Everyone knows the Four Treasures of the Literary Room, and today we are going to talk about the "Yan" in it.
Yantai developed with the development of pen and ink. In the Han Dynasty, due to the invention of artificial ink making, ink can be directly ground on the stone, so the yantai began to develop. After a long history, Yantai has long ceased to be a simple tool, but has become a collection of carving, painting in one of the exquisite crafts, has become the object of the collection of literati and inkers.
HechuanXia Yan, together with Jinyin Stone Yan and Yu Yan, is known as the "Three Famous Stones of Bayu", and with the gradual loss of traditional handicrafts for hundreds of years, only the Three Gorges Stone Stones have been completely passed down, and there are continuous works.
Hechuan Gorge Yan, also known as Moyu Baoyan, Diaoyucheng Gorge Yan or Three Gorges Stone Yantai, is carefully carved from the natural gorge stone of the Lipu Gorge section of the Jialing River. The gorge stone (also known as "black jade") is unique in the country, and the stone is delicate and elegant in color. With this stone as a stone, not only does not damage the pen edge, but also the water in the stone is stored, it does not dry for several days, and the ink storage is not rotten, which is an excellent raw material for the Yantai.
At the beginning of the Song Dynasty, there were only a few local producers engaged in Yantai in Hechuan, but the carving skills were well known. Later, with the war between the Song and Mongolia in the middle and late Southern Song Dynasty, the production of Hechuan Gorge Yan was once stopped, and the production of Yantai was resumed in the Ming Dynasty, and at the end of the Ming Dynasty, due to the war chaos, the craftsmen went out with their families in order to avoid the war, resulting in the production of Hechuan Gorge Yan was interrupted again.
The road to the inheritance of Hechuan Gorge's carving skills is difficult and tortuous. The carving and production of Hechuan Gorge Yan began in the Song Dynasty, although there are only a few local craftsmen engaged in Yantai, but the carving skills are famous far and wide, and the production of Xia Yan is indistinguishable from the "Four Famous Stones" at that time. Later, with the war between the Song and Mongolia in the middle and late Southern Song Dynasty, the production of Hechuan Gorge Yan was once stopped, and it was not until the Ming Dynasty that the production of Yantai was resumed. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, due to the chaos of war, the carving craftsmen who made the Yantai went out with their families in order to avoid the chaos of the war, resulting in the production of Hechuanxia Yan once again interrupted. During the Kangxi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty, Li Yinshan, an immigrant from the "Lake Filling river" and a local folk artist, began to engage in this kind of hand-carved craft again.
In modern times, folk artists led by Wang Zhixian, while inheriting the traditional Xia Yan production techniques, began to evolve from a single square, strip, and small circle shape to a variety of special-shaped Xia Yan, and they also carved bamboo stones, flowers, fish and insects, fairy Buddha women, ancient sages, dragon phoenixes, etc. in the yan cover, which was well received by the society, Hechuan Xia Yan was listed as "China's Top Ten Famous Stones", Shanghai's "Four Treasures", Huizhou's "Old Hu Kaiwen", Hankou's "Zou Ziguang Pavilion" and other well-known stationery stores came to order. Wang Zhixian became one of the founders of Xia Yan using protective oil, polishing with wax oil, and carving various patterns on the stone and hollowing out.
After the founding of New China, the folk carving artists represented by the five brothers Wang Weiguo, Wang Jianguo, Wang Fuguo, Wang Qiangguo and Wang Zhengguo, who followed their father Wang Zhixian to learn art since childhood, together with the carving artist Yi Zongyi, have passed on the carving skills of Xia Yan to the present day. From the 1980s, Xia Yan has developed from several styles to nearly 100 varieties, and the carving has developed from a single flat carving, yin carving, diamond flower, circular carving, relief, and hollowing, to a complex process that combines relief and hollowing, and its modeling characteristics are more obvious. Products are exported to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, as well as Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and other places.
The production of one side of the gorge stone needs to go through more than a dozen processes such as material selection, drawing, modeling, fine grinding, coloring, polishing, selection, packaging, etc., and then hand-polished by carvers using tools such as carving knives, drills, and abrasives.
Not to mention the hardships of masonry mining raw materials in stone kilns and long-distance transportation on mountain roads, not to mention the delicate knife methods of the masters when they start the dragon's armor and point the dragon's eye, the skillful skill of the craftsmen when using tools such as carving knives, hand hammers and drills for preliminary molding will amaze you. They have auspicious dragons and phoenixes in their chests, strange flowers and plants, famous masterpieces of literati and inkers of past generations, and local exotic customs and scenic landscapes, in short, they are confident. They use techniques such as beating, chiseling, carving, digging, and drilling on the established stone to shape the stone factor, and they want to shape the rough stone into the lifelike image in their hearts.
Among them, "hitting" is to combine the hammer with the hammer, through the hand hammer force, through the hammer force on the surface of the stone, the excess material is removed, from large to small, until the molding, that is, the so-called "cutting method"; "chisel" that is, the chisel (chisel knife) on the surface of the stone with the wrist force, the same use of the "cutting method" for chiseling, and sometimes use the shoulder force to chisel; "carving" is to use the carving knife to carve on the stone plane or surface; "digging" is to deeply chisel the stone to achieve a sense of hierarchy and three-dimensionality; "drilling" It is to use a small carving knife to punch or drill holes in the stone, and it is necessary to go through the three-hundred-and-sixty-degree rotational chiseling method to achieve the effect of hollow carving. If you want to master, let alone have several years of experience in the industry, especially the grasp of strength, a little carelessness, not only can not create the vivid image you want, but also the precious raw materials will be wasted.
Xia Yan has the characteristics of fast ink grinding, no loss of pen edge, water storage, no dryness, ink storage and other characteristics, coupled with exquisite carving, beautiful shape, engraved with poetry and famous sentences on the stone, with rich cultural connotations, in history and the "four famous Stones" at that time, no distinction between the top and bottom, in the literary style of Hechuan, deeply loved by the literati. According to legend, when the famous theologian Zhou Dunyi of the Song Dynasty wrote a book in Yangxinting (now Hechuan Octagonal Pavilion), he used the gorge stone produced by the Libi Gorge of the Jialing River in Hechuan. Since the Song and Ming Dynasties, Xia Yan has been loved and praised by countless troublemakers.
"The huts on the side of the gorge are secluded, and the stone plates are skillfully chiseled. Qi Mo Yun Dragon Dance, Pen Tiger List Hanging. The stone is as greasy as jade, and the craftsmanship is passed down. Noble like a Han family guest, a member of the Four Treasures Residence. This is the inscription poem of Li Shi of the Hezhou People's Bureau of the Ming Dynasty on Xia Yan. Feng Yuxiang was particularly appreciative of Hechuan's ink and jade stone yantai, and Zeng Poured Ink personally wrote the famous aphorisms of "those who have lofty ideals, things are successful" and "Lying down to taste the guts, three thousand iron armor can swallow Wu". In modern times, well-known figures and calligraphers and painters Such as Yu Youren, Xie Wuliang, and Guo Moruo also praised the hechuan gorge inscription poems.
Source: WeChat public account of Heavy Recitation, WeChat public account of Chongqing Visual Library, WeChat public account of CLP Huashen, WeChat public account of Wentong Yida