*Puning Porcelain Mosaic

*Puning Porcelain Mosaic

Nominating Unit: Puning Municipality, City of Jieyang

Porcelain mosaic is colloquially called “Ju Rao”, “Tie Rao”, or “Kou Rao”, which is a folk art of trimming porcelain pieces of different colors and sizes and making different inlayed styles. It is mostly used for architectural ornament. Puning porcelain mosaic is widely spread within the border of City of Puning, as well as many counties in eastern Guangdong Province. Its reaches can be as far as Southeast Asian countries and regions such as Cambodia and China’s Taiwan. According to the historical records and the remaining works in ancient temples, memorial halls and civil houses, Puning mosaic started from the reign of Emperor Wanli in the Ming Dynasty and gained popularity in the Qing Dynasty. In the transitional period between the Qing and the Republic of China, a group of skillful craftsmen emerged, among whom He Xiangyun was a world-renowned master.(https://www.daowen.com)

Puning mosaic mainly uses colorful and thin porcelain dishes, bowels, saucers, box, and plates as raw material, and mortar made of lime, brown sugar, and straw paper as the glue. Its techniques borrowed from painting and sculpture. According to the model design, they can be divided into cutting and inlaying part. Firstly, the porcelain wares are cut into small pieces for inlaying. The inlaying is carried out in order, namely pieces into parts, and parts into the whole thing. The whole assembling process uses stacked inlaying, crossing inlaying, etc. before the final model of figures, animals, flowers, birds, insects, or fish can be formed.

The patterns in Puning mosaic are mostly symmetrical, and the expressive styles include flat inlay, relief inlay and solid inlays. The colors used are mostly contrasting, pursuing harmony in apparent contrasts. Puning mosaic adopts themes with connotation in concord with the features of the architecture. For example, large dual dragon and a pearl, dual phoenix and peony are mostly used on the front of temples, ancestral halls, etc. to accent a grand and solemn scene. On the roof ridges and corners, solid figures are more than often used. The walls under eaves mostly use flowers, birds, beasts, fish, shrimp, and insects. The screen walls mostly have kylin, lion, elephant, crane, deer, etc. on them. Puning mosaic boasts a lively portrait of the themes and rich colors. Especially, the hard material makes it durable in the face of time and weather. In the subtropical areas where rainfall is abundant and temperature is very high in summers with constant invasion of typhoons, the porcelain mosaic is an irreplaceable architectural ornament, and a unique craftsmanship. It was enlisted into the list of the second batch of state-level intangible cultural heritage in 2008.

Due to the impact of market economy and foreign cultures, plus the changing trend of civil houses into apartment buildings, Puning mosaic is losing its ground greatly. The income of a mosaic craftsman is lower than that of an ordinary building decoration worker, which leads to a lack of inheritance people of this craftsmanship. Urgent and effective protections are called for.