"No diamonds, no porcelain work." The old saying is about a traditional old craft - "curium porcelain". China is the homeland of porcelain, and the curium porcelain craft has a long history. But nowadays, fewer and fewer people know about this craft, and even fewer people are engaged in this trade. In the studio, the female craftsman Zhong Qimin is slowly regaining this endangered skill.
Curium porcelain craftsman Zhong Qimin: Many people like perfect utensils, but I like some fragments, fragments, specimens. Because I can make it repaired as it was, or even turned into another beautiful work of art.
Curium porcelain, the broken porcelain, with a metal "curium nail" like a nail in the coffin repair. Curium porcelain seems simple, but in fact, the skill of curium porcelain people is very demanding. Drilling holes with diamonds is a big test for rival artists.
The thickness and hardness of each piece of porcelain are different, and the difference between the holes and the diamonds is a millimeter, and the measure of this drilling hole is based on experience and feel, neither too deep nor too shallow. Deep, easy to penetrate the porcelain, shallow, curium nails are not strong.
Three or four years ago, Zhong Qimin was an urban white-collar worker who worked full-time as an accountant, liked to visit museums and antique markets, and many old objects with old age had an irresistible attraction for her.
Curium porcelain craftsman Zhong Qimin: Because I can repair it, so my vision of looking for things is different from others, I will pick out the defective ones, it will be much cheaper than the complete device, but I take it back, I can make it icing on the cake after repairing.
Repeatedly impressed by the beauty of the remnants, Zhong Qimin began his career in curium porcelain. Fascinated by the broken artifacts, she always sat in front of a few cases, thinking about how to bring the broken artifacts back to life.
In order to learn curium porcelain well, Zhong Qimin made a special trip to Shanghai and Wuhan to learn art, and learned curium porcelain, engraving and other crafts with Tong Weicheng, a non-hereditary inheritor of curium porcelain technology, and Pan Donghua, a metalworking craftsman. This cup is a memorial to Zhong Qimin's artistic journey.
From the beginning of the hobby to free to help friends repair and repair, and then to make a name, more and more people come to the door, these three or four years, Zhong Qimin full-time curium porcelain, repaired more than five hundred pieces, there are daily teapot tea sets, there are ancestral old objects, earn enough money to make the small life moist and tasteful.
Curium porcelain craftsman Zhong Qimin: This thing carries a feeling, and there is also a different beauty after the curium nails, not simply the previous reluctance to repair the concept of something broken, now the cost of repair exceeding the value of the artifact itself is a lot, the consumption concept is different, they are more pursuit of a spiritual pursuit.
Curium porcelain is not only the use of ingenuity to make the remnants of flowers, but also the devotion of contemporary people to inherit the old craftsmanship. Also committed to the inheritance of traditional skills is Wen Qifu, a teacher at Guangxi Nanning Vocational and Technical College.
Walking into Wen Qifu's studio, my eyes were immediately attracted by the works in the window. Crystal clear peony flowers, phoenixes with long tails and peacocks waiting to open the screen, flowers, birds, fish and insects look lifelike and vivid. Even the faces of the characters are delicate and evocative. And these colorful, chic artworks are derived from a sweet material - sugar.
Teacher of Nanning Vocational and Technical College in Guangxi Chinese Cooking Master Wen Qifu: The oldest sugar art originated in our country, and then it spread to foreign countries, after the processing of foreigners, in the transmission back to China, the technique of sugar art is mainly 7 kinds of techniques, one is drizzled sugar, and the other is sugar blowing, the other is pinching, there is plastic, there is film pressing, and the technology of turning molds.
Wen Qifu is a teacher at Nanning Vocational and Technical College in Guangxi and a master of Chinese cooking. After 20 years of studying the art of food carving sugar, he integrated traditional Chinese sugar painting, sugar blowing man and other techniques with Western carving and other techniques to create with Chinese cultural imprints, his works have repeatedly won gold in Chinese and foreign competitions and exhibitions, and in 2018, Wen Qifu led the team to participate in the reception banquet design of the central delegation for the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the autonomous region. He is known as the first person in Guangxi's "sugar art" in the industry.
Sugar painting, originated in the Ming Dynasty, this traditional handicraft with folk characteristics has a history of more than 500 years, in 2014, he went to Henan to learn sugar painting skills from the national non-hereditary heir Master Zhu Hanrui. After systematic study and tens of millions of practices, Wen Qifu perfectly combines traditional sugar painting techniques with Western techniques, mainly based on Chinese modeling, and innovates in the creation, producing stunning sugar art works.
In order to better inherit the traditional Chinese sugar painting skills, Wen Qifu deliberately added sugar painting, sugar blowing people and other contents in the teaching, and founded the skill master studio, actively using the spare time to carry out sugar art technology training for students for free, and passing on his skills to every student without reservation.
Inheriting the Chinese cultural tradition, walking with the times, there is also a post-90s tea artist who broke through the world's vision and scribbled the youthful color with the tea ceremony.
Qin You, this young man after 90, don't look at his young age, not a long time in the industry, but he is already a little famous in the circle. In just three years, he has won many good results in domestic tea art competitions, and has won more than 20 honors such as Guangxi Technical Expert, Guangxi May Day Labor Medal, and gold medal of the Guangdong Branch of the Fourth National Tea Art Vocational Skills Competition. Behind the honor is Qin You's dedication and love for tea art.
Tea Artist Qin You: This is a completely unfamiliar field to me. In the beginning, there would be all kinds of oolong jokes, and in the early days, I couldn't even distinguish between basic tea types. I especially remember that once a customer wanted to drink black tea, but I brought him a big red robe and made a joke. At that time, I was standing next to my sister and working as an assistant to help him boil water, but she was disgusted.
Although the seemingly simple work in the tea room gave Qin You a lot of problems, it also made him have a momentum of not accepting defeat. He studied a little with his sister, from a layman who didn't know three times to an expert in the ear, Qin You, under the influence of tea art culture, also came up with a new idea: to be a tea artist.
Tea Artist Qin You: At that time, this idea was opposed and questioned by everyone, because they thought that a male tea artist had no future. In fact, at that time, I was very unconvinced in my heart, and I felt that I could do it and do it well.
Tea artist Qin You: I bought back a lot of books, there is knowledge of tea culture, there are ancient poems, and interpersonal communication, I hope to be able to study hard in a short period of time, so that I can make rapid growth and progress.
With a love for tea, Qin You embarked on the road of finding tea. He feels that a person who loves tea should trace the origin, understand the growth environment of tea, and the production process of tea in order to have a deeper understanding of tea, in order to brew a cup of tea with temperature.
Tea artist Qin You: I have successively gone to Meijiawu in the West Lake, Wuyi Mountain in Fujian, Xishuangbanna in Yunnan, and Wuzhou, Lingyun, Hengxian and other places in Guangxi. Went to the source of tea, Fang knows the difficulty of picking tea, making tea is not easy, so when we brew, we must let each tea leaf in our hands to show its life perfectly.
To be a good tea artist, the most important thing is to be able to brew a good cup of tea. Tea making is a skill, in addition to constantly practicing repeatedly, in order to improve skills, Qin You also dares to participate in various tea art competitions to challenge themselves and break through themselves.
Qin You's love and dedication to tea deeply touched the two sisters. The eldest sister and the second sister, who are also tea art teachers, also helped their younger brother Qin You and carefully guided them. The three brothers and sisters learn tea together and exchange skills to become a good story in the industry. During the China-ASEAN Expo, they were invited to receive foreign guests many times to show the beauty of Chinese tea art. Tea artists do not simply pour water on tea, but are messengers of tea culture.
Editor| Mo Jiexin
Editor-in-charge 丨 Tang Myron