fuzhou, Fujian. Remarkably light and delicately ornamented, bodiless lacquerware begins with a slight inner body made of plaster, wood, or clay, which is covered with several layers of cloth that are first stiffened with clear lacquer and then coated with lacquer having the desired color. Once the lacquer is dry, the inner body is excavated before the object is coated with more layers, thus making it far lighter than those objects where the solid interior remains. As the additional layers of lacquer are applied, allowed to cure, and polished, a lustrous finish emerges that can be left as a single color or painted in multiple colors. Fuzhou lacquerware is usually also carved with patterns.

Polished lacquerware plate.

Incised lacquerware screen with a trio of writing dragons.

With his arm raised, Mao is surrounded by adoring workers, peasants, and soldiers as well as figures representing oppressed peoples around the world.

A small selection of the hundreds of different types of Mao pins and statues, with a red guard armband, above.

The “little red book,” the Quotations of Chairman Mao, in chinese, english, french, and german.

Mao Memorabilia

During the ten-year Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, as with other Chinese mass movements, not only were propaganda posters produced in prodigious numbers, but also statues, pins, books, wall hangings, and myriad other objects were created to promote an ideology focused on glorifying Mao Zedong. It is safe to say that no other individual, including Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Che Guevara, Idi Amin, and Kim Jung Il, has received the same order of sustained adoration as a cult figure as Mao, and certainly none has been the object of a crazed revival. The Quotations from Chairman Mao, a little red book published in a format small enough to fit into a pocket, was so popular that upward of five billion copies are said to have been printed, exceeding any other book in the twentieth century. While Mao was alive, statues, busts, lapel pins, badges, and plates served as mementos celebrating his physical form and revolutionary vision, while thermos bottles, caps, bags, tea cups, flower vases, key chains, watches, lighters, windup clocks, ash trays, and other objects, each emblazoned with images and words to express the “fervent love for Chairman Mao,” brought his persona into the utilitarian realm.

Respecting the prevailing politics of the time, it was more common to view the left profile of Mao rather than the right. Badges, the larger the better, were to be pinned over the heart. While some of these objects were available for sale, most were distributed by work units as prizes or as symbolic additions to uniforms. Especially as young Red Guards traveled widely, items were swapped among their peers, creating a veritable national market. Some fervent believers became avid enthusiasts of the mementos, amassing amazingly rich collections. When Mao died in 1976, it is likely that billions of such items were stored in drawers or closets at home, circulating in markets, or still being worn and used. In 1980, the government issued a directive warning that Mao badges and other items should not be improperly disposed of. Some observers believe as many as 90 percent of badges were turned in and recycled by 1988.

Mao at rest in a pensive mood.

As the centenary of Mao’s birth loomed in 1993 and continuing through the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the PRC in 2009, Mao fever, as the Chinese call it, also surged. For some, the wearing of a Mao badge, hanging of a Mao portrait, or use of an object containing an image or saying of Mao expressed an explicit longing for the period in recent history when society was more egalitarian and morality was promoted. While authentic pieces are still found in enormous quantity today, there is also a cottage industry turning out replicas and fakes to help satisfy and capitalize on the demand. Most of the original Mao-era products were manufactured using recycled or scrap materials such as toothpaste tubes, packaging, and boxes. Today, Mao objects are produced either en masse on factory assembly lines or in smaller numbers in household workshops, sometimes using recycled materials as in the past. In recent years, moreover, kitschy new Mao products such as refrigerator magnets, bobblehead dolls, seat cushions, T-shirts, yo-yos, mouse pads, beer mugs, playing cards, and cuff links are found on market stalls throughout China.

Collection of unpainted Mao figurines and plaques on display in a singapore apartment.

Contemporary chinese sculptor sui Jianguo fabricated a series of freestanding and hollow Mao jackets of iron and candy-colored fiber-glass, which, without heads, torsos, or hands, serve as ironic metaphors of times past.

Once symbols of revolutionary zeal and relict artifacts from a tumultuous period, Mao memorabilia have morphed into a commodity and collectible not only in China but worldwide. Mao today is a marketable brand with a new generation of consumer goods attached to his name. Nowhere in China is identified more with Mao than Shaoshan, his birthplace in Hunan Province. Building on a long history of revolutionary cult sites, Shaoshan has become a mecca for Red Tourism by masses of Chinese. During the sixtieth anniversary of the establishment of the PRC 2009, more than 3.5 million pilgrims—old revolutionaries as well as those born after Mao’s death—came to Shaoshan. Responding to the increasing number of shoddy mementos being sold with Mao’s likeness, local officials have become more vigilant in ensuring that the souvenirs for sale are of better quality. From July 1, 2010 on, according to the national news organization Xinhua, “all Mao statues sold in Shaoshan must meet new technical criteria or could be confiscated and destroyed.”

Tucked away along a small lane in Chengdu, Sichuan, is a cluttered and eccentric private museum chockful of more than fifty thousand Mao badges, pins, and other ephemera. Wang Anting’s “Little, Little Mao Exhibit Hall,” which opened in 1989, has entered the Guinness World Records, but in 2009 the ramshackle structure with its unparalleled collection was up for sale by its aged, infirm, yet ardent owner. Theme restaurants have been opened in many cities in China (and indeed in other Asian cities, such as Singapore where two branches of the House of Mao welcome locals and tourists alike), with furnishings, decorations, and even Mao’s favorite Hunan food. Moreover, temples that honor Mao have been constructed, where, as with other gods, folk of all classes come to light incense and burn paper money. Throughout China today, taxi and other drivers dangle multicolored trinkets with images of Mao from their rearview mirrors as a protective talisman. An odd permutation on Mao memorabilia emerged in 2009 as President Barack Obama was preparing for his state visit to China. In stalls throughout Beijing, “Oba Mao” merchandise began to appear, in which Obama was dressed in a green Red Army uniform with the Chinese characters for “Serve the People” emblazoned beneath his image on T-shirts, magnets, key chains, even pajamas.

In this sophisticated shanghai bedroom of the designer Kenneth grant Jenkins, the sofa holds pillows with images of pop icons such as Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, the Beatles, and even Che Guevara as well as nine portraits on one pillow of the great helmsman, Mao Zedong.

Here, the bust of chairman Mao is a mere accent in a modern apartment in singapore.

Papercuts

The tradition of papercutting dates back some two thousand years and continues to be a popular folk art form in countless Chinese homes, especially in rural villages. While it is not possible to precisely date the origins of this craft, its development likely followed the “invention” of paper, which tradition places in 105 CE during the Han dynasty, although remnants of crude paper made from vegetable fibers have been found that date from even earlier. The earliest excavated examples of papercuts—with geometric as well as animal motifs—were discovered in 1959 in Xinjiang, where their fragility was overcome by the dryness of the climate. Silver, pounded thin into foil, like black paper, also has a long history of being cut into intricate designs suitable for ornamentation in women’s hair.

There are regional differences in the styles and uses of paper-cuts; indeed, variations exist from village to village, and families hand down their favored patterns from generation to generation. Throughout China, papercuts are principally associated with two events, the annual New Year festivities and periodic celebrations attending marriages. Both are a time of joy, renewal, and family gathering, as well as an opportunity to prepare fine food and display favored ornamentation. The New Year, which falls in January or February during the depths of winter, is often a bleak time with rather subdued and monochrome colors of nature except in southern China. Thus, the presence of colorful New Year papercuts, prints, and lanterns in their many forms adds a bright, even ostentatious, quality to the occasion. With harvesting long over and spring planting yet to begin, families pass time by diligently preparing for the arrival of the New Year. Women especially are busy with the production of handcrafted ornaments as well as the cleaning of the home, an essential obligation as the lunar New Year approaches. Replacing the translucent paper that covers lattice wooden window frames is part of the New Year ceremony of renewal, and the stark white spaces that are left invite fresh ornamentation. Small papercuts, which the Chinese call chuanghua or “window flowers” even though they are not always flowers, are pasted into the open squares so that they face into the rooms and can be enjoyed as sunlight projects them onto interior surfaces. At night, when viewed from the outside, each delicate papercut appears like a puppet shadow cast on a screen by the illumination of an electric bulb or oil lamp.

Another form of New Year papercut is called guajian or “hanging papercuts,” which, because of a near homonymic relationship with the Chinese word for cash, are also called “hanging money” guaqian. Usually red in color, but sometimes multicolored, they are small rectangular sheets cut into ornamental fretwork, which are then hung alone or side-by-side in sets on the lintel above the doorway of the dwelling or the outer gate. These complement New Year’s couplets that surround the door and pictures pasted on the door panels as well as the “window flowers.” Whether there are three, four, five, or six guajian depends on how fulsome is the message inviting good fortune. Inside the home during the New Year, it has been common to affix paper cutouts also along the walls surrounding a bed and even on chests, basins, and teapots.

Over the course of a year, it is rare for there not to be at least one wedding in a Chinese village or neighborhood. During this time of celebration and showiness, papercuts play a prominent role and are called xihua or “joyous flowers,” whatever their form. No papercut is more in evidence than the dyad shuangxi or “doubled happiness,” which is expressed by a Chinese character not found in any dictionary but known by all Chinese. Formed by writing together a pair of characters meaning “joy,” or xi, the pseudo-character shuangxi is one of the most commonly seen “words” in and about many Chinese dwellings—above the gate, on doors and windows, on the ceiling above the bed. With an uncomplicated symmetry, the shuangxi figure papercut is sometimes made complex with the addition of other emblems that amplify its meanings to include wishes for sons and other hopes for happiness and long life.

Fish are a common cut-paper motif because of a homophonous association with the word for “abundance.”

Papercuts traditionally were crafted using scissors to cut either a single sheet of thin paper or a small pile fastened together. Sharp, pointed scissors, discussed elsewhere, work well whether they are being operated freehand or following a stencil printed using a wood-block. Papercuts given shape with scissors are often bold, sometimes not more than a silhouette, and are usually done from memory, without a pattern. Cutting complex patterns with fretwork is virtually impossible using scissors except in the hands of a master able to manipulate a very small pair. Using a scalpel-like knife to make papercuts is a later development and more popular today. Multiple layers of thin sheets of paper beneath a pattern are attached with pins to a wax- or tallow-covered board, so that the sharp knife, held vertically like a brush, can cut through all the layers. For simple designs, as many as forty layers of thin paper can be stacked and cut reasonably well, while intricate patterns may not exceed a half dozen sheets. A skilled practitioner usually has a set of knives that facilitate the cutting of squares, curves, and circles.

Using a pair of scissors, an artisan deftly cuts paper into decorative patterns.