What is the origin of lacquer line carving in China?

China's lacquer line carving technology originated from powder leaching and clay line carving.

Lacquer line carving originated in Quanzhou, Fujian. It is one of the artistic treasures in the treasure house of Chinese lacquer art culture and a unique traditional craft in southern Fujian. Lacquer line carving has been applied to the decoration of Buddha statues since the prosperity of colored sculptures in the Tang Dynasty, commonly known as "makeup Buddha", which has been widely circulated for a long time as a special industry.

Lacquer line carving is exquisite and elegant in craft, vivid in image, simple and solemn in style and lifelike in picture. It is a wonderful flower in art gardens and a must for China. Lacquer line carving is a traditional folk handicraft with a long history and unique characteristics in Quanzhou, Fujian, with a history of 1400 years. Then spread in Quanzhou for many years.

Lacquer line carving is the heritage of the carving art of ancient Buddha statues, and its inspiration comes from the line carving technology in Song and Yuan Dynasties, especially the line carving with dripping powder and mud. It was formed in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties and gradually matured in the late Qing Dynasty. Its development in southern Fujian is closely related to the prosperity of folk religion and the prosperity of the sculpture industry of gods and buddhas.

In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, Quanzhou craftsmen began to apply lacquer line carving technology to the decoration of temples and statues of gods and buddhas. Due to the immature technology and rough materials, mainly glutinous rice flour and wooden tires, the works generally have the defects of short shelf life, easy moth-eaten and easy deformation.

Later, craftsmen found that mixing red brick powder with paint solution to make paint mud, and then attaching the paint mud to the wooden tire for carving, can last for several years, even more than ten years. Since then, lacquer line carving as a unique handicraft began to flow to the market, but the early lacquer line carving works were few in number and expensive, and only some fine works were collected in Minnan temples in Kangxi period of Qing Dynasty.

Technological characteristics of lacquer line carving

1. Lacquer line carving was first applied to the decoration of Buddha statues. Lacquer line carving is hand-made and quite complicated. The process has developed from simple strip, carving and engraving to ten pure manual processes such as strip, board, winding, stacking, carving and engraving. A product needs months or even years of professional production time, with exquisite workmanship, vivid image, simple and elegant style and vivid picture, and each product is not the same.

2. The traditional lacquer line carving process in Quanzhou is: 1, lacquer line mud making, 2, foundation laying, 3, design and modeling, 4, base tire making, 5, twisting, 6, lacquer line carving, 7, painting, 8, white mud, 9, painting, 10, and pasting. As far as creative design of works is concerned, sculpture is the first; As far as the special aesthetic feeling of art is concerned, the skill of lacquer line decoration is the key.

3. Lacquer line carving is made by blending old brick powder, lacquer, cooked tung oil and other raw materials. After repeated beating, it becomes a soft and tough mud mass, commonly known as "lacquer line soil", and then it is rubbed into "lacquer line" by hand, and then it is coiled, knotted, wound and piled on the primer-coated blank to carve various exquisite and embossed patterns and figures.