Brick Carving

79.Brick Carving

Nominating Unit: City of Guangzhou

Guangzhou Brick Carving is a special type of wall art in the Pearl River Delta that features strong water region architectural styles. It is mainly popular in the old area of City of Guangzhou and its Shawan Township in Panyu District and Huadu District. The bear-patterned hollow brick unearthed from the relics of Palace for King of South China (now Zhongshan Fourth Road in City of Guangzhou) which is dated back to the end of the Qin Dynasty and the beginning of the Han Dynasty proved the long history of Guangzhou Brick Carving. During the Ming and the Qing Dynasties, Guangzhou Brick Carving had already been widely adopted on the ancestral temples and civil houses, and formed its own style. After the Republic of China was founded, the brick carving craftsmanship gradually lost its popularity with the rise of modern architectural styles. However, the recent couple of decades saw a sign of its revival.(https://www.daowen.com)

Traditionally, Guangzhou Brick Carving was mostly used to decorate the lintels and walls, and was placed on the upper part of the gable, both sides of the gates, the gatehouses, and the gate canopy. It may be by itself, or put together with paintings, plaster or ceramic sculptures. The themes include various kinds of figures, flowers, birds, fish, beasts, mountains, rivers and architecture, book shelves and calligraphies, etc. The most popular styles include flowers, dragon and phoenix and immortals with an auspicious connotation, and stories from ancient novels, traditional operas and Mumu books about flourishing ages.

Guangzhou Brick Carving uses high quality grey bricks used for building houses, and are carved with two kinds of tools, namely cleavers and trowels. The trowels can be further divided into big and small single-bladed trowels, big, medium and small round trowels and slashed trowels. The making procedure starts from design drawing, raw carving, polishing, numbering, joining, gluing, fine tuning, etc. Raw carving is the key part with many cleaver techniques to make the style, and the polishing is most unique, which is the fine carving of small parts and final fixing to make the carving real lifelike. If viewed from a distance, the carving looks like tassels hung over the brick. Therefore, Guangzhou Brick Carving got the name of “tassel brick carving” due to its delicate carving techniques. The carving techniques mainly include relief, high relief, etc. Guangzhou Brick Carving is especially good at combining many bricks with different technique and putting them together to make a giant piece. In some ancient temples, colleges, and gardens, there are still giant pieces of historical figures, animals, and flowers, put together with dozens or even hundreds of bricks. Some of them are over a hundred years old. Now the representative transmitter of Guangzhou Brick Carving, He Shiliang’s work “Hundred flowers and hundred birds” is 5 meters tall, 22 meters wide, and has been selected into the Shanghai World Guinness Record.

Under the impact of modern architectural decoration practices, brick carving, as a traditional architectural technique, is losing its ground. Besides, its complicated techniques, high cost, and low economic output denied most interested learners. The number of craftsman skillful in this technique is also diminishing sharply, which added to the predicament of a breakdown in Guangzhou Brick Carving. Urgent and effective protective measures are called for.