Filigree inlaid "intangible cultural heritage" inheritor Li Changyi's "gold and silver life"
A lifetime of filigree craftsmanship can't be cut off from me
Master of Arts and Crafts Li Changyi
Li Changyi's "Dragon Ship of the Prosperous World"
Li Changyi and his disciples
Li Changyi taught skills to his apprentices
Jewelry works of Li Changyi's apprentice
Li Changyi, a native of Chongqing, began apprenticeship and exposure to filigree inlays at the age of 22, and has now gone through nearly half a century. At the age of 72, he is the only provincial-level master of arts and crafts in Chongqing and the only inheritor of the "traditional craft of filigree inlay" of Chongqing's intangible cultural heritage.
Making dragon whiskers is Li Changyi's unique skill: the thinnest parts of the beard and hair are only 0.16-0.18mm in diameter, welded without a trace, and if there is a breeze, it can also be gently fluttered... Filigree inlay is very common in film and television dramas, and this kind of royal handicraft is mostly used in jewelry production. In popular costume dramas such as "The Biography of Zhen Huan", "Yanxi Raiders", and "Wu Mei Niang", most of the golden crowns or hairpins worn by the queen's concubines are made with this skill. Since 1972, when he came into contact with the filigree inlay process at the Chongqing Metal Craft Factory, Li Changyi has never left this line of work and has spent most of his life on filigree inlay. Today, Li Changyi's main job is to make samples and collect apprentices to teach skills, in addition to which he insists on painting in his studio every day.
Similar to the wishes of many "intangible cultural heritage" inheritors, Li Changyi also said: "I am old, but I hope that this skill can be continued." ”
Pull silk like hair
The filigree is twisted by hand to a diameter of 0.16 mm
Filigree inlay is a full handmade skill, each process must be operated by a special person, the craftsman to check, a product to consume a lot of energy and time to complete, of which the most difficult technology is the number of wire drawing links, to the diameter of 5mm gold, silver wire to make the required filament, and the current finest filament diameter is only 0.16mm.
Filigree inlay, also known as fine gold craftsmanship, is to extract gold, silver, copper, etc. into filaments, and then rely on eight major processes such as piling, base, weaving, weaving, pinching, filling, saving, welding, etc., to make the filaments into jewelry or works of art, and then inlaid with pearls, gemstones, jade, with high-quality wood, glass and other high-grade materials. Because the two independent processes of filigree and inlay are often used together, they are gradually collectively called "filigree inlay", and are named the first of the "Eight Gems of Yanjing", which are first divided into the Beijing School, the Sichuan School and the Hai School. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, a large number of dignitaries and nobles moved west to Chongqing, creating a prosperous and prosperous filigree inlay from the small Shizi characters to the linjiangmen line. After synthesizing the advantages of the first two schools, the Yupai filigree inlay came into being. In 2014, Yupai filigree inlay was also included in the list of intangible cultural heritage of Chongqing, and at present, Li Changyi has become the only master still engaged in filigree inlaying in Chongqing, and the only inheritor of this intangible cultural heritage skill.
To get the right wire, in addition to melting the raw material, it is necessary to go through steps such as tapping and pulling. Don't look at these simple actions, to polish the melted metal raw materials into the right thickness, with these smooth and soft wire threads, craftsmen can carry out real filigree inlay production. After being woven into parts of different shapes with wire threads of different thicknesses, they are welded together at high temperatures and inlaid with gemstones or ornaments to form a complete filigree inlay ornament.
Li Changyi said that the charm of filigree inlay is that machine production can never be expressed, and the filigree is welded to jewelry or utensils without leaving a trace, which is the core technology that filigree inlay can never be replaced by the machine: it all depends on the manual side of the silk on the fire to bake, while using the mouth to blow the higher temperature of the outer flame to the filament interface, so that the filament can achieve the effect of "growing" from the ornament. Once the fire is not well mastered, the product will instantly become waste when welding. Skilled, such as Li Changyi, welding a simple piece of gold and silver ware also takes 24 hours.
From a student
22 years old with filigree inlay to form a "fate"
Speaking of the experience of bonding with filigree inlay, Li Changyi frankly said that at the beginning, it was not his own choice, but more like an arrangement of fate. In 1972, in order to expand the scale and variety of production, Chongqing Gold and Silver Jewelry Factory was changed to Metal Craft Factory, and received a grant of 1.2 million yuan to start building a new factory and recruiting workers. Li Changyi, who has loved art since he was a child and likes to make small handmade toys, quickly signed up and was hired as a jewelry worker. Because Li Changyi once learned fitter technology at the Chongqing Aviation Repair Station, he was valued as soon as he entered the factory, while following the engraver Wu Susaku to learn to make steel molds, while practicing filigree and cold production with the old artist Zhang Qiduan.
When he first began to learn filigree, Li Changyi suffered a lot, because the machine was not advanced, and he could only rely on hand to beat gold and silver into pieces and roll them into strips, and after countless times of plucking, the filigree would be as fine as a hair. At that time, due to the daily rubbing, the blood bubbles on Li Changyi's hands broke again and again, and finally the thick cocoon was raised to alleviate the pain.
Less than two years after entering the factory, the factory gave Li Changyi the opportunity to study at the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts. At that time, there were five factory designers, and there were only two places to study at the Academy of Fine Arts, and Li Changyi got one of them. Looking back now, Li Changyi feels very grateful for this learning experience at that time, "During this time at the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, there was no other interference, so that I concentrated on learning drawing, brush strokes, colors, pattern design, sculpture, etc.", and it was more than a year of further study that made Li Changyi's skills and techniques more comprehensive.
After returning from school, Li Changyi began to engage in the processing and design of gold and silver jewelry, rushing to work in the factory during the day, while continuing to learn technology from the master, going home to paint at night, going out to sketch on weekends, and being very busy.
Later, together with the experienced teachers in the factory, he made a silver jewelry handicraft called "Peacock Open Screen Hanging Plate", which was very stunning, with emerald green feathers coming to life, and was selected to represent Chongqing in the United States, and was purchased by a collector at a high price on the spot.
Through his own efforts, coupled with the fact that he has done more things, Li Changyi's design level has been continuously improved, and the factory has also increased production and developed the market, and the master has officially let Li Changyi design himself. After 1976, Li Changyi began to travel frequently to Beijing on business, sending handmade samples of filigree inlays he made.
"At that time, the filigree inlay technique in Beijing was relatively mature, and I often traveled to Beijing to send samples, and I also learned a lot of knowledge, and then innovated to form my own style." Compared with Beijing, Chongqing's filigree inlay technology is slightly backward, but Li Changyi is not discouraged, focusing on improving himself, studying and drawing more carefully, so that the efficiency of Chongqing Metal Craft Factory is becoming more and more prosperous, orders are lined up, and the jewelry and pendants he designed are especially loved by the public.
It's all about passion
The more difficult it is, the more you want to learn, and you have to study it thoroughly without sleeping
Li Changyi still remembers the enthusiasm and momentum of the factory officer when he was twenty or thirty years old: "At that time, the more I learned, the more energetic I became, the more difficult I wanted to learn, very drilled, really all rely on enthusiasm." Design your own samples, sample yourself, take over a thing from the morning to work, I hope to finish it quickly, and stay up late without sleeping to study thoroughly. ”
Even with no overtime pay and no excess benefits, Li Changyi never complained. "I still remember that at that time, my salary was 18.5 yuan, and I paid 12 yuan a month to make living expenses for my family, and the rest was used to buy paints and tools for sketching and painting." For Li Changyi, it was a period of poverty and happiness and fullness, in order to save living expenses, he ate breakfast, and at noon he was reluctant to eat until the evening. When sketching, Li Changyi had to carry water, scones or pot helmets on his back every time, and walked at least thirty or forty kilometers, tired and energetic.
The days of delivery to and from Beijing were also very memorable, he recalled, when from Chongqing to Beijing there were only train sleepers, and it took more than 20 hours to get there one way. Every time he went to Beijing to deliver goods, he had to carry more than ten boxes alone, the train was very crowded, and he was always responsible for taking care of his samples. When I arrived in Beijing, according to the requirements of the other party, I began to design and modify, and at night I was drawing pictures in the hotel, and on the train back, I was also rushing to work and changing the plan. On the second day after returning home from a business trip, I go to work, sample, and rarely give myself a vacation.
At that time, Li Changyi had to go to Beijing at least five or six times a year and negotiated with foreign investors from Hong Kong, Macao, Singapore, Malaysia and Japan. He still clearly remembers the place "Fuwai Avenue", "I arrived at the train station at that time, and every time I had to take the No. 103 bus to the delivery place." ”
Li Changyi said that the most brilliant time of Chongqing filigree inlay was also this time period, that is, in the 70s and 80s of the last century, the output value of the factory could reach hundreds of millions of dollars a year. By the mid-1980s, factories that had been making jewelry for ten years began to transform into large ornaments, producing bottles, plates and other ornaments in order to increase production and generate foreign exchange. "This presents us with a difficult problem, because there are more varieties of ornaments than jewelry, and the technical requirements are higher, so we must make a three-dimensional model." Li Changyi said.
However, it is a problem and an opportunity, and the transformation of factory production products has also completely allowed Li Changyi to play the skills of sculpture and painting - he quickly got started and produced three-dimensional images such as shouxing, Guanyin, dragon, horse and other filigree crafts.
In 1988, Li Changyi applied the filigree process to the three-dimensional ornament and produced the silver ornament "Silver Palace Ship". This work is made of tens of thousands of silver wires as thin as hair, and integrates complex processes such as flat-filled silk, stacked silk, filigree, coiled wire, winding, and interfilament, conquering the industry, and also won the second prize at the Hundred Flowers Award of Chinese Arts and Crafts, and finally won the title of "Sichuan Provincial Master of Fine Arts and Crafts" for Li Changyi. After the advent of the "Silver Palace Ship", the factory order volume increased, and Li Changyi began to be busy again, working overtime to ensure quality, while also trying to control the production cycle within two months to ensure supply.
Before li Changyi retired, he was very busy at work, and his wife took care of the housework and children wholeheartedly. The greatest support and understanding of his wife for his work made Li Changyi very grateful and pleased.
Curve saves the country
After retirement, he still traveled all over the country to preserve his filigree skills
Every craftsman's wish is to use his craft to carry forward his own trade, and Li Changyi is no exception, but the changes in the world under the tide of the times are difficult to avoid. Around 2000, the traditional handicraft industry was greatly impacted, and the processing of handicrafts gradually fell into loneliness. In 2004, Li Changyi's Chongqing Metal Craft Factory went bankrupt. Witnessing the whole process of the factory from reconstruction to take-off to decline, Li Changyi's heart was very unhappy. The original technical backbone and workers in the factory have changed careers and sought a new way out. Li Changyi also faced the difficult choice of whether to continue to hold out or find another way out.
"In fact, the factory began to make gold products in the early 1990s, and I also went from a designer of filigree inlay to a gold product and jewelry processing staff. In 2001 and 2002, due to the lower price of gold raw materials in Hong Kong and Macao than we did, the machine processing was faster than ours, and the mainland gold market was not competitive, and the factory went out of business. Li Changyi recalled.
There is no opportunity to make filigree in Chongqing, Li Changyi did not give up, but planned to let go of his hands and feet to go outside and look for opportunities. And that year, he was in his fifties.
After traveling to Beijing, Chengdu and other places, Li Changyi decided to go to coastal cities to see opportunities, and successively went to Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Xiamen. He found that open cities such as Guangdong and Fujian prefer machine processing. Although machining means a higher level of modernization, Li Changyi knows that this path is not suitable for himself, nor does it conform to his original intention. For Li Changyi, Chongqing's filigree inlay techniques are more integrated and diverse, and the skills of other regions are not suitable for him, a native of Chongqing.
"I'm a craftsman and I'm not interested in machining." He said.
When he was in Shenzhen, Li Changyi worked at one of the largest gift companies in the local area, but he still didn't have many opportunities to do his favorite filigree process, and his job was to design gifts. However, he insisted on doing design while engaging in the old line, because it was design gifts, and Li Changyi had the opportunity to make ornaments here. "I love making boats because I was a fitter on a boat when I was a teenager." One of Li Changyi's filigree inlay masterpieces sold at a high price, "Shengshi Dragon Ship", was completed here.
After working for nearly a year, Li Changyi went to another gift company in Xiamen, Fujian Province, through the introduction of a friend, to make models and design resin products, where Li Changyi did it for another seven or eight months.
The turnaround occurred in 2006. That year, Li Changyi's father fell ill, and he chose to return to Chongqing to take care of his father. A gift company in Chongqing learned that Li Changyi was a scarce talent in the traditional filigree craft, and issued a sincere invitation to Li Changyi, hoping that he would come back and pass on the silver jewelry handicraft that was about to disappear. Li Changyi mentioned that at that time, the secretary general of the Arts and Crafts Association also came forward to try to keep him: "Chongqing's handicrafts are not working, you are a teacher, or hurry back to bring a belt, with management, processing, and apprentices, otherwise no one will do this thing." ”
In this way, the wandering Li Changyi was finally able to return to his hometown of Chongqing and open the inheritance of filigree inlay technology. "The owner of this gift company used to do gift business in Shenzhen, and then the gift market in Shenzhen was too saturated to return to Chongqing." I'm here to do filigree and the owner is very supportive of me. I just did a few of them there. "Finally there is a chance to make filigree, but the problem still exists - the finished product is too high to sell because the price is too high, and Li Changyi has to do the work of gift design at the same time."
Harvest the inheritance
"Are you really willing to learn this thing?"
In 2013, Chongqing Technology and Business University had a student named Zuo Shuqiao. He saw a report by Li Changyi, the inheritor of filigree inlay, on the Internet and had the idea of worshiping the teacher. At first, Li Changyi did not agree to Zuo Shuqiao's request, but asked him: Are you sincerely willing to learn this thing? He had his own concerns about the apprenticeship: "If it is only a temporary interest, I will lose the meaning of my efforts to teach you." ”
Li Changyi knows very well that this craft is definitely not a job that impatient people can do, and a skilled filigree technician must pay at least 3 years of hard work to learn. In the face of everyone who learns from a teacher, Li Changyi will first examine his personality, and then look at his understanding. The young man Zuo Shuqiao's tenacity was also very strong, and in order to get Li Changyi to agree, Zuo Shuqiao found a workshop on the first floor near Li Changyi's home for Li Changyi to use as a teaching, and also founded his first studio in Chongqing. This made Li Changyi feel that this young man was not a whim, but really wanted to do filigree inlay as a lifelong career. After nearly a year of "investigation", in October 2014, he officially accepted Zuo Shuqiao as a disciple, which was also the first college student apprentice of Li Changyi. When Zuo Shuqiao's store was on the right track, Li Changyi also began to recruit the second and third apprentices. Slowly developed to today, just last month, Li Changyi also accepted a new apprentice and held a ceremony to worship the teacher.
Nowadays, Li Changyi's apprentices have many people of different identities and backgrounds, including recent graduates, even teachers at Jiaotong University, and more college students at the Academy of Fine Arts. Speaking of his apprentices, Li Changyi's tone could not hide his pride and gratitude: "The apprentices I brought with me have six or seven filigree studios in Chongqing, and each studio can have sales of two or three million yuan per year, and the sales can add up to eighteen million." "Since 2015, Li Changyi has personally taught and accepted apprentices, and now the apprentices have also opened classes, and the number of students recruited across the country has reached as many as 2,000.
At present, the studios of Li Changyi's apprentices are gradually on the right track, and the main profit channels are the sale of filigree inlaid jewelry and training. Li Changyi also takes time to go to the apprentices' studios every month, how the studio products are doing, what problems there are in the technology, give them advice, cheer up. When he first accepted apprentices, some children were not well-off and had no money to buy tools such as tablet presses, which Were also funded by Li Changyi. Li Changyi often told his disciples not to give up halfway.
For the matter of inheritance, Li Changyi also has his own worries: "The apprentices only learned filigree, but they can't stop at this foundation and not move forward, they have to learn the next step, learn carving, shaping, painting, etc." If you don't engage in art and don't understand the combination of various skills, you can't design new things, or you can't do it. Despite this, Li Changyi also understood that the apprentices also had their difficulties: "Twenty-six or seven years old, you need to make money as the goal, unlike when we had a factory as a backing, now they all rely on their own money to support their families." 」 Li Changyi's words were full of understanding and heartache.
Among Li Changyi's many disciples, Zuo Shuqiao had the greatest influence on the path of non-genetic inheritance. Two years ago, Zuo Shuqiao set up an intangible cultural heritage studio in Shuangjiang Town, Tongnan District, Chongqing City, with the inheritance of intangible cultural heritage skills and the promotion of intangible cultural heritage as the foundation, with the support of the Shuangjiang government, so that the seemingly distant intangible cultural heritage can be planted.
Today, Li Changyi, who spends all day in his studio painting, says that painting is his old job. In 2013, Li Changyi painted the Three Gorges of Chongqing, a total of 12 paintings. The subtlety is that they are separate paintings, connected together as a whole, and this work won the Innovation Award of the National Tourism Products Souvenir Exhibition that year.
Someone once asked Li Changyi, in the eyes of others, the daily work of rubbing and pulling silk and knocking and beating is really boring, why can you enjoy it? Li Changyi gave the answer: "I have one of the biggest motivations for making filigree, that is, the sense of responsibility. Li Changyi said that from a young age in the factory, he has held the concept of "doing his best and not seeking returns". Nowadays, as the non-hereditary inheritor of Chongqing filigree inlay, this sense of responsibility for protecting the filigree inlay process has become even heavier in Li Changyi's heart.
Some people have asked Li Changyi when he plans to really retire and enjoy his life. Li Changyi replied: "I will not really rest in this life, I have brought so many apprentices, and there are still many techniques that have not been taught to them." ”
The biggest wish of 72-year-old Li Changyi is that the filigree inlay process can be passed on forever, so that more people know how to appreciate the beauty of complex art, more. In his ancient years, he never stopped the brushes and tools in his hand, practicing his skills hard in the first half of his life, and passing them on with his heart in the second half of his life, and this skill could not be put down in his heart. "I have done a lifetime of filigree craftsmanship, and I can't break it from me."
Article/Reporter Lei Ruotong
Photo courtesy of Li Changyi
Source: Beijing Youth Daily