Carving craftsmanship: the breathtaking beauty of the world of jade

Chinese craftsmanship is profound and extensive . A set of carving knives, a pair of skillful hands, a piece of ingenuity, and a piece of beautiful jade, combined with the aesthetic concepts passed down from generation to generation and accumulated over the years, have created a dazzling wonder in the art of sculpture, which is Chinese jade carving.

Chinese jade carving techniques are rich, including relief, inner carving, round carving, and hollow carving. Among them, the most shocking is the hollow carving technique.

Openwork, also known as "hollowing out" or "openwork", is a traditional sculpture form that hollows out the background part based on relief. It embodies the jade carver's superb wisdom and exquisite craftsmanship, reflects his ingenious conception, and is the breathtaking essence of jade carving!

Ancient carved jade wares can be further divided into single-layer carving (i.e. openwork carving), multi-layer carving, layered carving, three-dimensional carving, hollow-patterned vessels and auxiliary carved jade wares according to their shapes and decorative functions.

During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, jade wares were mainly ritual vessels, decorative artworks, practical objects, and funeral supplies. During this period, jade wares had strong lines, smooth holes, and openwork and inlaying techniques were extremely common.

There are a large number of realistic depictions of flowers, insects, birds, tigers, deer, mountains, forests, dragons and phoenixes in jade wares from the Song, Liao, Jin and Yuan dynasties, achieving a high level of accomplishment in capturing both form and spirit. The openwork technique was further developed during this period. By the middle and late Qianlong period, the art of hollowing out luxurious jade articles had matured, and carved jade articles became popular among the court and the public.

Nowadays, with the improvement of jade carving tools, China's exquisite carvings have fascinated millions of people with their stunning craftsmanship!

The difficulty of carving can be seen from the selection of stones. The stone used for carving must be fine and pure, especially the hollow parts, where not even the slightest crack is allowed. In addition, in addition to general carving tools, the tools used for carving also require special long-arm chisels, pick knives, scraper knives, hook knives, small saws and other special tools.

After talking about the preparation steps, let’s talk about how to carve. The key to hollow carving is to "start with the outside and then the inside". Hollow carving can only be carried out after the blanking and chiseling processes of the outer scenery and the background are all completed. Therefore, hollow carving is more delicate and exquisite than other works, presenting people with a three-dimensional and diversified sense of beauty in details.

Hollow carving flexibly uses knife techniques such as punching, scratching, cutting and scraping, and expression methods such as relief and openwork, as well as the rich connotation of oriental artistic language. In the interweaving and variation of the density, virtuality and reality, squareness and roundness, thickness and length of the shape, it expresses a subtle and exquisite artistic effect, making the work have a musical rhythm and appeal, and becoming a treasure!

In this impetuous era, we need a work like this that can shock us and allow us to appreciate the beauty of concentration in the shock. It is a beautiful collision between the hardness of jade and the softness of painting. Call it extremely luxurious or ingenious. Nowadays, there are not many things that can make people feel clear-minded when viewing them. If there are, they are undoubtedly rare masterpieces in the world!

From an additive life to a subtractive life, people are always in the process of understanding themselves and changing. I long to put aside the trivialities of life, cut off all the complex connections, abandon the heavy burdens, leave the hustle and bustle and run towards tranquility.

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