Yunfu Stone Art

Yunfu Stone Art

Nominating Unit: City of Yunfu

Yunfu Stone Art is mainly distributed in Yuncheng District, City of Yunfu, as well as some towns and villages such as Gaofeng, Fulin, Hekou, Antang, etc. Due to the Karst landform, City of Yunfu has craggy stones, grotesque mountains, abounding in such stone materials as marble, limestone, dolomite, granite, quartzite, etc. During the reign of the Emperor Wanli in the Ming Dynasty, there had been stoneworkers exploiting marbles to carve for the decoration of temples and ancestral halls or for the engraving of furniture, for slate painting or for stele engraving. During the reign of the Emperor Xianfeng in the Qing Dynasty, the marble material and the engraving products for architectural decoration had been sold to several countries, including Singapore. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the refined components of Yunfu Stone Art were selected as the architectural decoration for restoring the Great Hall of the People, Memorial Hall of Chairman Mao, the Palace Museum in Beijing, as well as Potala Palace in Tibet. Since the policy of Reform and Opening-up was implemented, new progress has been made in Yunfu Stone materials industry. Not only has City of Yunfu become one of the major four production bases for stone materials, but it has also been designated as the national example base for stone material circulation. The huge Carving Everlasting as its representative masterpiece, has been chosen to be set in Cairo International Conference Center in Egypt. Yuncheng City is therefore named as “Homeland for Folk Art in Guangdong Province” by the Department of Culture in Guangdong Province.(https://www.daowen.com)

With local marble as the basic material, Yunfu Stone Art features stone carving and stone inscription in the traditional sense. Stone carving is mainly in the form of circular engravure, basrelief, and intaglio, with the major themes related to immortals or Buddha such as Maitreya Buddha, Guanyin (a Bodhisattva), fairies spreading fl owers, etc. Meanwhile, engraved are also some animals with auspicious signs such as dragon, phoenix, lion, turtle, kylin, tiger, elephant, ox, horse, etc.; Stone inscription mainly makes a feature of famous poems and calligraphy. Nowadays stone jigsaw and practical decorative art have been added to Yunfu stone art. Stone jigsaw can be further divided into plate jigsaw and stone mosaic jigsaw. The plate jigsaw puts together various colorful pictures by making use of stone plates of different colors while stone mosaic jigsaw puts together refined patterns, calligraphy, or pictures by taking advantage of the leftover material, crushed aggregates of stone plate materials and its natural colors. Practical decorative art includes both practical decoration utensils such as vase, plate, tray as well as architectural decoration components such as column, Rome Column, fireplace. Yunfu Stone art can be produced ingeniously in accordance with materials, colors, and environments. The craftsmen are able to make full use of the natural features, textures, colors, grains of each stone, producing the effect of “man and nature in perfect harmony”.

With the economic development and the advancement of science and technology, an increasing number of advanced modern facilities have been brought into the stone material and stone carving industry so that the factories living on traditional arts and crafts have been stuck in a difficult situation where inheritance is badly needed. Yunfu Stone Art is now being severely challenged, calling for urgent measures for effective protection.