Yangchun Root Carving

78.Yangchun Root Carving

Nominating Unit: Yangchun Municipality, City of Yangjiang

Yangchun Municipality is located in southwest Guangdong Province and enjoys a Karst landform and is rich in vegetation and forests, which provides a foundation for its root carving tradition. As early as the Qing Dynasty, root carved daily necessities, sacrifices and styled artworks were already popular in this area. The locals called it “Wood Shadow”. After continuous transmission and development, Yangchun Root Carving has been developed into many types and they have been populated all over the city from the 40s and 50s of the last century till today.

Root carving utilizes died tree roots. Yangchun Root Carving uses the root of many kinds of trees, such as Longan, litchi, of spicy camphor, banyan, mountain cuckoo, camellia, crape myrtle, etc. No living tree’s root can be used. Only died tree roots fl oating on water, roots of thousands years old buried under river or ground, or roots discarded in the mountains, forests, or by the roads can be used. Different carving styles require different kind of texture.(https://www.daowen.com)

Traditionally Yangchun Root Carving can be divided into practical root carving and artistic root carving. Artistic root carving favors strong roots with peculiar looks and the carving has to go through fixed procedures, i.e. washing, peeling, trimming, carving, polishing, and waxing. The themes of artistic carving include people, animal, scenery, and wall ornaments, giving primitive, simple, vivid, or exaggerated looks. Abstract artistic root carving utilizes the oddness of a root’s structure, shape, texture, or color, giving it some kind of philosophical, metaphoric, or symbolic meanings. Practical root carving mainly uses the stubs, roots, or knurls of a tree as its raw material, and its techniques are almost the same as those of artistic carving. The products are for daily uses, such as tables, chairs, tea tables, screens, or walking stick, tea jar, pen stand, tobacco jar, etc.

In the recent several decades, there has been an innovation called calligraphy root carving, which has become a whole new series. Calligraphy Root Carving must use dry fl at tree roots that look like Chinese characters, and its processing caters to the natural shape of the roots plus imagination. The craftsmen intentionally choose those characters with many strokes and complicated shapes and can make a whole character with just one root, without any joining and combining. It is highly popular among collectors and enjoys a promising future.

Yangchun Root Carving is a treasure of Guangdong Province’s folk carving craftsmanship. It utilizes wasted material and turns them into treasure, and is a perfect example of people’s cultural wisdom and creativity. In 1998, Yangchun city was named “Homeland for Ethnic and Folk Art in Guangdong Province” by provincial Department of Culture. However, due to many reasons, Yangchun Root Carving is faced with a lack of good raw material (roots) and skilled craftsmen. Urgent aid and protection are called for.