Guo Ruifen is the representative inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage Duanyan production technique in Zhaoqing City.
Nanfang Daily reporter Shi Liang photographed
Guo Ruifen insists on hand-made bricks, paying attention to the techniques of thin and shallow carving and symmetrical carving of lines. Nanfang Daily reporter Shi Liang photographed
Guo Ruifen's design and sculpture of "The Moon is As Clear as a Lotus" won the gold medal in the Inheritance Group of the Guangdong Provincial Women's Handicraft Entrepreneurship Innovation Competition.
Courtesy of respondents
In the Duanyan Cultural Village, the capital of China, Guo Ruifen, the female master of Duanyan, is a unique landscape.
In the early morning, a stone, a table, a small stool were placed in front of the store, and Guo Ruifen put on glasses and began to create. I saw her holding a chisel in one hand and a hammer in the other, swimming on the delicate and warm stone, carving a lifelike cloud dragon pattern.
"Sister Fen, how can Xiangyun carve out the level?" From time to time, when peers come to ask for advice, she will give generous guidance and careful explanations. Sister Fen, 50 years old this year, has been making bricks for 36 years, but she is still full of enthusiasm.
●Shi Liang, a reporter from Nanfang Daily
1 "groundbreaking" female apprentice
Zhaoqing has many Yan family members, and Guo Ruifen is the 17th generation of the Guo family of the Gong Yan family. The Guo family began to make bricks in the Ming Dynasty, and the treasure of the Guangdong Provincial Museum, "The Thousand Golden Monkey King", was made by Guo Ruifen's ancestor Guo Lanxiang.
When she was a child, Guo Ruifen loved to listen to her grandmother's "Weishui History" of family brick making, regarded the Duan Yan rubbings at home as treasures, and had a strong interest in Duan Yan since she was a child. Grandma once mentioned that the traditional craft of the front-end Yan is passed on from inside to outside, male to female, if there are people with foreign surnames or women present during carving, the master should turn the Brick Platform over to cover the pattern, and even look at it, let alone learn the art.
And this did not shake Guo Ruifen's heart to learn art in the slightest. In 1986, the day after graduating from junior high school, she paid homage to her brother Guo Guihua, who was engaged in the duanyan industry, "Brother, I want to make bricks, and no matter how tired I am, I have to learn!" Seeing that his sister was determined, Guo Guihua accepted this female apprentice "for the first time".
Quarrying, processing, designing, carving, polishing... Guo Guihua unreservedly taught all the knowledge related to Duan Yan to his sister. Guo Ruifen is quite talented and quick to get started. "You must be careful when you do yan, if you are in a bad mood and have a sidekick, you would rather stop work and go out to relax, and you must not be sloppy." Guo Ruifen told reporters that this is the experience of making stones taught to her by her brother, which is more important than any technology.
The carving techniques of the Guo family are mainly based on exquisite court carving, specializing in landscapes, figures, flowers and birds, yunlong, fish and water, etc., paying attention to the techniques of thin and shallow carving and symmetrical line carving. Different from the vigorous and powerful male works, Guo Ruifen's works are more delicate and delicate, soft and flexible, and the first Yunlong Yantai she spent 12 days to create sold for a high price of 60 yuan, equivalent to a month's salary of workers at that time.
After several years of study, Guo Ruifen officially became a teacher, but she did not immediately take orders, but chose to enter the Duanyan Factory to continue her studies. The work in the factory is heavy, as one of the few female workers, Guo Ruifen watched the sisters around her change careers, but she gritted her teeth and persevered to the end. In the days of the factory, her vision and skills have been greatly improved, and she has become related to Yang Zhilin, who is also from the Yan family.
After marriage, Guo Ruifen integrated the traditional skills of Guo and Yang, and his "whole square knife carving method" and "water wave curling wave tip method" were original to the industry. Husband and wife are often known as "the divine eagle heroes of the Duan Yan world", the two often cooperate in the production of bricks, so that the works have delicate and exquisite lines at the same time, but also do not lose the momentum of the clouds and rivers, air swallowing mountains and rivers, more than 20 works have won the national and provincial arts and crafts evaluation of gold, silver, bronze awards.
2 Female masters of "Art and Countryside"
"The work is exquisite, the work is good, the potholes are clarified, and the rare materials are not damaged." Integrity and morality, art and hometown. "This is the Guo family's family training, and it is also the essence of the Guo family's yan.
"The work is exquisite, the work is good, the potholes are clear, and the rare materials are not damaged" emphasizes the material. Duanyan stone is a non-renewable resource, during the Wanli calendar year, the governor of Liangguang Dai Fengqi issued a government notice of "Zeliang is not prohibited, rocks are not cut", strictly prohibiting the mining of white end stone; in recent years, Zhaoqing promulgated and implemented the "Regulations on the Protection of Duanyan Stone Resources in Zhaoqing City", which further strengthened the effective protection, development and utilization, supervision and management of Duanyan stone resources.
In this regard, Guo Ruifen strictly demanded himself and his apprentices, one side of the stone is not easy to come by, can not waste an inch and a millimeter, and must be carefully considered before the knife. There was once a stone material, Guo Ruifen put it for nearly ten years, and waited until the skills were mature and the mood was peaceful before starting to create.
Out of love for stone, Guo Ruifen will regularly go out with her husband to collect wind and look for inspiration. "Other people go to relatives for the New Year, we visit the exhibition hall for the New Year." She told reporters with a smile that the couple often used the Spring Festival holiday to visit and study in museums and art galleries that have Yantai exhibitions across the country, absorbing the strengths of all people and adding value to themselves, which also made them rarely encounter bottlenecks on the road of creation.
"Integrity and morality, art and hometown" emphasizes inheritance. The skills of "passing on men and not passing on women" have long been broken, driven by Guo Ruifen, aunts, cousins, cousins, nieces, etc. have joined the Duanyan industry and have achieved excellent results.
The Guo family technique is so precious, but Guo Ruifen will never be stingy in passing it on. For those who want to learn to make bricks, guo Ruifen will be generous in guiding and teaching with heart. She runs the studio with her husband and forms partnerships with the local high school of fine arts, and every year students regularly come to learn the technique of duan yan. The students from the class have a good artistic foundation, and with the careful guidance of Guo Ruifen, the overall skills of the students have improved rapidly, and the big works in the small studio are frequent.
"We are now taking in students every year, including students from the college, villagers in the village, and peers from the shop next door." Guo Ruifen also traveled to a remote mountain village in Yinchuan, Ningxia, to teach Duanyan carving technology and help rural revitalization. Shouldering the mission of inheriting the Culture of Duanyan, she also actively assisted the local women's federation to organize an exhibition of female craftsmen's works: "I hope that through Duanyan, she can help more women to find employment and start a business, so that the world can see the beauty of Duanyan and the beauty of women's creation." ”