How to make lanterns for Lantern Festival How to make lanterns for Lantern Festival

The production process of lanterns is relatively complicated. Its production process generally includes conceptualization, tie embryo, mounting, decoration, assembly of several links.

The embryo is the beginning of the lantern production process. It is the basic skeleton of the work. In the old days with bamboo production, later changed to lead wire, more conducive to the stability of its shape. Bamboo production lanterns with bamboo, the bamboo must choose a specific species of bamboo, the Chaoshan people called "Miaoer bamboo". This kind of bamboo is more flexible and elastic, and is not easy to be deformed.

When making the lanterns, artists split the whole bamboo into pieces of uniform size and thickness, and break down the work into several main geometric shapes: round, square, conical, or angular. The bamboo pieces are tied together to form its external frame, and then put together to form the overall form of the work.

Mounting is divided into two parts: mounting the embryo and mounting the surface. Mounting the embryo is similar to molding the embryo in clay sculpture. The difference is that the paper used for mounting the embryo is made by the local method, which is called "grass paper" by the artists.

According to the size of the gap between the lantern embryo (skeleton), the paper to the whole, individual parts may be mounted on several layers, or even dozens of layers to make up for the embryo frame in the performance of the work on the shortcomings. This link is a further refinement of the form of the work. If the lanterns to light, this link can not do, and directly mounted.