Those "retroactive" old crafts, let's see the inheritance | development | craftsmanship
[Go to the New Era Xintiandi · Young Inheritors of Intangible Cultural Heritage]
Look, those old crafts that have "counterattacked"
——The Story of New Craftsmen Revitalizing Old and New Craftsmanship
Guangming Daily reporter Yin Zehao and Peng Jinghui
When people use the word "old" in front of a craft, it usually has a profound and exquisite background, but sometimes it also means that it is "high and low", "self admiring", and even faces difficulties in survival.
For craftsmanship, time is both an enemy and a friend. Some are gradually declining in the long river of history, while others are reborn and rising again with the passing of time. Survival or destruction? This is the fate that all crafts have to face.
Only craftsmen can control their fate.
"When we were born, there were already signs of the decline of many traditional crafts; as we grew up, the stalemate of traditional crafts had been broken, and many had completed a 'comeback'!" During the interview, the heroic aspirations of young inheritors of intangible cultural heritage moved the reporter.
In the tide of the times, they have infused the wings of technology into old crafts, built a virtual world stage for traditional aesthetics, and brought "high and cold" art into daily life... They always have fresh and down-to-earth creativity, allowing old crafts to find a living space between inheritance and innovation, finding a balance between artistic aesthetics and economic income, creating a legend belonging to an embroidery thread, a bamboo thread, and a copper plate, telling Chinese stories in cultural objects, reflecting a nation's nostalgia for the past and pursuit of the future.
Zhang Xue's Su embroidery fan is like a phoenix flying in the air. Images provided to respondents
Yin Ying designed and woven bamboo weaving patterns on her handbag. Images provided to respondents
Learn from the past, not from the past
One evening in 2018, Zhang Xue, a young man born in the 1990s in Suzhou, was taking a walk by the lake. Looking up from afar, a bird like cloud in the sky caught his eye. He casually captured this scene and shared it on social media. Out of the professional habit of a Suzhou embroidery worker, he wrote: Is it good to embroider it?
This unintentional self questioning needs to be answered seriously. A game company proactively contacted Zhang Xue, hoping that he could design a fan based on this photo. At that time, Zhang Xue had been an embroiderer for almost ten years, and this was his first opportunity to showcase the beauty of Suzhou embroidery in the virtual world.
Design, several drafts; Techniques, repeated deliberation. He is very satisfied with the design of the golden phoenix soaring above the fan, but still faces difficulties - how to present the effect of starry sky in the background? Zhang Xue decided to combine Kesi with Su embroidery.
"Many traditional crafts of 'treasures' have their own strengths. When lost, I often seek inspiration from them and borrow from other craftsmen." Zhang Xue asked a Suzhou silk cutting craftsman to make a silk cutting fan. On the fan, black lines are inlaid with gold lines. Under the illumination of the light, a starry effect appeared on the fan.
Embroidering flowers on the Kesi fan is another challenge. "The embroidery thread is too thick and the picture is rough; if it is too thin, the embroidery thread is easily cut off by the base material of the tapestry." Throughout the embroidery process, Zhang Xue "walked on thin ice.". Adding to the difficulty of embroidery is a common practice for Zhang Xue. He also used the Su style fan, mortise and tenon structure, and Song brocade from the treasure trove of craftsmanship on this fan.
In the end, this "Phoenix Flying" fan meets the players in the game. Zhang Xue requested the game developers to present the intangible cultural heritage skills involved in fan groups when players receive props, allowing them to experience the charm of traditional culture in the game.
Like Zhang Xue, Ji Tianxiang, a post-00s student at Beijing Electronic Technology Vocational College, regards various traditional crafts as treasures. In 2022, Ji Tianxiang began studying cloisonn é production with Ding Xiaofei, a teacher at the School of Art and a master of Beijing arts and crafts. "The teacher often says that traditional handicrafts are too rich for us to learn completely." Ji Tianxiang, who has just entered the industry, keeps in mind Ding Xiaofei's instructions to constantly learn various traditional handicrafts.
Ji Tianxiang shared a story with reporters: In 2016, Ding Xiaofei took on the task of making the cloisonn é emblem for a naval unit's ship. The traditional cloisonn é technique, when dealing with large blank spaces in patterns, uses wire cutting to draw cloud patterns, retroflex patterns, and other dividing spaces at the bottom of the pattern, reducing the difficulty of glaze application. But the pattern of the ship emblem cannot be changed at will, so Ding Xiaofei changed his mind and turned to using carving technology to make metal tires. The carved contour lines have the same effect as the wire cutting process background.
"There are not many people who can proficiently master the carving process, and when I heard the teacher explain this work, I was deeply impressed." Ji Tianxiang knew that Ding Xiaofei's ability to see and analyze when encountering problems was inseparable from years of comprehensive learning. He also felt fortunate to have met this "teacher of a certain length" when he was young, and to have "buttoned the first button" for his learning journey.
Intangible cultural heritage grows in daily life
In 2008, Yin Ying from Qingshen County, Sichuan Province brought her bamboo weaving works to the "Xiangyun Cottage" of the Beijing Olympics to showcase the charm of her hometown's intangible cultural heritage skills to friends from all over the world. However, the on-site situation made her somewhat anxious.
Visitors passing through the bamboo weaving exhibition area not only admire the bamboo weaving painting, but also discuss what the material of the painting is. The diverse answers of silk thread, vine, grass, plastic... made Yin Ying extremely anxious. "I said it's bamboo, they don't believe it!" Speaking of this experience, Yin Ying remained excited. This trip to Beijing has made this young man born in the 1980s, who grew up in a bamboo weaving family, start thinking about the promotion and inheritance of bamboo weaving.
Yin Ying is skilled in flat bamboo weaving. She introduced that the cycle of "long-term production, high price sales, and long-term production" was once the main mode of bamboo weaving painting production, which determined that this "rare and precious like a giant panda" skill has always been "insulated" from the mass market.
With the continuous introduction of new policies in the field of intangible cultural heritage protection by the country, Yin Ying has also begun to try to "bring bamboo weaving into everyone's life.". In 2016, Yin Ying's studio established a cooperative relationship with the School of Arts at Shanghai University to produce bamboo woven patterns for jewelry and bags.
"In the past, Yan flew into ordinary people's homes in front of Wang Xietang." Yin Ying used this poem to describe the current situation of Qingshen bamboo weaving to reporters: bamboo weaving techniques have been widely used in fields such as tableware, furniture, and architecture. "There's nothing unexpected that can't be made up," she said.
In 2022, the comprehensive output value of the bamboo industry in Qingshen County reached 7 billion yuan, and Yin Ying's active exploration is a microcosm of the transformation and development of this intangible cultural heritage technique in Qingshen County.
The inheritance and development of cloisonn é craftsmanship have encountered similar problems as bamboo weaving paintings. "This skill has a high threshold and involves multiple stages, requiring mastery of multiple skills," said Ji Tianxiang. This young cloisonn é learner knows that there is still a long way to go to become a mature successor to cloisonn é, but he has his own unique insights into the promotion of cloisonn é: "Traditional cloisonn é utensils appear in the form of bowls, bottles, and other ornaments, with weak practicality and functionality. Only by unleashing imagination can more application scenarios be created for cloisonn é." As the Dragon Boat Festival approached, Ji Tianxiang designed a cartoon cloisonn é pendant with mice eating zongzi rice, which was a "small experiment" in which he unleashed his imagination. He hopes that in the future, cloisonn é can appear in every aspect of people's lives.
In recent years, the popularity of China-Chic aesthetics and national style culture has made Ji Tianxiang confident in the life oriented application of cloisonne art: "The color and lines of cloisonne have a poetic style and charm. As long as the charm is still there, it is still cloisonne. Our goal is to let intangible cultural heritage grow in people's lives, rather than seal them in museums and people's memories."
3D printed colored enamel ring. Images provided to respondents
Three dimensional dynamic Su embroidery "Yulan Butterfly". Images provided to respondents
Technology shapes new forms
In the eyes of her peers, Zhang Xue has a big brain. After achieving the splendid appearance of Su embroidery in virtual worlds, animation and other fields, he began to explore the possibility of three-dimensional Su embroidery.
In 2022, the 3D dynamic Suzhou embroidery "Yulan Butterfly" was successfully embroidered, and the vivid scene of "Yulan Blooming with Colorful Butterflies" appeared in the world woven by Suzhou embroidery, realizing Zhang Xue's 3D Suzhou embroidery dream. The "magic" that awakens these butterflies and flowers is a memory alloy material.
Zhang Xue collaborated with Associate Professor Mi Haipeng from the School of Fine Arts at Tsinghua University to create three-dimensional and dynamic Su embroidery images using memory alloy. Zhang Xue and her team members hid the memory alloy in the petals and butterfly wings through precise design and embroidery. Under specific conditions, two memory alloys deform at different angles, forming a dynamic effect of magnolia blooming and butterfly flapping. Once the work was released, it attracted considerable attention on the internet. A netizen exclaimed, "This is the luxury of the Chinese people themselves." Zhang Xue took this opportunity to bring Su embroidery to more and larger stages.
In 2017, the "Revitalization Plan for Traditional Chinese Crafts" was introduced, exploring the organic integration of handicrafts, modern technology, and craft equipment. The imaginative design has transformed from a blueprint to a physical object, with strong policy support.
The combination of cloisonn é and technology has been a question that Ji Tianxiang has been pondering for a long time. Before he started learning the cloisonn é technique, he didn't know that this enamel technique could still be combined with 3D printing. In fact, 3D printing, a low-cost and high-efficiency technology, has been widely used in the cloisonne tire making process. After feeling the changes brought by technology to this ancient craft, Ji Tianxiang had a big idea: can such good technology be applied in subsequent processes such as glazing?
During a class, Ji Tianxiang observed that the enamel glaze in the furnace shone orange due to high temperature, and then turned from gravel to glass, embedded on the surface of the metal mold. He immediately realized that this was similar to the principle of light curing in 3D printing, and perhaps it could really be achieved by glazing cloisonne through 3D printing. Ji Tianxiang shared his idea with the teacher, who also supported his idea.
"The full process 3D printing of cloisonn é has a promising future," Ji Tianxiang imagined. "If it comes true, more people can participate in the design and even production of cloisonn é. This is of great significance for the inheritance of cloisonn é."
There are still many young explorers like Zhang Xue and Ji Tianxiang, who use technology to shape the contemporary forms of these crafts. "Perhaps thousands of years later, when people write about the history of handicrafts, they will record our exploration stories. I hope it will be a rich and colorful stroke," said Zhang Xue.
Guangming Daily
[
