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Ivory carving refers to the carving process with ivory as the material and its finished products, referred to as ivory carving. Guangzhou ivory carving, also known as Southern School ivory carving, is known for its delicate and exquisite lustrous. During the Qin and Han dynasties, ivory carvings already appeared in Guangzhou, and there were ivory products among the cultural relics excavated from the tombs of the Nanyue kings of the Western Han Dynasty. By the Tang and Song dynasties, Guangzhou ivory carving began to form its own stylistic characteristics. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, guangzhou ivory carving flourished, and in the 1950s and 1980s, it became more brilliant.
(National representative inheritor of ivory carving, Zhang Minhui's work "Dragon and Phoenix Peony", wenmu shooting)
Guangzhou ivory carving products are mainly divided into three categories: appreciation, practical products and decorations. Appreciation products include ivory balls, flower boats, etc., practical products such as folding fans, chopsticks, bookmarks, decorations such as bracelets, necklaces, earrings, rings, etc., which can be described as containing all aspects of life, both to the elegant hall and into the people's homes. At the same time, as a famous foreign trade port, Guangzhou's export of ivory carving is also very prosperous, so ivory carving tends to realistic style, and also absorbs the advantages of foreign large curly leaves, realistic flowers and other patterns.
(National representative inheritor of ivory carving, Zhang Minhui's work "Jixing Gaozhao", taken by Wenmu)
The tools used for carving in Guangzhou include scrapers, files, chisels and so on. Due to the warm climate in Guangzhou, the ivory is not easy to brittle and crack, which is suitable for hollow carving and drilling, so it has formed a production process characteristic with skeleton carving and mosaic as the core. Among them, skeleton carving is the traditional skill of Guangzhou ivory carving, and mosaic is regarded as the innovative development of Guangzhou ivory carving.
In the 1990s, China began to ban the import and export of ivory raw materials, and by 2017, the commercial processing and sale of ivory was completely stopped, and the ivory carving technology began to seek transformation. Southern ivory carving is also actively looking for a new way out in this situation, and non-hereditary inheritors continue to pass on the thousand-year-old skills of ivory carving using raw materials such as mammoth ivory and cow bone.