How many of the top ten carving techniques for jadeite do you know?

Jade carving is a unique skill in my country. It has a long history, exquisite craftsmanship, and diverse styles. It is known as the "wonderful work of oriental art" and is well-known throughout the world.

During the thousands of years of development, our excellent jade carvers have created many unique jade carving techniques. Generally speaking, there are ten types in total. Next, let’s learn about the top ten techniques of jade carving.

1. Round Sculpture

Also known as three-dimensional sculpture, it refers to a non-compressed three-dimensional sculpture that can be appreciated from multiple directions and angles.

Round carving, also known as three-dimensional carving, refers to the method of carving objects from the front, back, left, right, top, middle and bottom. The carved works are the overall expression of art on the sculptures, as realistic as the real objects and particularly full of three-dimensional sense.

Since round sculptures are very three-dimensional, they require the sculptor to be very strict in the selection of jade materials. The content of the round sculpture can be people, animals, or still life, but it is not suitable for depicting natural scenes.

2. Relief

It refers to shaping or carving an image on a flat base plate. The outline of the image is similar to that of a painting, with varying degrees of concavity and convexity. It is not restricted by form and is mainly appreciated from the front.

The biggest difference between relief and round sculpture is that relief uses compression to process objects. According to the different degrees of compression space, relief can be divided into:

Bas-relief

Medium relief

Deep relief

Shallow relief, medium relief and deep relief, each has its own characteristics and is brilliant.

Bas-relief

Bas relief is also called thin relief. Its carving method is to first determine the designed outline, and then remove the blank space outside the outline to make the image slightly protruding, as if floating on the surface.

Such scenes carved in bas-relief can show ups and downs, but the height is not as high as that of medium relief and deep relief. Therefore, shallow relief is suitable for use on high-end jadeite raw stones, which reduces the amount of waste and ensures that high-quality jadeite is carved out.

If you want to understand bas-relief, for example, the depth of the pattern on a coin can be roughly called bas-relief.

Medium relief

The medium relief carving method is to cut the outline of the pattern on the original stone material. It will first shave off a slightly thicker layer of material and carve out an undulating structure. The depth of the carving is deeper than that of the shallow relief, and the level changes are also more.

The application range of medium relief is very wide, and it is also the most widely used method among the three jade relief methods.

Deep relief

Deep relief is also called high relief. According to the above explanation, we can know that it is the deepest of the three relief carving methods.

Therefore, the works it carves out have ravines and grooves, a strong sense of ups and downs, and a strong sense of realism and three-dimensionality. In the actual application of jade carving, deep relief is often used in combination with shallow relief to express the distance and spatial three-dimensional relationship of objects.

3. Openwork

Also known as hollow carving, it is a further development of relief carving.

It is a carving technique that hollows out the background part based on the relief. The purpose is to make the outline of the carved image clearer and make the work reflect the exquisite and delicate artistic effect.

Openwork carving adds layers to jade carvings, with patterns and scenery interlaced up and down, and scenery at different distances. However, the craftsmanship is complex, the production is difficult, time-consuming and labor-intensive, but the artistic effect is the best.

4. Internal carving

It refers to carving two or three layers of still life inside and outside a piece of jade. It is a relatively complicated craft and is called a "unique skill" in the jade carving industry.

From the Republic of China period to the early years of the People's Republic of China, due to limited tool conditions and the lack of jade carving skills, the art of inner carving has been blank. After the 1970s, jade carving artists explored inner carving techniques and achieved groundbreaking results.

5. Thread combination

Apply industrial threads and assembly technology to jade carving crafts, this is a thread combination. After the 1980s, large jade carvings became popular, and the introduction of threads into jade products had ideal effects.

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