Nanjing woodcarving

Nanjing woodcarving is a famous specialty in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. Nanjing's woodcarving is divided into antique woodcarving and boxwood carving. The antique woodcarving is simple and calm in color, and is good at imitating Tang horses. The arhat statue is also unique in form and spirit. Boxwood carving takes animals and figures as the main themes. Wood carving is a kind of sculpture, which is often called "folk craft" in our country. Wood carving can be divided into three categories: three-dimensional round carving, root carving and relief. Woodcarving is a kind of work separated from carpentry, which is classified as "fine carpentry" in our country. Folk art varieties classified by carving materials. Generally, fine and tough tree species such as nanmu, rosewood, camphor, cypress, ginkgo, agarwood, mahogany and longan are selected. The natural tree root carving art is "tree root carving". Wood carving includes round carving, relief, carving or a combination of several techniques. Some also paint to protect the wood and beautify it. According to legend, boxwood carving was invented by a cowherd named Ye Chengrong in the late Qing Dynasty. Ye Chengrong is from Yueqing County, Zhejiang Province. One day, while playing in a temple at the head of the village, he saw an old man sculpting a Buddha statue in the temple, and he was immediately attracted by the old man's skills. He simply ran out of the temple, tied the cow to a tree, dug up a sticky piece of mud, sat at the entrance of the temple, and secretly learned to build plastic. The old man is a well-known local folk artist. Seeing that Ye Chengrong is clever and studious, he took him as an apprentice and taught him five skills, such as round sculpture, clay sculpture, painting, gilding and relief. He made rapid progress, and a year later, he mastered this skill. One day, Ye Chengrong watched the plastic Buddha statue in Zi Xia, Baotai Mountain, Yueqing County. A Taoist priest in the temple folded a boxwood and asked him to carve a wishful hair pin out of boxwood. In the process of carving, Ye Chengrong found that boxwood is tough, delicate in texture and inferior in color and luster to other wood, so it is a good material for carving. From then on, he began to carve works with boxwood. In this way, boxwood carving in Chinese folk art garden was born. Ye Chengrong's boxwood carving uses a sharp-pointed carving knife, and the carved figures' clothes are pleated like nails and rat tails, which looks a bit stiff. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, a folk artist named Zhu Ziqi in Wenzhou used a semi-circular knife to carve clothes pleats, which looked smooth and beautiful. In 1972, Premier Zhou Enlai presented the Red Silk Dance created by Wenzhou boxwood carving artist Ye Runzhou as a gift to the Canadian delegation visiting China. Today, boxwood carving is well-known at home and abroad.
Reprinted with attribution： https://cnlocality.com/(Chinese Specialty Products)