In a studio at the foot of The Haizhu Bridge in Guangzhou, Sun Kaifuzheng, the inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage of Guangzhou Egg Carving Techniques and a visiting professor at the Guangzhou Light Industry Technician College, sat around with his students to comment on the egg carvings of the Year of the Tiger series that had just been carved last night. These egg carvings include cartoons, freehand tigers and paper-cut fuhusels, and carving techniques include hollowing, relief and skeletonization. In order to welcome the Spring Festival of the Year of the Tiger in the Lunar Calendar, Sun Kaifu had a creative idea from a month ago.
Sun Kaifu uses an electric drill to carve ostrich eggs in his studio.
Flower face eggs become lucky tigers
Carving an egg into a "flower face" is not an unattainable art. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, folk had the custom of giving red eggs when they were celebrating weddings, blessing birthdays, and celebrating noble sons. Later, the vendors drew some pictures of flowers, birds, insects, fish, faces, etc. on the eggs to try to make the business prosperous. After years of evolution, the Easter egg process has gradually improved. Nowadays, people hollow out eggs and carve exquisite patterns on the surface of eggshells, forming eggshell crafts that can be preserved for hundreds of years in normal conditions. On the stage of Chinese arts and crafts, egg carving culture has a history of 100 years.
As early as 1982, Sun Kaifu studied carving in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, and officially opened the creation of egg carving in 1998. A small egg has four layers of mysteries under Sun Kaifu's hands. On the Bogu shelf in Sun Kaifu's studio, turtle eggs as small as finger size and ostrich eggs as large as fists are arranged in turn; calligraphy, figures, landscapes, and architecture are beautifully presented on the smooth and brittle eggshells.
"In previous years, I carved the horse "Hundred Juntu" and the chicken "Majestic Wind Song", and this year I carved the tiger with the students." Sun Kaifu made egg carving the zodiac as his annual plan. This year's Lunar New Year, Sun Kaifu also brought his students with him, planning to launch different styles of egg carving tigers. There are so many classic images of tigers, which ones are carved? How to carve? Sun Kaifu chose elements of the Year of the Tiger from cartoons, Chinese paintings and calligraphy based on the artistic characteristics of egg carving and the egg carving skills of his masters and apprentices.
Sun Kaifu and the student's egg carving in the Year of the Tiger.
The material of egg carving is mostly red-skinned eggs, of which the eggs laid by old hens are better. "Red-skinned eggs have colors and can carve more layers, red, pink, light pink, and the lightest layer is white." Sun Kaifu pointed to the egg carving materials he processed to introduce the exquisiteness of picking eggs. For egg carving, the eggs laid by the old hen are good, but most of the eggs in the market are fresh eggs produced by broilers, and Sun Kaifu also made a lot of effort to buy eggs. "I held the egg to the lamp of the market, a plate of eggs as long as a few, the owner of the market is of course not happy, how can this customer do so many things." Sun Kaifu smiled and recalled the scene of buying eggs, "I have to explain to the boss that I used this for carving, to have a thick shell and no scars." Now, Sun Kaifu and the owner of the nearby vegetable market who sell eggs have become old acquaintances, and his egg carving materials have a more stable quality.
The taste of the egg carving master
What does New Year's Eve smell like? Sun Kaifu's memory of the taste of the year is related to childhood. "When I was a child in the north, the New Year was very cold, and Chinese New Year's Eve I started setting off firecrackers at 11:30 p.m., and gradually put them on 1:00 p.m. The gunpowder smelled good. He remembers that the Spring Festival is cold, and new clothes can only be worn in the New Year, he said, "The firecrackers that children get in the New Year are a fixed number, they have to be saved, play part of them today, and leave the rest to play tomorrow, I also know that firecrackers can be put louder on the kang." ”
More than 60 years of life ups and downs, Sun Kaifu has walked through the northeast, Gansu, Jiangxi, Guangdong and other places, has a rich experience of the new year, the "firecracker tips" has long been useless, but it wrapped the joy of childhood, blowing up the smell of time.
Because of the epidemic, this year Sun Kaifu canceled his plan to go to Shanghai to celebrate the New Year with his daughter and chose to celebrate the New Year with his wife in Guangzhou. "Last year I spent time with my daughter in Shanghai, and this year I stayed in Guangzhou, and I will definitely have a video with my daughter!" For Sun Kaifu, the new year is the smell of firecrackers, a warm greeting to his daughter on the phone, and the few smokes he rubbed against the electric drill during egg carving.
Attaching importance to the New Year is the theme of Sun Kaifu's intangible cultural heritage creation, and it also carries his expectations for the atmosphere of the New Year. "This time, I carved a more realistic tiger on the egg, referring to the tiger in the Chinese painting." The details of the tiger fur under Sun Kaifu's knife are clearly visible, and the tiger skin pattern of the egg carving cleverly applies the spots of the egg itself, and the sculptural traces are not heavy but layered. "As an artist, it is very important to celebrate the festival, and I think that setting off the atmosphere of the festival is also the function of this art." Sun Kaifu attaches great importance to the elements of the season in the choice of egg carving themes, which are derived from folk life, and with the continuous progress of tools and the increasingly exquisite craftsmanship, they have not changed the sincere nature of "grounding gas" and "seasons".
Sun Kaifu and students are carving eggs.
Pass on memories with skill
In Sun Kaifu's studio, the finished egg carving will be placed in the glass cover of the built-in LED lamp, and under the reflection of the light, the Year of the Tiger series works will slowly rotate, appearing lustrous and transparent, dazzling and dazzling. But at the foot of Sun Kaifu's workbench, there is a special glass cover. Inside this large glass cover were piled up failed egg carvings with different postures, "This is the failure of my practice of hollow egg carving, and I also collect them, and the more I get to the back, the fewer the failed ones." Sun Kaifu said. When talking about the failure rate of egg carving, he admits that it is a fragile art. In the process of egg carving, as long as the force is not carefully made a slight mistake, several months of hard work will be wasted.
Sun Kaifu's student Li Fabin also participated in the production of the Year of the Tiger series of egg carvings, as a non-hereditary heir of the egg carvings in Jiangmen City, Li Fabin said: "I chose the cartoon tiger according to my hobby, the tiger carved on the egg is a relief carving technique, and the hollowing technique is also used on the emus egg." The emu egg was originally dark green, and when carving, the thinner the carved egg, the lighter the color of the egg, and I only finished this work in the middle of the night last night, carving until two o'clock in the middle of the night. "The emu egg carving mentioned by Li Fabin is placed in the middle of the egg carving studio visualizer, the hollowed-out carved emus egg is light blue as a whole under the light, and the embossed tiger in the middle also shows different levels of three-dimensional effects because of the depth of the carving." The more you go to the back, the harder it is, because you can feel that the support of this eggshell is getting weaker and weaker, and it is a success, and a broken one is a failure, and there is no middle value. Li Fabin, who has been in contact with egg carving for more than ten years, is still full of respect for egg carving skills, "Carving this emu egg is more and more nervous the more you carve, and finally your heart is brought up." ”
After reviewing the Year of the Tiger series, Sun Kaifu and his students continued to work. The sound of the electric drill "squeaking" sounded again, and an ostrich egg rose up under his drill knife. In addition to this year's Year of the Tiger series, Sun Kaifu has another piece to polish, which is an ostrich egg carving that combines the winter Olympic symbol and Lingnan window flower elements, which he named "Snow Love". After more than a month of creative conception, egg selection and processing, Sun Kaifu gave this ostrich egg a new artistic life. He said: "The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, this is a historical moment and a unique memory worth carving. ”
Sun Kaifu's egg carving "Snow Love".
As large as ostrich eggs and as small as quail eggs, Sun Kaifu wrote with a knife, with exquisite skills and lasting enthusiasm, recording the years and years on the eggshell, and also recording the story of this era.
Written by: Nandu reporter Huang Wei
Photo: Nandu reporter Yi Kevin intern Liu Chaoqi