【Art Scene Viewing】
Guangming Daily reporter Su Yan
No. 53, Pingsi Road, Gusu District, Suzhou City, Wang Jian Fan Art Studio, the façade is low-key and ordinary, if you don't look closely, you may miss it. The road in front of the door was being renovated, and the road roller roared. Entering the store, the double-glazed doors are closed, the world is suddenly quiet, and in front of you are two "fan walls" - showing Wang Jian's collection of fine folding fans since the Qing Dynasty, as well as his own proud works.
Usually, Wang Jian does not have the posture of a national intangible cultural heritage (fan-making skill) inheritor, he is like the neighbor uncle who can be seen in the alleys of Suzhou Lane, simple dress, smile kindly, and wear a home-cooked fireworks. But once he sat in front of the workbench of the folding fan, he was like a changed person, this small world, like his kingdom, he restored the Ming Dynasty "black bone mud gold fan" here, and created the fan head "Eighteen Styles". Every move and every style of the case creation is meticulous and steady, serious and affectionate.
Black bone mud gold fan Wang Jian
After hundreds of years of inheritance, Su Fan has flourished in the thousand-year-old city. Su fan originated in the Song Dynasty, flourished in the Ming and Qing dynasties, the first to spread is the silk palace fan, also known as tuan fan, after the Ming Dynasty folding fan and sandalwood fan rise. In the past, the friends of gentlemen mostly used remuneration singing and elegant collections as bridges, and the literati and scholars were happy to go, and they wrote poems and paintings on the surface of tuan fan and folding fan fan, which gradually became fashionable. The top product of the Suzhou folding fan, known as the "literati fan" in the Ming Dynasty, carries the literati's full belly pearls, poetic feelings, and has the reputation of elegance and longrunness.
"Literati, warriors, storytellers, boudoir ladies or matchmakers use different fans, even the way they open and the posture they use are completely different. Suzhou literati fans cannot be fanned as large as pu fans. "Wang Jian gave a demonstration to the reporter, only to see him slightly clamp his right elbow, the fan leaning against his chest, slowly swinging the fan surface, and his expression was leisurely, making people feel as if they had traveled to the scene of the People's Yaji under the Tiger Tulu Pagoda hundreds of years ago." The poetry, calligraphy and painting are vividly reflected on the fan surface, and the fan style is actually a low-key 'display'. Wang Jian said that when the fan is closed, the literati and inkers often hide the fan in the sleeve, so Su Fan also has a nickname - "Huai Sleeve Elegant Thing".
Like Wang Jian, the fan-making craftsmen who came out of the Suzhou Fan Factory and the Suzhou Sandalwood Fan Factory silently inherited the essence of Su Fan's skills in the form of studios or family workshops. They grasp the time and rhythm, follow the principle of "the ancient and not the mud", in the slow and leisurely time, grind out a piece of work with traditional context and let modern people shine, so that Su Fan reveals new vitality from the ancient meaning.
Purple bamboo handle, sandwich double-sided embroidered lady figure fan Cai Nianqun
Shigu innovation is in the same vein
Some Tuan Fan collectors commented, "In a hundred fans, you can see at a glance which one Cai Nianqun made." Cai Nianqun makes a fan as short as half a month and as long as half a year. Drawing inspiration from ancient furniture, paintings and various utensils, extracting elements, blending into the production of tuan fans, many materials he has at his fingertips. A friend gave him a female double-sided embroidery, he put the double-sided embroidery on the fan surface, the fan handle with a jade inlay base, and the style of the female figure is very close, retro elegant. "Not exactly in accordance with the ancient aesthetic." Cai Nianqun said. His tuan fan is mainly black and white and gray in color, and the form is concise but not simple, and it has a look.
In the late Ming Dynasty, tuan fan style declined, folding fan and sandalwood fan gradually prevailed. The production process of the latter two is more complex than that of tuan fan, with dozens of totals. According to Wang Jian, Jiang Sutai, a fan maker in Suzhou City in the Ming Dynasty, was proficient in making fan bones, and his bones were as light as nothing, the most valuable, and there was a record of "the price of Three or Four Gold for Jiang Bones".
When Wang Jian restored the ebony mud fan, the production of the ebony fan bone was a major difficulty. A qualified fan, the weight does not exceed one or two, must be polished to an extremely thin fan bone, which is a severe test for bamboo, the toughness of ebony is not as good as bamboo, to achieve the standard of light and thin while ensuring sturdiness and durability, the fan maker's hand kung fu is a great challenge. After thousands of experiments, Wang Jian only touched the doorway. The ebony fan bone is sealed with fire paint, elasticity and moisture are not lost to ink jade bamboo; the black fan paper is covered with a large piece of red gold, and the finely crushed gold is foiled, which is visually dense; the orchid paper-cut pattern hidden in the fan layer is faintly revealed, which adds a bit of elegance. "Suzhou literati are introverted in temperament, and their euphemisms are often tucked into these unnoticed places. If others can find out, it is gratifying; if they do not know, they will not be lost, and they can be lonely and self-congratulatory. Wang Jian said.
Xiangfei bamboo handle, sandwich xiang cloud cluster crane pattern luo and straw woven surface, inlaid jade, dot cui phoenix octagonal fan Cai Nianqun
Sandalwood fans evolved from folding fans. In the 1920s and 1930s, Suzhou Zhangduoji FanZhuang used sandalwood as raw material to produce a fragrant and exquisite sandalwood fan, which became a favorite handicraft for women. Subsequently, there were more than 60 workshops in Suzhou that made sandalwood fan bones. In modern times, sandalwood fans have more choices of materials, more exquisite craftsmanship, and gradually out of the practical category, becoming a beautiful work of art.
At the original site of Suzhou Sandalwood Fan Factory, Xing Weizhong, a master of Chinese arts and crafts and the inheritor of the national intangible cultural heritage project (fan making skills), introduced his representative works for more than 50 years. He said that the hollow pattern on the sandalwood fan is an important feature of the sandalwood fan, which is intricately composed of various geometric patterns. The process of making these patterns is called pulling flowers. The tool for pulling flowers, usually made by the flower pulling master himself, is tied to a steel wire on the bow string, and the flower must be kept vertical when pulling, otherwise it is easy to fail. Behind a delicate and elegant sandalwood fan, such a complex process is laid out, highlighting the exquisite skills of the "Su Zuo" craftsmen.
Pull hot carved side sandalwood fan "Qinqi calligraphy and painting" Xing Weizhong
"Only 'Shigu' can 'produce new'. First of all, we must conscientiously copy and study the skills of our predecessors, and when the skills are pure, we can touch the bypass, seize the inspiration that flashes at once, and give the material a unique shape and temperament with exquisite skills. A fan-making master said that he made only a dozen fans every year, and each one was carefully considered and considered to be perfect.
Gangnam is affectionate and closes
Due to the flexibility and smallness of the fan surface of the tuan fan, painters led by Li Tang, Xia Gui and other "four families of the Southern Song Dynasty" shifted from panoramic composition to "corner scenery", pushing the "sketch" fan painting of Chinese painting to the peak of art. Of the 100 works included in the "Album of The Song Dynasty" compiled by Zheng Zhenduo, there are as many as 67 tuan fan surfaces. Tuan Fan painting brings to the extreme the compositional art of "seeing the public in the widow, seeing the outside in the inside, seeing the far in the near, and seeing the love in the object".
Peach blossom shaped silk palace fan "Ten Thousand Mountains Red All Over" Xing Weizhong
Hidden in the Palace Museum, Xia Gui's work "Songxi Panyue Map", the picture depicts pine trees, boats, and bright moons, the double pine painting of the near scene is painted in the lower left, the upper right of the tree is a flat boat, tourists and boatmen have different postures, and the upper left of the picture is a round of bright moon, with a pale color, forming a distant and misty artistic conception, reflecting the ingenious spatial layout.
Through the fan surface, you can get a glimpse of the grand situation of the Jiangnan literati yaji at that time. At the Tuan Fan Theme Exhibition held at the China Fan Museum, the fan face of "Varnish Handle Zhang Yu Zhu Yizeng and Other Six Calligraphy and Painting Tuan Fan" is a green landscape created by the "Yiyuan Painting Society" on the one hand, and the calligraphy written by Zhu Yizeng and others on the other side is a typical yaji joint work. The painting and calligraphy in the fan surface echo together to reflect a leisurely feeling of leisurely and open-mindedness and affection for the landscape.
After hundreds of years of evolution, su fan fan culture has a new trend with the aesthetic changes of contemporary people. After successfully restoring the fan surface mud process, Wang Jianyan created a unique fine gold, piece gold, and partition techniques, combining "Big Red" and "Tian Chi" in a specific proportion to create a hierarchical effect similar to "ink five colors" on the plain fan surface; drawing on the concepts and techniques of modern graphic design and three-dimensional art, so that the mud gold block directly participates in the fan composition, making the fan more harmonious and unified.
Sandalwood carved palace fan "Mei Xiang Fang Boat" Xing Weizhong
"In recent years, with the emphasis on excellent traditional culture, the fan line is slowly moving upwards, the traditional production mode is gradually recovering, and the market's awareness of Su fan is rebounding." Wang Jian said that since his career, every time he successfully restored an ancient fan, he tried to record the craft technique in detail so as not to lose it again. But I also feel that the meaning is not particularly large, do the fan this line, there are rules, there are methods, but there is no Wanbao encyclopedia, there will be countless new problems in the process of doing, can only slowly grope for themselves, slowly solve.
Over the years, people have come to the door one after another and want to learn from their teachers. Wang Jian frankly told them that the fan-making industry has been hard for ten years, and all that he has learned is only the basic skills, and if there is no twelve-point love for fans, no love to the extent of obsession, this road cannot be walked. Up to now, Wang Jian has only accepted seventeen apprentices, and for each apprentice, Wang Jian has asked them to promise that he will also bring apprentices in the future, "only in this way can this skill be passed on."
Today, when almost every household has air conditioning, the function of the fan has long gone beyond the material level and quietly become a spiritual image. What Su Fan fans out is not only a cool breeze, but also a state of mind, a state, and a culture.
Guangming Daily (2020.07.26 10th edition)