Wuyuan Three Sculptures

Jiangxi
🎧  Listen to Introduction

Wuyuan Three Carvings is the general term for the three folk carving arts of brick, stone and wood in ancient buildings. They are mostly used as decorative parts on buildings such as residential houses, official residences, ancestral halls, temples, covered bridges and archways. In Wuyuan, wherever there are ancient villages and ancient buildings, there are the beautiful Wuyuan Three Carvings. The appearance of Wuyuan Three Carvings was first seen in the decorative paintings on the "Shangshu Di" building of Yu Maoxue in Likeng, Tuochuan in the 24th year of Wanli in the Ming Dynasty (1596). The "Sima Di" newly built by Yu Weishu in the 16th year of Shunzhi in the Qing Dynasty (1659) marked that Wuyuan Three Carvings entered a new stage of development. Wuyuan Three Carvings reached its peak relying on Hui-style architecture, and its related skills are mainly distributed in some towns and villages such as Jiangwan Town, Sikou Town, Longshan Township, Tuochuan Township, Zheyuan Township, Qinghua Town, Huashen Township, and Zhentou Town. Wuyuan's three carvings integrate aesthetics, mechanics, mathematics, historical allusions, and ecological ethics, and have profound cultural connotations and extremely high artistic value. Its carving techniques are very different in style, and a variety of carving techniques can be mixed and used in an unconventional way to make the work achieve an ethereal and clear effect. Brick carvings, one of the three carvings in Wuyuan, are widely used in door covers, door lintels, roof masts, roofs, and roof lintels in Hui-style buildings, especially in gatehouses and door covers in ancient buildings. Its themes include feathers and flowers, dragons, tigers, lions, elephants, forests, gardens, landscapes, and drama characters, which are elegant and solemn. The production process of brick carvings is brick mining, grinding, drawing, carving, and assembly. Its carving techniques include flat relief, relief, and three-dimensional carving. The brick carving materials are taken from the local water-milled blue bricks, which are crisp and delicate. The brick carvings in Wuyuan folk houses are extremely sophisticated. When grinding blue bricks, a skilled craftsman is only allowed to grind out three finished products a day. One more piece is a reduction in work, and one less piece is laziness. Among the three carvings in Wuyuan, stone carving is used for memorial archways, railings, steps, pillars, door frames and the lower end stones on both sides of the gate. Cuckoo relief and round carving are highly renowned. Its production process is divided into five processes: material selection, modeling, grinding, drawing, carving and assembly. Because the subject matter of stone carving is restricted by the limitations of carving materials and carving tools, it is not as delicate and complicated as wood carving and brick carving. It is mainly animals, plants, Bogu patterns and calligraphy. The overall art is simple and magnificent. The stone carving materials are one of the blue-black Yixian black and the other is green tea green stone. The best is Qingtian stone. Among the three carvings in Wuyuan, wood carving is mostly decorated on screens, columns, front arches, beams, columns, brackets, window rails and other places in the building. Its production process is divided into seven steps: tree selection, board sawing, board drying, grinding, drawing, carving and assembly. The subject matter of wood carving is wide, including figures, landscapes, flowers, animals, insects and fish, Bogu patterns and calligraphy. The requirements for wood carving are very high. Large-scale carved wood such as beams and columns must be made of maple, camphor, cypress, and oak that are more than 100 years old. Wuyuan's three carvings are the essence of Huizhou carving art. The brick, stone, and wood carvings of "Shangshu Di" and "Sima Di" in Likeng, Tuochuan reveal the majesty, grandeur, and inviolability of the official residence. Wangkou's "Yu Clan Ancestral Hall" is known as an art treasure house of three carvings. The three carvings inside this Qing Dynasty building are exquisite and delicate. The corridors, brackets, and beams are all carved with cirrus clouds, exotic flowers and plants, pavilions, bridges, flowing water, and character stories. The layers are clear, the shapes are realistic, and the three-dimensional sense is strong. A picture of teaching children in the Hong Village house is the largest water-milled blue brick carving in Jiangnan today. The periphery of the work is engraved with the endless and auspicious "Hui" pattern, flowers and leaves support the edge, fish leaping and dragon flying, all with hollow carving techniques, fine into Huizhou, smooth and clear. The "Nine Generations Living Together" wood carving works in Likeng bring together various techniques such as shallow carving, divine carving, openwork carving, and hollow carving, which truly reproduces a picture of wealth, peace, flying eaves and curved ridges, carved beams and painted buildings. Whether it is painting, allegory, carving, or frosting, it is extremely neat and skillful. The brushwork is standardized and rigorous, the knife work is smooth, and the proportions and structures are all in line with the rules. The three-carving art is a major feature of Wuyuan architecture. It has flourished with the rise of Huizhou architecture. With the help of line modeling and the expression of Xin'an painting school, it has emerged as an outstanding craft that is famous all over the world. After hundreds of years of inheritance, many famous craftsmen have emerged, including Liu Sanyuan, Cheng Kaigong, Dong Qiming, Wang Leijiu, Yang Sidi, Wang Tianchang, Teng Baoqing, etc.

Intangible culture related to the heritage

China tourist attractions related to the heritage

World heritage related to the heritage