Yueqing Boxwood Carving

Yueqing, the cradle of boxwood carving, is located on the southeast coast of Zhejiang Province, East China. Yueqing boxwood carving ranks alongside Dongyang wood carving and Qingtian stone carving as one of the top three carving arts of Zhejiang. This craft has also spread to surrounding areas like Wenzhou, Yongjia, Hangzhou and Shanghai.

Boxwood carving, which has a history of about 900 years, is basically a kind of circular carving. Boxwood has a creamy, yellowish color, which darkens over time, giving it an elegant and classic look.

About Boxwood

Boxwood carving was named after the material used to engrave on, boxwood. Boxwood is a slow-growing plant with a diameter of only 15 centimeters after 40 or 50 years of growth. As a very precious and rare form of wood, Chinese little leaf boxwood usually grows in virgin forests, high mountains, or precipices. The plant blossoms in winter and seeds in spring. A saying goes that "a thousand-year-old boxwood plant would not be enough to make a small piece", which vividly describes its slow growth. Boxwood was the best material for small alto-relievo carving because of its toughness, smoothness, simplicity and fine grain.

Legend

Concerning the origin of boxwood carving, there is a legend, which states the art form was invented by a child cowherd called Ye Chengrong, who was a local of Yueqing County.

According to the story, one day the boy was playing in a temple at the end of the village, and found an old man carving a Buddha figure. He was immediately attracted and tied his cow to a tree. Ye found a piece of sticky mud, and sitting in front of the temple began to imitate the old man. The old man was a famous local artisan. Finding Ye very intelligent and fond of learning, he decided to take the child on as his apprentice, and taught him about circular carving, clay sculpture, dyeing, gilding (gold plating) and relief.

The boy learned very fast, and a year later mastered these skills. One day, while Ye was sculpting some Taoist figures, the Taoist in the temple found a branch of boxwood and asked him to carve a hairpin. While carving the boxwood, Ye found the nature of the wood very hard, the grains very exquisite, and the color and luster outstanding. He deemed it a good raw material for woodcarving, and so began boxwood carving, a very rare and precious genre of folk art in China.

Carving boxwood

The main artistic feature of boxwood carving is that all the works are made based on their original shapes, maximizing the use of the wood. Though there are many methods, the most prominent and popular way is circular carving.

The tools involved in woodcarving include a mud hammer, sculpting shelf, clay sculpture box, caliper (a kind of measurement tool), and scraper, as well as various kinds of knives. The tools used to shape the rough biscuit include a saw, wood hammer and steel hammer, while the tools for carving are mainly chisels such as broad, flat and groove chisels.

Enchasing is the most delicate technique in wood carving in that it makes works exquisite, refined, graceful and dynamic.

There are three categories of Yueqing boxwood carving: the traditional genre, which features human figures both in individual and in groups; the root carving genre, which is carved out of boxwood roots; and cleaved boxwood carving.

The carving process generally involves more than ten steps such as designing drafts, selecting materials, making the initial biscuits and polishing. First a sketch has to be made. Then the artist has to in succession sculpt the clay model, select fine wood, carve and then polish the wood, carve the grains, wax, and arrange the base. To produce boxwood carvings of good quality, each of these complicated procedures has to be done very carefully.