Bamboo,
pine and plum, which called "three good friends
in the cold years", are always popular among the
people, including the poets, artists and handicraftsmen,
etc. The common bamboo gives us a super beauty sense.
Therefore, collecting the arts of bamboo carving
is the hobby of Chinese people since long time ago.
It was few bamboo carving came down before the
Ming dynasty. But since the middle of Ming dynasty,
the bamboo carving became a professional type in
the industrial arts and more and more artists began
this work, which made the character changed from
its practice to a kind of artwork for people's enjoying.
Jiading and Jinling area which teemed of bamboo
were the two centers of the bamboo carving arts
in the Ming and Qing dynasties. The Jiading faction
has the representative of Zhuhe, Zhuying, Zhu Zhuizheng,
three generations. They were all good at the techniques
of painting, embossment and round carving, among
which the embossment consists of bass and high embossment.
They had high culture with the crambo skill, painting,
calligraphy and seal cutting technique, so all of
the characters on the bamboo were carved vividly.
Under the effort of Family Zhu, Jiading faction
became the biggest branch in the world at that period
with another outstanding person such as Hou Xiaozeng,
Shen Dasheng, Wang Yongfang, Wang Zhiyu, Wangzhi,
Wu Zhifan, Shi Tianzhang, Zhoupo and Gu Zhangyu.
Jinling faction had another style, which paid no
attention to the exquisite carvings, pursued the
nature taste with little cut and polish. The main
technique is the concave carving in the bamboo,
which the excellence was more sentiment could be
embodied with not only the line, but also the side
inlay on the carving of the landscape. Jinling faction
set up in the middle of Ming dynasty, Pu Zongqian
was the founder. Actually, it was extremely pity
that no one of his relation continued the artworks
after he died.
The other two carving of "peel then carve" and
"carve then peel" appeared on the basis of the Ming
dynasty. The first one was saw the bamboo into bamboo
tube, remove the burl and the green surface, then
glue and inlay the wood and bamboo after cooking,
basking and pressing, finally, polish the surface
and carve the pattern on it. Oppositely, the second
one was that keep the green surface to carve the
pattern on it, then remove the surface out of the
pattern, the real bamboo body appeared. It set up
in the middle of Qing dynasty.