Brick carving art

Brick carving is a process of carving objects or patterns on special fine-grained soil bricks. Mainly used for wall decoration of temples, tombs, houses and other buildings. There were flower bricks in the Warring States period, and portrait bricks in the Han Dynasty were even more famous. But most of them are die-printed brick carvings. In the Tang Dynasty, ceramic tiles were carved after die printing. Brick-carved tombs were very popular in the Song Dynasty. The carving method gradually changed from lowering the horizon (gold and gold) to multi-layer relief. Brick carving in Ming and Qing dynasties is rich in content and more exquisite in technique. In addition to single-layer relief, there are also multi-layer relief and brick stacking techniques. The general production procedures of folk brick carving are brick repair (using water mill bricks), sample installation (sticking patterns on the brick surface), sample engraving (carving the outline of patterns with a small chisel), blank making (chiseling out peripheral lines first, then chiseling out main lines and secondary chisel), thinning (further fine carving) and grinding (fine grinding with coarse stones). If the brick has sand holes, it should also be repaired with pig blood and brick ash. Finally finished.