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Spending Winter Days- New Year Paiting of Wuqiang, Hebei in Qing Dynasty

New Year picture is an image carrier of the Spring Festival culture. In China, by the close of the year, New Year pictures are pasted in many places to add auspicious atmosphere. As an age-old art, New Year pictures give expressions to the lifestyle and features of the people, their sentiments and aesthetic tastes. New Year pictures fall into three types in terms of working process: prints, carved paper and paper drawn. Prints mainly refer to ancient woodcut print. The working process includes primarily drawing draft, sketching outline, woodcutting, making plates, printing, painting and framing. Carved paper refers to carving

Ten Thousand Tael of Gold, auspicious painting of Suzhou, Jiangsu, in Qing Dynasty

patterns on paper, which gives a fine and vivid picture. Paper drawn, or gray put, refers to a special craft in which the artists use charcoal sticks to draw draft of lines, and then put drawing paper on the draft, by applying willow branch burning ash on it and copy, a few copies can be produced from each draft. To produce a beautiful painting, a set of processed have to be followed including coloring, lining in black, opening the facial features, rinsing hand, etc. “Gray put” pictures began to surface during the Chenghua Period (1465-1487) and became influential later on. The Japanese ukiyoe had assimilated the essence of the techniques of gray put.

The New Year Pictures originated from the door-god just like the spring couplets. According to the book Du Duan by Cai Yi (132-192) of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the pictures of Shen Tu and Yu Ler, two gods guarding the gateway to the high spirits were passed on the doors of the ordinary people. It was said that when Emperor Taizong of Tang Dynasty fell ill, he heard ghosts and monsters wail outside his sleeping quarters which disturbed his sleep all through the night. Knowing this, the two senior generals, Qin Shubao and Wei Chigong, offered to stand guard at the royal palace, one holding a sword, and the other two iron staffs. Later on, the emperor had the picture of these two generals drawn and pasted them on the palate gate. Since then, the custom of pasting door gods spread among the people. One is Qin Shubao, white faced with phoenix eyes, holding two maces; the other is Wei Chigong, black faced with round eyes, holding double iron-staffs.
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Eight Immortals Celebrating Birthday, a Beijing painted papercut of Qing Dynasty, collected by Wang Shucun

Paper cutting is a long-standin decorative folk art in China. The cutter first draws the designs on a piece of paper and then cuts it out with scissors or a knife. In the countryside, paper cuts are often stuck on windows and doors as auspicious and joyful decorations to mark festival and happy occasions. Often decorative patterns like beby, gourd, lots, etc. can be used to symbolize plenty of offspring and plenty of blessings. As a type of folk art, paper cutting evinces distinctive local features: unpretentious and uninhibited as in Shaanxi; graceful and fine as in Hebei ; resplendent and orderly as in Sichuan; exquisite and pleasing as in Jiangsu. Paper cuts are also used for decorating gifts or as a gift itself.

There are two chief crafts in preparing paper cutting, the scissor-cutting approach and the knife-cutting approach. Just as the terms suggest, with the scissor-cutting approach, the scissors are sued as tool. Component parts of a pattern are cut at first and paste into a whole, an then clip the pattern with sharp scissors to make a fine finish. By knife-cutting approach a paper is folded into several layers, which is placed on a soft mixture of ash and animal fat, and then cut carefully with a small knife. In comparison with scissor cutting, knife cutting can have more patterns cut at one time.

With reference to the skills, paper cutting falls into cut-in-relief, intaglio and mixed carving. The relief cutting process is

Eight Immortals, a figure papercut of Huangxian, Shandong in QingDynasty, kept in Shandong Art Gallery

a development of traditional Chinese linear pattern tracing approach. Works done using such approach are extraordinary exquisite with the lines cut as fine as hair. By intaglio the images appear more dignified and unaffected with bright spots or white lines incised into dark surface. The mixed carving suing relief cutting an incised into dark surface. The mixed carving using relief cutting and incised cutting alternatively, further enriched paper-cut manifestation. With respect to coloring, there are multicolor cutting, dyeing cutting and golden color cutting. By multicolor cutting, more than two polychrome sheets are put together to form a pattern before cutting. By dyeing cutting, dyeing liquid is dripped onto finished paper-cuts. The permeability of water can make the different colors seeping into each other without being confused, thus producing a bright and gorgeous effect. By golden color cutting, patterns are cut using golden paper and then set off with all sorts of colored paper so as to appeat resplendent and magnificent, suitable for festival decoration.
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Animal-mask patterned cong (long hollow piece of jade) of the Liangzhu Culture, 8.8cm high, about 6,500g in weight

Jade has been cherished by the Chinese as a symbol of man virtues. Its hardness suggests firmness and loyalty, and its luster projects purity and beauty. Typical subjects are carvings of flowers, animals, vases, and human figures.
In the Neolithic Age, when people gradually recognized colored stone similar to jade in choosing stone for making implements, they used such stone to make implements, ornaments and sacrificial offerings. The colored stone turned items can be called the embryonic form of jade artworks, which can be traced back to the Hemudu Culture in China. By the middle and late yeas of the Neolithic Age, jade-carving had been detached from stone ware making to become an independent handicraft. China is a major jade producer in the world. According to Shan Hai Jing (Book on Mountains and Seas), an ancient writing about geography, there are more than two hundred palces where jade is found, which means that the source of jade is inexhaustible in China. Hetian of Xinjiang is a well-known place of JDE ORIGIN IN China; Jiuquan of Gansu, Lantian of Shaanxi, Dushan and Mixian of Henan, and Xiuyan of Liaoning are also rich in quality jade resources.

Generally, the procedure of jade carving includes jade observation, designing, opening, piercing, cutting and polishing.

Yu the Great Curbing the Flood, a jade carving of Qing Dynasty, the world’s largest jade piece. 224cm high, 96cm wide, more than 5,000kg in weight. It is now kept in Palace Museum.

Tang Rongzuo, a collector in the late Qing Dynasty, once wrote a book entitled Of Jade in which the working procedure, methods and implements in carving jade ware are illustrated with twelve color drawings. As viewed from the perspective of craft, a jade artwork with superb workmanship excelling nature is not made by carvin, but by grinding with water using minerals such as emery, silicon, garnet, etc. that are harder than jade. Therefore the process of jade making is called jade rolling or jade grinding. While the skills in grinding jade are superb, the tools used are simple and crude. The primitive implement used is simply a revolving round disk called tuo (emery wheel), which is used to move emery which rubs, smoothes and polished jade. During he Neolithic Age and the Bronze Age when ironware was not yet been invented, tools used were largely made from wood, bamboo, animal bone compounded with sandstone. Until the modern times, Chinese people always used traditional tools in the manufacture of jade artworks such as wire saw, round disc made of steel and wrought iron, etc.
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