*Craft of Hardwood Furniture in Cantonese Style

94.*Craft of Hardwood Furniture in Cantonese Style

Nominating Unit: City of Guangzhou

The craft of hardwood furniture in Cantonese style is an important representative of traditional folk manual craft in Guangzhou. More than 300 years ago, Cantonese-style furniture “Iron Pear Recessed-leg Table with Everted Flanges” (Tie Li Qiao Tou An) already appeared in the late Ming court during Chongzhen’s reign. In the Qing Dynasty, Cantonese-style furniture became the main source of the palace furniture and today the Beijing Palace Museum still keeps the rosewood table screen painted with figures and embellished with kingfisher’s feather and ivory (Zi Tan Dian Cui Qian Ya Ren Wu Cha Ping) from the Qing Dynasty. After the mid-Qing Dynasty, with the increase of foreign trade in Guangzhou and the more contact between the Chinese culture and the Western culture, Cantonese-style furniture also reached its peak period. It absorbed the techniques of expression and styles from Rococo Art and Baroque Art in Europe. The products were very popular in Hong Kong and Macao, and were exported to Japan and many countries in Southeast Asia and Europe. In the last century, when the anti-Japanese war broke out and Guangzhou was occupied by the Japanese army, Cantonese-style furniture fell into depression. After the war, it gained gradual recovery and witnessed development till today. At present, Cantonese-style furniture crafts are distributed in many districts in the City of Guangzhou and its surrounding areas, especially concentrated in Shangxiajiu Street, West Guan and Xin Sheng Street in Liwan District where production of Cantonese-style furniture has the longest history.

Cantonese-style furniture mainly adopts valuable hardwood like rosewood, mahogany, rose wood, etc. Adding that its main origin is in Guangzhou, it is also called “Cantonese-style Hardwood Furniture”. The materials it uses are very exquisite. The hardwood that is selected shall have these features: dark color, great density and fine texture. One piece of furniture uses only one kind of wood, sometimes, even one timber. The manufacture craft consists of several procedures: designing, cutting, moulding unburnt earthenware, decorating, polishing, waxing, assembling, etc. Each procedure demands accuracy and delicacy. Special attention is paid to the overall shape and structure in making preliminary model so as to reflect the unique style of Cantonese-style furniture. The decorating part is the most characteristic one which is featured with Baroque Style of integrating sculpture, inlaying and color painting as well as Rococo Style of integrating various techniques and methods in one. The sculpture boasts the techniques of relief carving, circular carving, line engraving, etc. The openwork carving is especially favored with its skillful way of carving, dimensional arrangement and delicacy. Inlaying part is even more exquisite. The following new techniques are from its original creation: Marble Inlay which embeds the marble in the tabletop and chair back; Mother-of-Pearl Inlay which adopts colorful mother-of-pearl; Gem Inlay which uses materials like amber, agate, coral, gem, gold and silk, tooth, horn, wood, porcelain, etc.; different patterns of Bone Inlay such as high inlay, flat inlay, mix inlay; decorative techniques such as gold drawing, color painting, pasting yellow bamboo slice, wiry enamel, etc. All these techniques help the craft of inlaying reach the perfect. Finally, the elaborately decorated furniture needs polishing and waxing. Generally, there is no need to paint the furniture and let the bare wood out so as to display its natural character.(https://www.daowen.com)

There are several series in Cantonese-style hardwood furniture: cabinet, bed, desk, chair, etc. The furniture is characterized by rich and varied designs and decorations, for example, dragon, phoenix, lion and sea turtle, all kinds of flowers, pastoral scenery and stories of ancient heroes. With the brilliant decorative effect, magnificent appearance and elegant and spectacular style, Cantonese-style furniture seized the eyes of Li Yu, the famous dramatist in the years of Emperor Kangxi in the Qing Dynasty. He highly praised it as “the extremely delicate craft”. As an important branch of China’s traditional furniture, Cantonese-style furniture which combines both Chinese and Western techniques occupies an important position in the history of furniture craft. In 2008, it was enlisted into the list of the second batch of statelevel intangible cultural heritage.

Due to the lack of valuable raw material of hardwood, violent hit of the furniture made of modern new materials, the hardship of mastering traditional crafts and the low rate of having talents, Cantonese-style hardwood furniture is faced with crisis of no succession. There is an urgent need to support and protect the Crafts of Cantonese-style Hardwood Furniture.