In addition to the familiar stone carvings, wood carvings, jade carvings, core carvings, brick carvings, and ivory carvings, have you heard of corner carvings ?
"The Head of Wealth"
"Ancient Romance of the Silk Road"
40 achievement 1 shrimp
"Suddenly...suddenly...suddenly..." As the sounds fluctuated, the horned shrimp polished in Bai Yaohua's hand became brighter and brighter. Unlike usually sanding with sandpaper, he uses chaff ash.
"Crch ash is made by homemade and needs to be burned until the carbonization is 98%. The polishing effect looks particularly fine and soft, and there is also a mirror effect of green and blue light. This cannot be achieved with emery and sand paper." Bai Yaohua didn't know who first used this "earth method". Anyway, since he was engaged in the horn carving industry, everyone has done this.
"Spring Tide"
In the Beihai Golden Bat Corner Sculpture Cultural and Creative Art Museum located in the "Marine Silk Road Arts and Crafts Expo Park" in Beihai, Guangxi, it not only displays old horn sculptures collected by Bai Yaohua from all over the place, but also gathers almost all his classic works over the years, such as eagles spreading their wings and flying, like fish and shrimp swimming in the water, and especially river shrimps with clear visible shrimp lines, which are amazing.
"Honored Luck"
"To achieve this effect, you can only use the white buffalo horns with transparent horns." Bai Yaohua carefully picked up "a group of shrimps and crabs" and explained: "The shrimps in this work are carved from white ox horns. The white ox horns mainly come from Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan. They are divided into pure white ox horns and striped white ox horns. Only pure white ox horns are the best materials for carving shrimps and crabs."
different ox horns
rely on With more than 40 years of experience in horn carving, Bai Yaohua can distinguish the kind of horn horns used in horn carving works and what should be suitable for carving: this is our Guangxi black buffalo horn, which is small and thick and evenly horned, and is suitable for making bases; while the black buffalo horns in Jinghong and Xishuangbanna in Yunnan are black on the outside and blue on the inside, and the eagle feathers carved are layered; the yellow horns in Inner Mongolia are more suitable for carving small goldfish because of their thin horns...
"Spring Tide" details2
horn carving has many themes, and shrimps are always the most commonly expressed subject matter. This is because shrimp is the subject that best expresses the characteristics of horn carving. "Looking at the skills of the horn carving artist, you can see a little bit by looking at the shrimps he carved." Therefore, Bai Yaohua, each shrimp, has worked hard to conceive and carve, and has vividly shown the lifelike expression of the shrimp, the shrimp whiskers as thin as silk threads, the shrimp feet that are paddling, and the shrimp lines clearly visible in their bodies.
The Chinese Dream in the World of Corner Sculptures
"It is said that art originates from life, but for me, doing art requires solving life first. I have a deep understanding of this." In that era, working in a good unit was the pursuit of most people, because Bai Yaohua was a child of overseas Chinese and did not have to go to the countryside. He was arranged by the county United Front Work Department to study corner sculpture production at Hepu County Arts and Crafts Factory. "At that time, I was relatively introverted, and the independent work of horn carving art was particularly suitable for me, so I never wanted to let go of it once I picked up the carving knife."
Small corner carving work
Although the opportunity was rare, Bai Yaohua had to choose to leave because he couldn't stand the work "too rigid and too monotonous". In the late 1980s, Bai Yaohua resigned from Hepu Arts and Crafts Factory and started a business with his wife Zhong Wenlan. I started with 2,000 yuan, and it lasted for a long time when the electricity bill was paid and the material bill could not be paid.
"Enjoy the World"
Later, the situation gradually improved. He began to create some works he liked and occasionally attended exhibitions. Once, a professor read his work and said bluntly: "Although your work is very exquisite, it lacks innovation. Can you tell me what the theme of the work is?"
"I was stunned at that time. At that time, I only knew how to work hard, so how could I think of this?" This basin of cold water awakened Bai Yaohua. It was also from this time that he began to constantly explore the theme and depth of his work. In this case, his classic work "Chinese Dream" appeared.
In order to create this work, Bai Yaohua spent 4 months conceiving it. Because of the need for breakthroughs, Bai Yaohua is really unsure whether he can succeed. "During that time, my heart was hanging. It was a big bet, and I spent hundreds of thousands of yuan on raw materials alone. When facing such a work, my hands were shaking when I put them in. Sometimes, I felt like I had no more, so I could only stop; sometimes inspiration suddenly appeared, and I had to get up and remember it on the paper even in the middle of the night." It took me a year and a half to polish it.
"Chinese Dream" details1
"Chinese Dream" details2
2
2014, when "Chinese Dream" appeared at the Dongyang National Arts and Crafts Masters' original "Hundred Flowers Cup" works exhibition, it was praised by many experts and audiences. Each shrimp in the work has its own shape and is vivid, but while approving it, some people also questioned the name of the work "Chinese Dream": "Why does it represent the 'Chinese Dream'? Not a dragon, phoenix or other animals or birds?"
"In Chinese history and culture, shrimp and dragon are the same species, and shrimp are the reincarnation of dragons." Bai Yaohua had long expected such a question, and he only knew it when searching for information. Later, this work won the gold medal of the original "Hundred Flowers Cup" by the National Arts and Crafts Masters of Dongyang that year.
"Harmony of Hundreds of Wealth"
"Flowers and Full Moon"
"Chinese Dream" became a turning point for Bai Yaohua. After that, every once in a while, he would come up with a work that was eye-catching, such as "Harmony of Hundreds of Wealth", "Flowers and Full Moon", "Spring Tide", etc., and successively won the National "Golden Phoenix Cup" Gold Award, the China Xuzhou Folk Crafts Expo Boutique Award and Gold Award. Bai Yaohua has also gradually entered the ranks of leaders in the horn carving art industry in China, and in 2016 and 2018, he became a representative inheritor of the horn carving skills of Guangxi's intangible cultural protection heritage project and a master of Chinese arts and crafts.
Creating high-quality works is also a way to inherit
"Hand-hand drawing is the basic skill of our horn carving artists, but it does not reject the use of modern machinery. Drawing three-dimensional renderings by computers can see the design effect more clearly." Bai Yaohua will also use machinery in processes such as ox horn cutting and rough grinding.
Traditional corner carving tools1
Traditional corner carving tools2
As early as the 1960s, Hepu Arts and Crafts Factory began to introduce mechanical tools, changing pure hand-made carvings that have been passed down for thousands of years to carving skills assisted by machinery. This not only improves production efficiency, but also allows corner carving products to be exported to the United States, Japan, France, , Singapore and other countries, greatly increasing the popularity of Guangxi corner carvings, and together with Beihai shell carvings and Dongxing stone carvings, they have become the "three carvings" in Guangxi folk tourism products.
"Hepu Arts and Crafts Factory performs the entire process of cutting, engraving, polishing, installation, etc. of corner carving, which not only makes each process more professional and the details more perfect, but also allows new young people to master a certain process production skills in the short term. Although this seems to be unfavorable to the inheritance of skills, it is beneficial for the entire corner carving industry."
It was also from that time that the corner carving industry in Guangxi gradually experienced "two-level differentiation": one is Hepu corner carving represented by ornamental artworks, and the other is Binyang corner carving represented by mass production of practical craft products such as horn brushes and horn combs. Bai Yaohua’s Hepu Golden Bat Corner Carving Craft Factory is one of the representative enterprises of Hepu Corner Carving. Although some processes can be replaced by machinery, in order to maintain the independence of the works, he still insists on purely hand-carving for some key works and processes.
Bai Yaohua is hand-made horn carvings
"Although the three-dimensional engraving machine can be mass-produced, it cannot be used to carve large works. Because the horn materials vary in shape and size, thickness and thickness, they need to be used according to their materials, the engraving machine cannot be mass-produced." Bai Yaohua inherited the horn carving in his own way.
Corner Sculpture Art Museum
In order to better inherit the horn carving skills, Bai Yaohua created the "corner Sculpture Art Museum" integrating creation, inheritance, research, protection, etc., and cooperated with many colleges and universities in Guangxi to cultivate horn carving technical talents. After completing these, Bai Yaohua now handed over the management and training work to his wife Zhong Wenlan, and he devoted more energy to creation.
"There are many kinds of inheritance. I inherit it in the form of works. I hope that later generations can see: in such an era, such a work has been released, so that good works can be passed on to the horn sculptures."
text | Liu Haijun
pictures | Bai Yaohua
