*Cantonese Inside-Bottle Painting

68.*Cantonese Inside-Bottle Painting

Nominating Unit: City of Shantou

Cantonese Inside-Bottle Painting is distributed in City of Shantou in East Guangdong Province. Inside-Bottle Painting is conducted within the bottle, evolving from the drawing technique within the snuff bottle, which in early days was called “Inside snuff bottle painting”. It was initiated in Beijing during the reign of Emperor Jiaqing in the Qing Dynasty. Afterwards, it gradually evolved into the Jing School in Beijing, the Ji School in Hengshui, Hebei Province, the Lu School in Boshan, Shandong Province, and the Yue School in Shantou, Guangdong Province. The School of Ji and Lu could both trace their origins to Beijing, while the School of Yue, initially created by the great master of Inside-Bottle Painting Wu Songling, went through a long period of exploration and self-perfection.

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Cantonese Inside-Bottle Painting is mainly conducted on the inside surface of the glass bottle and crystal bottle. The drawing tool is the paintbrush of flexure type developed by Wu Songling. The head of the brush is curved by iron lines, the top end equipped with the brush made up of weasel’s hair, the penholder made by bamboo. The whole paintbrush is made in a curved shape for the convenience’s sake. One of the basic skills of Inside-Bottle Painting is to use liquid gold to paint lace patterns on the bottle outward, then air-dry and roast the painting; Second, Insidebottle polishing, including fine polishing, cleaning, and airing the inner surface of the bottle in accordance with warp and weft; Third, Inside-bottle painting, including designing and drafting in mind, inside surface lining, painting, and coloring, etc. The decoration of the outward surface of the bottle assimilates the cloisonné enamel and the skill of gold drawing of Chaoshan decorative porcelain. The inside surface draws lessons from Fine Brushwork Painting with heavy colors advocated by Beijing School while it lays greater emphasis on traditional Chinese painting advocated by Lingnan School by integrating watercolor, traditional Chinese painting color and canvas color with delicate lines and bright colors, fashioning a unique, splendid and magnifi cent style of Cantonese Inside-Bottle Painting, integrating both the inside and outside pictures into a harmonious whole.

Cantonese Inside-Bottle Painting is mainly conducted within square round bottles, with various shapes like plum, gallbladder, wooden club, Kwan-yin, fish tail, camber, olive, and carrot; different specifications such as large, medium, small sized; the largest bottle with a height of 13.5 centimeters, a diameter of 6.5 centimeters, the smallest with a height of only 5 centimeters, a diameter of 2.5 centimeters. Within such a small bottle, the craftsmen paint the whole world stretching only several centimeters demonstrating pictures after pictures of splendid landscape, animals, people, flowers and grass, which is termed as “fantastic and marvelous drawing art”. Guangzhou Inside-bottle painting got cataloged in the list of the second batch of the state-level intangible cultural heritage in 2008. Due to enormous difficulties, high requirements, duration of long-time learning, and low income in Inside-bottle painting, Cantonese Inside-Bottle Painting is now on the verge of extinction with no inheritance, calling for urgent measures to effectively protect it.