| Arts and Crafts |
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China is home to a wide variety of arts and crafts,
such as sculpture, metal work, eaving and embroidery, folk
paintings, ceramics, and lacquerware in addition to
traditional folk arts such as papercuts, lanterns, kites and
toys. Jadeware, ivory carving, cloisonn, embroidery and
porcelain produced in China are famed the world
over.
China's major jade-carving centers are in
Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Liaoning, Jiangsu and
Xinjiang. Large pieces of jade carving often come in the
form of censers, vases, figures, birds, animals and flowers.
Smaller jade items include brooches, rings, cigarette
holders and seals. Major ivory carving centers are in
Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai, with each city claiming its
own style. Beijing is famed for lifelike ivory carvings of
human figures rendered in the round and other delicately
colored articles. Guangzhou creates exquisitely hollowed-out
concentric ivory balls, boats, and floral towers. Shanghai
is famous for its uniquely delicate ivory portrayal of
freshwater mussels and fish. The art of miniature ivory
carving also thrives in Beijing and Shanghai; artisans carve
landscapes or lengthy texts on tiny slips of ivory the size
of a grain of rice. Their work truly seems
miraculous.
Cloisonn is a kind of decorative
enamelware created by artisans who mount a delicate pattern
of copper strips on the surface of a metal roughcast. The
areas within the strips are then filled with enamel pastes
of different colors and the copper strips are soldered. Thus
prepared, the cloisonn to be is fired then polished and
gilded, producing a resplendent interweaving of metal and
enamel. Decorative cloisonn works include plates, vases,
censers and jars; functional items include table lamps,
fruit dishes, candy jars, and stationery or smoking sets.
Beijing is a major producer of cloisonn. Many of its
products have been selected as valuable gifts to be
presented to distinguished foreign
guests.
Artisans produce embroidery by hand
employing several dozen types of stitches to create the
desired texture, color, gradation and spatial effects.
China's four famous styles of embroidery are those of
Suzhou, Hunan, Sichuan and Guangdong. Suzhou embroidery is
famous for its cats and goldfish, Hunan embroidery for its
lions and tigers, Sichuan embroidery for its carp, roosters
and cockscombs and Guangdong embroidery for its warmly
decorative One Hundred Birds Worshiping the Phoenix set
against a panoramic backdrop of the sun, green pines, green
bamboo, peonies and red plum blossoms.
Ceramics
were produced in China in very ancient times. Main producers
of porcelain today include Jingdezhen in Jiangxi, Liling in
Hunan, Dehua in Fujian, Tangshan and Handan in Hebei, Linru
and Yuxian in Henan, Longquan in Zhejiang and Zibo in
Shandong. Porcelain from China's famous porcelain capital
Jingdezhen is well-known both at home and abroad. It is, to
quote a popular saying, "as white as jade, as bright as
a mirror, as thin as paper, and as sonorous as a chime of
bells." The city's eggshell, blue-and-white, famille
rose and colorful-glazed porcelains are famous all over the
world. Yixing in Jiangsu is known as China's pottery capital
for its much-admired purplish-brown teapots made from local
clay of the same color. Simple and unsophisticated in form,
the fine-grained teapots have a distinctively Chinese style.
Tea made in an Yixing teapot keeps its fragrance and flavor
for a long time thanks to the special qualities of this
purplish-brown clay; similarly, food cooked in an Yixing
earthernware pot is especially delicious.
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