Li (1932-), male, from Nanhai County, Guangdong Province, is a master of arts and crafts in China and a famous ivory carving master. Influenced by family art since childhood, I love the art of tooth carving. At the age of 18, I began to study with my brother Li Dingrong. 65438-0956 Worked in Guangzhou No.1 Ivory Carving Cooperative (now Daxin Ivory Craft Factory), and served as the design director and technical deputy director until his retirement. He is good at carving figures, and his works are mainly figures, including landscapes, trees and pavilions. On the basis of Guangzhou's exquisite artistic style of tooth carving, it absorbs the strengths of Beijing's tooth carving, boldly innovates and forms its own artistic style. Representative works include large-scale tooth carving, goddess scattered flowers, flat peaches made by the Great Sage, lotus lanterns, moon palace lamps and so on.
Chinese name: Li
Nationality: China.
Place of birth: Nanhai County, Guangdong Province
Date of birth: 1932
Occupation: painter
Representative works: The Goddess Scatters Flowers, The Great Sage Makes Flat Peach, Lotus Lantern, Moon Palace Lamp.
Blood relationship with tooth carving
Li, 1932, whose ancestral home is Xiqiao Township, Nanhai County, Guangdong Province, and whose ancestral home is Guangzhou, has been engaged in tooth carving for generations. Speaking of his ancestral home, Li is deeply proud that he is from Nanhai: because many tooth carving artists were from Nanhai before, many jargon had the habit of Nanhai dialect. Grandpa Li, the sixth in the family, used to run a shop named "Lianchang" from Daxin Road 1920 to 1935 in Guangzhou, specializing in ivory handicrafts and foreign goods. Later, my grandfather gave Lian Chang to his son, Li Dangan, Li's father (known as the "big mouth party" because of his big mouth). Li has a brother named Li Dingrong, who is seven years older than Li Da. He learned to carve figures with tooth carving from an early age. Li was born and raised in such a family that made a living by ancestral tooth carving skills. Unconsciously, he became interested in all kinds of tooth carving art.
War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression broke out, the Japanese invaded China, Guangzhou fell, and the handicraft industry, which was thriving, went bankrupt one after another. The Li family had to move from Guangzhou to Xiqiao, Nanhai. At this time, in his teens, Li began to study art with his eldest brother Li Dingrong, and then went to Hong Kong to work and learn art with his eldest brother. Thanks to my brother's example and Li's diligence, the skill of tooth carving has made rapid progress.
After the liberation of Guangzhou, people's lives were relatively stable, and the people's government began to attach importance to the development of handicrafts. Li Dangan, the father who stayed in Guangzhou, saw this situation and quickly wrote to let Li Dingrong and Li in Hong Kong go back to Guangzhou for development.
Li Dingrong and Li Yu returned to Guangzhou on 1954 to make a living by doing some ivory processing in the tooth carving shop.
From 65438 to 0956, Guangzhou municipal government began to organize private workshops of handicrafts to take the road of collective cooperation. Li Dingrong and Li participated in Guangzhou No.1 ivory carving production cooperative, which is now the predecessor of the state-owned Daxin ivory craft factory. Li's brothers moved from family workshops to collectives, from individuals to state ownership, from turmoil to stability, and their hearts were full of gratitude to the people's government. Li Zhen thinks they should give full play to the skills they have learned in tooth carving and help the country to make more exquisite tooth carvings.
In the early 1960 s, Li, who was less than 30 years old, was already a seven-level mechanic and became a "young master" as soon as he debuted. "Young Master Tong Ning Ge" has always been Li's respectful name in the industry.
Li read some books when he was a teenager. Although he didn't even graduate from junior high school, he was knowledgeable and literate in the tooth carving industry. Therefore, Li was not only the backbone of business in 1950s and 1960s, but also a teacher of Daxin Ivory Craft Factory. Li Ziran knew the craftsmen of that era very well: because of the war, the people lived in poverty, and most of the craftsmen had low educational level. They can't write, they can't draw, they don't understand human body composition, they only know how to make it by hand. Li realized that today is a new society, and to do a good job in tooth carving, it is necessary to improve the cultural literacy of tooth carving artists.
Therefore, Li Jing often gives the workers "literacy" after work, so he is called "model teacher" by his companions. On the one hand, Li tirelessly teaches others, on the other hand, he is very good at learning. See Li Haoxue in Daxin Ivory Craft Factory. During the national steelmaking in 1958, Li was left alone to make a product with a height of 24 inches (1 inch = 3.3333cm) and a weight of about 20kg. This is the first time that he has made a large-scale ivory carving figure independently. It was this experience that made him establish his artistic direction of focusing on ivory figures.
In the same year, Daxin ivory factory also sent Li to Beijing ivory carving factory to study and exchange, and visited Beijing Palace Museum for a month.
In Beijing and the Forbidden City, Li was shocked by the profound cultural charm of the Chinese nation: he saw the exquisite works of art left by his predecessors and how magnificent the artistic treasures left by craftsmen of all ages were. Li is like a big sponge, constantly learning and absorbing, and then digesting. He used his wisdom and talent to turn what he had learned into knowledge, and then passed it on to his colleagues in Daxin Ivory Craft Factory after he returned to Guangzhou. Half a century later, Li Shen, who was over 70 years old, said with emotion: "One month's study in Beijing has influenced my life and made me have a lifelong love for ivory carving art."
In the past 50 years, Li has changed from a production worker to a design studio director and technical assistant director. He was also rated as a model worker in Guangzhou, an advanced worker in Guangdong and a master of arts and crafts in China. He worked in Daxin Ivory Craft Factory for 38 years. After retirement, he was rehired as a senior art consultant of the factory. He not only forged a deep artistic marriage with the art of tooth carving, but also forged a deep artistic marriage with Daxin Ivory Craft Factory, giving full play to his artistic talent and intelligence in the field of tooth carving in China.
Innovating "Southern School" Tooth Carvings
After a month's technical exchange in Beijing Tooth Carving Factory, after repeated thinking, Li proposed to keep the traditional features of Guangzhou Tooth Carving, such as tooth ball, tooth boat painting, flying dragon, flowers and birds landscape, and broaden the themes of character modeling, pavilions and pavilions. He also specifically proposed that the artistic techniques of "Northern School" seiko figures should be rubbed into the tooth carving techniques of "Southern School".
Historically, ivory carving was divided into "Southern School" and "Northern School" in terms of techniques and themes. Beijing tooth carving is the representative of "Northern School", featuring figures, flowers and birds, and ancient ladies. Guangzhou tooth carving is the representative of "South School", which is mainly composed of tooth balls, figures, original boats, landscapes, flowers and birds, and animals, and emphasizes fine carving in techniques. As the main representative of the "Southern School", Li also learned that there were about 10,000 to 20,000 people engaged in ivory handicrafts at that time, 90% of whom were figures, and the competition was fierce. Therefore, he believes that to be a good figure, it is important to improve the quality of the makers and designers of tooth carving, so that the theme of shaping characters runs through several major skills in the tooth carving industry. To this end, Li once published a paper entitled "Man is the best skill", expounding the viewpoint that "it is easy to learn skills, but difficult to learn art". Practice has proved that craftsmen who have the artistic skills of characterization can usually make other modeling themes, which we often say now, but experts who can only carve flowers and birds are not necessarily good people, because this is just a technology, which is different from the art with vitality. Art includes action modeling, facial expressions and so on. It is difficult to be a good character, because it involves thinking, artistic vision, aesthetic knowledge and so on. Varieties that are simply used for carving don't even need you to draw, but become people, flowers, birds, animals, landscapes and so on. You need to be highly skilled. Therefore, in order to promote the development of Guangzhou's tooth carving, Li felt that it was necessary to develop the theme of figure modeling of tooth carving on the basis of the original skills.
Li first made a technical breakthrough in the design and modeling of ancient static ladies-put forward targeted carving requirements in appearance, posture and clothing lines, and strived to show artistic beauty in every product with the theme of characters. Daxin Ivory Craft Factory attaches great importance to his suggestion. In the 1960s, the factory dispatched, Luo Zhencheng and Li to form a technical backbone team, and went down to the workshop separately to guide front-line workers to master the method of figure carving and study how to accurately and beautifully shape figures. Through these efforts, Guangzhou Daxin Ivory Factory has made a qualitative leap in the process of making carved ladies and other figures-not only the figures are more graceful, but also the charm is realistic. At that time, these ladies' articles were collectively referred to as "Oriental Beauty" by foreign businessmen, and were ordered in large quantities by the foreign trade industry according to the specifications of 8-inch, 12-inch and 16-inch Seiko ladies, which became very sought-after foreign exchange-earning commodities at that time, and Guangzhou's tooth carving skills were further improved. This qualitative leap can be said to be led by Li, and the task of handling it also falls on Li's shoulder. From 1958 to 1962, Li almost has three mornings in the workshop to open teeth, carve and ponder the appearance of a lady with front-line workers until the product is made.
During this period, Li also created a new tooth carving product "fisherman's net boat". He designed and made a net-casting boat with the skill of Guangzhou tooth carving hollowing out and splicing, which reproduced the life scene of an ancient fisherman going out to sea to fish. Fishing net boat can be said to be a work of "turning stone into gold". Once this work came out, it was widely welcomed by the export. After decades, the products of this theme have been very prosperous and well received by the market. A few years ago, Guangzhou Big Ivory Craft Factory formally applied to the State Patent Office, and the theme of "Fisherman's net-casting boat" won the patent production right.
Ancient ladies and "fishing net boats" became the mainstream products of Daxin ivory craft factory at that time, accounting for 60% of the sales of Guangzhou tooth carving crafts at that time. Since then, the lifelike tooth carving figures have officially become a wonderful flower in Guangzhou's tooth carving garden.
1962, at the initiative of Guangzhou Mayor Zhu Guang, Guangzhou Cultural Park held a famous city arts and crafts exhibition. Li's "Purple Sword God" is the first time that he carved an ivory red plum vase with flowers on the outside and words on the inside. His work won the second prize, and another 20-inch young lady was purely a static figure. In the industry at that time, it was rare for this kind of works of ladies without ideological content to win prizes. Because of Li's design, this kind of women's clothing products were once called "Meirenning" by the industry and merchants. After a long time, this kind of lady modeling provided rich themes, which laid the foundation for making large-scale works such as Fairy Scattered Flowers and Ma Gu's Birthday.
Li also earnestly studied modern figure carving techniques and boldly created eight female tooth carvings that reflected the theme of revolutionary struggle. He expanded the design theme from ancient beauty to contemporary hero, and made a great leap in time and space. This work is also collected by Guangdong Folk Arts and Crafts Museum because of its vivid characters and vivid modeling.
1963, Daxin ivory craft factory transferred Li, who was full of innovative thinking, to the craft design room of the factory, which once again provided a stage for Li to display his artistic talent. Li first thanked the factory for its trust, and then realized the heavy responsibility on his shoulders: that is, designers should know how to design, solve technical problems and cultivate technical backbones. After he entered the design room, the first big work he was responsible for designing was Ode to a Hero, which is a tooth carving pedestal made of original ivory materials, about 2.4 meters high and weighing about 40 kilograms. The whole work sculpts four heroes, Lei Feng, Wang Jie, Ouyang Hai and Jiao Youlu, and reproduces their spiritual outlook. This work was designed and produced by Li Cong 1964 to 1969. Due to the influence of the "Cultural Revolution", factories often shut down, and the whole production process lasted for six years.
1970, the tooth carving of "Ode to a Hero" was finally exhibited at the Guangzhou Autumn Export Commodities Fair, which was seen by a German businessman in France and bought at a large sum of money. Li and his workmates earned a lot of foreign exchange for the country, but at that time they only had tens or hundreds of yuan a month. To Li's regret, a large number of their famous artists (including himself) worked hard to design and produce tooth carving crafts, but they did not sign their own names, thus failing to obtain the protection of the rights and interests of intellectual works.
Keep innovating and reach new heights.
Just as Li was preparing to show his talents in the design of tooth carving figures, a "cultural revolution" turned traditional handicrafts into a product of "self-cultivation" However, the Guangzhou Export Commodities Fair has not been closed for one session, and Daxin Ivory Craft Factory is still responsible for earning foreign exchange through export trade. On the one hand, the factory wants to dissolve the "petty bourgeoisie shack" of the design room, on the other hand, it wants to invite an old artist to continue to make some traditional handicrafts to participate in the Canton Fair and earn foreign exchange for the government. Li returned to the workshop as a monitor and apprentice, and his creative enthusiasm has never diminished.
During the "Cultural Revolution", Li first designed and produced a large-scale tooth carving pedestal "Ma Gu Xian Shou". Ma Gu Qianshou broke through the problems of small product specifications and monotonous modeling style caused by the limitation of raw materials in previous tooth carving works. He made the trunk of Ma Gu's body with a whole piece of ivory material, made other modeling movements with scattered tooth materials, and then made them into various shapes respectively, and then connected all the parts by mosaic and mosaic. This practice makes the shape of "Ma Gu Xian Shou" reach 1 meter high and weighs about 50 kilograms. The specifications are grand and the characters are lifelike.
From then on, Li was out of control, and his thinking seemed to grow wings. He also designed "Fairy Scattering Flowers" and adopted the method of "Ma Gu's Birthday" in the production process to make the tooth carving elegant. He also designed several large-scale tooth carving crafts with mythical themes, such as Descent from Seven Sisters, Lotus Lantern, Pearl of the South China Sea, Flat Peach Made by Dasheng, etc., which adopted new mosaic technology and won favorable comments, and won various design awards in the craft industry of Guangdong Province or Guangzhou City.
1978, after the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee, Daxin Ivory Craft Factory resumed the design room, with Li as the director of the design room. Daxin Ivory Craft Factory has also become an important foreign exchange earning unit of export commodity trade, with unprecedented growth in production scale and labor force. Li is responsible for the creative design, technical management, quality management and skills training of the whole factory. The busier he is, the happier he is.
1982, according to the requirements of "revolutionization, knowledge, skill and youthfulness" of cadres, Li was promoted to deputy director of Daxin Ivory Craft Factory, in charge of production technology and design. At that time, the number of workers in Daxin factory had reached six or seven hundred, which was the most prosperous period since the factory was established. The trend of the times pushed Li to a leading position. Li didn't live up to expectations. During the period from 1982 to 1992, he not only led the technical work of the whole factory, but also made excellent artistic creation of tooth carving.
Li-Li's tooth carving has gained great fame. His design style has attracted attention from both inside and outside the industry. The most representative large-scale tooth carving is "The Fairy's Birthday" (see color picture), which pushed his design style to the peak of tooth carving art.
1982, a foreign businessman learned that there was a master of tooth carving named Li in Guangzhou. He found Daxin Ivory Craft Factory through Guangdong Export Company and contacted Li, hoping to ask him to make a big and conscientious work. The name of the work is "The Fairy's Birthday". Daxin Factory made it clear that Li was responsible for the design and production of this work.
The Fairy's Birthday is based on ancient legends, which shows the lively scene of immortals from all walks of life rushing to Yaochi to present birthday gifts to the Queen Mother. This work is carved and inlaid with ivory, which integrates figures, flowers and birds, animal mouths, landscapes, pavilions, lights and characters, and is composed of hundreds of carving accessories. The whole handicraft is carved with figures of different sizes *** 128, each with different postures, lifelike, lifelike, dancing fairies, walking immortals and elegant heavenly queen. The whole work has excellent design and grand specifications, with a total length of 1.90m and a height of 1.30m, * * *. This work won the first prize of 1983 excellent "four new" product design of Guangdong Second Light Industry System.
"The Fairy's Birthday" caused a shock in the field of tooth carving because of its rich theme, large scale and exquisite production, and brothers in the craft field rushed to Daxin Factory to watch it. Daxin Factory marked the price as 200,000 RMB, but the export company in charge of planned economy at that time only quoted 1.6 million RMB, and no deal was made. This also involves the question whether this handicraft is a work of art: if it is a handicraft, the profit of the product can only be increased by 15%~20% on the basis of the original cost, and if it exceeds the profit, the tax will be as high as 45%. Because the relevant policies were not straightened out at that time, it was put off until 1985, and The Fairy's Birthday was still in the showroom of Daxin Ivory Craft Factory. One day this autumn, a group of people from Shanghai Friendship Store came to Daxin Ivory Factory and wanted to buy "The Fairy's Birthday". Daxin Factory offered 260,000 yuan at this time, and finally clinched the deal with a coupon of more than 250,000 yuan, which was a very high price at that time. Because the price of an ordinary commercial house at that time was about 1000 yuan. If you use a coupon of 250 thousand, you can buy a building Li and his colleagues from Daxin Ivory Craft Factory are waiting for a good price with their eyes wide open, but the Shanghai Friendship Store has marked the price of 2 million yuan. 1988, Shenxian's birthday was sold to a banker in Japan for1580,000 RMB in Shanghai. Dramatically, with the approval of the China government, the banker invited Li as a guest to escort the "Fairy Birthday" to Japan and stay in Tokyo for half a month. This work can be said to be Li's most satisfactory design. However, to Li's regret, this satisfactory work, designed and produced with decades of wisdom and painstaking efforts, was not engraved with his name, although he personally escorted it abroad. At that time, despite the reform and opening up, all works in the tooth carving industry, even masterpieces by artists, could not bear their own names, because there was no provision for the protection of intellectual property rights in China. It was not until 2 1 century that the protection of intellectual property rights was implemented.
From 1950s to 1990s, Li successively designed and produced exquisite tooth carvings and won numerous awards. He kept a low profile in the face of various awards such as Guangzhou Model Worker, Guangdong Advanced Worker and China Master of Arts and Crafts. What makes him most happy is that he can participate in the creation of tooth carving art wholeheartedly.
Li has worked in Daxin Factory for 38 years. Although he has a skill, he is not conservative. He took dozens of apprentices and trained many provincial masters of arts and crafts, senior craftsmen and senior technicians. He left his disciples the following skills:
1. Learn tooth carving skills and design creation without rigid imitation, but with innovation; 2. Read more literary classics to improve literary skills; 3. The design or production of handicrafts should reflect cultural connotation and have vitality.
Li's 60-year practice in the art industry proves that even if the original culture is low, as long as he constantly explores the peak of the art of tooth carving, he will eventually become the top master in the field of tooth carving. His skills have been recognized by the industry, and his artistic style, which combines the strengths of the "North School" and "South School" tooth carving art, has a far-reaching influence in China tooth carving industry. But what he is proud of is not the masterpieces that once earned some foreign exchange for the government. What makes him most gratified is that he can grow from a producer to an innovator of craft design, from an apprentice to fame and then to a teacher, pursuing art, and has gone a long way, which has played a leading role in promoting the continuous innovation and development of Guangzhou's tooth carving industry.
Family inheritance, endless
Li was born in a typical tooth carving family. He is not only a master of tooth carving, but also the technical deputy director of Guangzhou Daxin ivory craft factory in its heyday, representing the southern style of tooth carving. Therefore, he has his own thoughts on how to develop and inherit the skill of tooth carving. Now over seventy, Li is still committed to saving this ancient skill that is on the verge of being lost. He often cooperates with government media organizations and Guangzhou Cultural Heritage Protection Forum to publicize and display Guangzhou's tooth carving skills. He also suggested that the Academy of Fine Arts or vocational and technical schools should properly recruit students to study tooth carving, which can not only inherit ancient stunts, but also provide employment opportunities. In recent years, he and his son, * * *, founded a dental carving craft enterprise to recruit and train dental carving technicians, and he personally taught the skills. With the shortage of ivory raw materials in Africa, he turned his artistic perspective to the design and production of ivory works of mammoths (ancient mammoths unearthed in Russia). Guangzhou Baoxiang Craft Co., Ltd., as its artistic director, participated in the two exhibitions of Guangdong Arts and Crafts Masters in 2007 and 2008, and its long-haired ivory sculpture "Fisherman's Happy Harvest" and "Ancestor's Birthday" won the grand prize respectively, and its vivid expression techniques and superb skills were affirmed by experts and respected by the audience!
Similarly, influenced by the family atmosphere, Li Bincheng and his two sons obtained the biography of their father and mastered the skillful carving technique. The youngest son gave up his career as a civil servant and resolutely devoted himself to ivory carving. Under the guidance of their father, they also produced a number of exquisite works of art with exquisite tooth carving skills, such as mammoth teeth, sandalwood and fragrant wood materials. In 2006, when the King of Sweden visited Guangzhou, China with the "Gothenburg", he was deeply attracted by the lifelike, rotating and fragrant wooden ball and couldn't put it down.
For more than half a century, Li's tooth carving family has been handed down from generation to generation, constantly blooming new artistic life. In 2006, China's tooth carving skills were identified as the first batch of intangible cultural heritage protection objects. In 2007, as the main representative of Guangdong's tooth carving, Li won the first place named by Guangdong Federation of Literary and Art Circles and Provincial Folk Writers Association for his artistic achievements and influence on the tooth carving industry.
20 10 September, in the "China Henghao-Global Chinese Design Grand Prix for Expo Souvenirs" sponsored by China Culture Promotion Association, World Chinese Merchants Promotion Association and Shanghai Culture and Art Exchange Association, the Expo souvenir "The Crown of the East-The Same Seal of Expo China Pavilion" designed and produced by Li stood out among more than 4,000 entries and won the special prize.
The same seal of the China Pavilion of the "Oriental Crown" World Expo won by virtue of its outstanding performance in theme, technology, materials and market. This work expresses the humanistic connotation of "walking with the World Expo and walking with the world" in the form of "printing on the same road" in the ancient seal cutting of China. Its originality is bold and ingenious, and its ingenious conception is unparalleled, projecting deep Expo feelings and China complex. There is an Expo gold medal made of 15g pure gold at the top, with the Expo logo cast on it, and a seal made of mammoth ivory unearthed in Siberian frozen soil hidden in the middle. The seal is a dragon created by Li, a master of arts and crafts in China and a famous ivory carving master in Yuexiu District, which symbolizes the background color of "China Expo". The whole work is exquisitely conceived, with unique materials, integrating tradition and modernity, appreciation and practicality, and it is a rare treasure.
In the "Guangdong Week" exhibition of 20 10 Shanghai World Expo, Guangfu culture and ivory carving art shine brilliantly. The ivory ball on the 57th floor of Master Li and his descendant Mr. Li Bincheng's work "Shi Sheng Gankun" participated in the exhibition. Two masters of arts and crafts also performed live tooth carvings, which attracted the attention of leaders such as Wang Yang, secretary of Guangdong Provincial Party Committee, and Yu, secretary of Shanghai Municipal Party Committee. While stopping to appreciate, they paid attention to the production process and inheritance of tooth carving art, and at the same time, they were well received by the visitors on the spot.
This tooth carving work named "Shi Sheng Gankun" was designed and operated by Master Li himself. The theme of the main body is the Flying Maiden in Dunhuang, which sets off the Dragon Ball (57-story ivory ball), which means that today the Chinese nation is prosperous, endless, peaceful and progressive. Among them, the most precious 57-layer ivory balls are 17 cm in diameter, each layer is as thin as silk paper, all of which are hollowed out and carved, and each layer is concentric and can rotate flexibly.