Nanjing Wood Carving

Nanjing Wood Carving

　　Nanjing wood carving is a renowned specialty of Nanjing, Jiangsu. The wood carvings in Nanjing are divided into antique-style wood carvings and boxwood carvings. Antique-style wood carvings feature simple, dignified colors and excel in imitations of Tang Dynasty horses. Their arhat and deity statues also achieve a lifelike harmony between form and spirit, making them distinctive. Boxwood carvings primarily depict animals and human figures. Wood carving is a type of sculpture and is often referred to as "folk craft" in our country. It can be divided into three main categories: three-dimensional round carving, root carving, and relief carving. Wood carving is a craft that branched off from carpentry and is classified in our national occupational categories as "fine woodworking." It is a type of folk art categorized by the carving material used. Typically, woods with fine texture, toughness, and resistance to deformation—such as nanmu, rosewood, camphorwood, cypress, ginkgo, agarwood, mahogany, and longan—are selected. Artworks carved from naturally shaped tree roots are called "root carvings." Wood carving includes techniques such as round carving, relief carving, openwork carving, or a combination of several methods. Some pieces are also colored to protect the wood and enhance their beauty.

　　It is said that boxwood carving was invented by a shepherd boy named Ye Chengrong during the late Qing Dynasty. Ye Chengrong was from Yueqing County, Zhejiang. One day, while playing at a temple at the entrance of his village, he saw an elderly man sculpting a Buddha statue inside. He was instantly captivated by the man's skill. He ran outside, tied the cow to a tree, dug up some sticky clay, sat by the temple entrance, and secretly began imitating the molding process. The elderly man was a well-known local folk artist who, noticing Ye Chengrong’s intelligence and eagerness to learn, took him on as an apprentice and taught him five skills: round modeling, clay sculpture, coloring, gilding, and relief carving. He progressed rapidly and had mastered these techniques within a year. One day, while sculpting Buddha statues at Zixia Temple on BaoTai Mountain in Yueqing County, a Taoist priest from the temple broke off a piece of boxwood and asked him to carve a hairpin from it. During the carving process, Ye Chengrong discovered that boxwood was tough, had fine grain, and possessed a luster unmatched by other types of wood—it was an excellent material for carving. From then on, he began creating artworks using boxwood. And so, boxwood carving was born in the garden of Chinese folk art. Ye Chengrong’s boxwood carvings were made using pointed chisels, resulting in the folds of clothing appearing somewhat stiff, resembling nail-head and mouse-tail lines. By the end of the Qing Dynasty, a folk artist named Zhu Zhiqi from Wenzhou modified the technique, using a semi-circular chisel called a "reverse mouth" to carve fabric folds, producing smoother and more elegant results. In 1972, Premier Zhou Enlai gifted the "Red Silk Dance" boxwood carving, created by Wenzhou artist Ye Runzhou, to the visiting Canadian delegation. Today, boxwood carving enjoys fame both in China and abroad.