Bambooworking
Bambooworking is the activity or skill of making items from bamboo, and includes architecture, carpentry, furniture and cabinetry, carving, joinery, and weaving.
The earliest surviving examples of such documents, written in ink on string-bound bundles of bamboo strips (or "slips"), date from the fifth century BC, during the Warring States period.
Bamboo or wooden strips were used as the standard writing material during the early Han dynasty, and excavated examples have been found in abundance.
In Central India, there are regular bamboo working circles in the forest areas of Maharashtra, Madhyapradesh, Odisha, and Chhattisgarh.
Examples include clothing such as shirt tops, pants, and socks for adults and children,[1] as well as bedding such as sheets and pillow covers.
osier), oak, wisteria, forsythia, vines, stems, fur, hide, grasses, thread, and fine wooden splints.
[citation needed] Bamboo has also long been used as scaffolding; the practice has been banned in China for buildings over six stories, but is still in continuous use for skyscrapers in Hong Kong.
In Japanese architecture, bamboo is used primarily as a supplemental or decorative element in buildings, such as fencing, fountains, grates, and gutters, largely due to the ready abundance of quality timber.
The literati frequently wrote poetry to laud the fine aesthetic appearance of bamboo-carved stationery and the splendor of the embellished themes despite the fact that they were useful products, highlighting the particular cultural significance of bamboo.
[citation needed] The range of forms and subjects employed demonstrates the attraction of bamboo carving, which dates back to the middle of the Ming era.
[4] Both as useful tools and pieces of art, the carvings on the bamboo stationery used by the middle Ming and early Qing literati are valuable.
[citation needed] Throughout the middle of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, bamboo carvings underwent a transition from functional instruments to decorative stationery.
[6] Bamboo cutting quickly developed from a traditional craft to a form of fine art that the Chinese royal family admired.
In the first year of Yongzheng (1723), the emperor ordered the building of a workshop (zao ban chu) to make products for his home, staffed with artists and artisans he cherished.
[7] The numerous craftspeople, painters, and intellectuals who congregated in the Jiangnan region started to communicate often,[8] which influenced the change from painting to craft.
Literati artists looked for Taoism in nature in the early Ming Dynasty (1368–1435), while later painters used idea-image to communicate Confucianism.
asks Chinese poet Bai Juyi in his poem "The Story of Raising Bamboo" (Yang zhu ji).
Numerous bamboo-carved stationery items have survived to the present day, demonstrating the literati's widespread and popular use of this material at the time.
These physical and spiritual attributes may be the reason why bamboo-carved stationery was so well-received by intellectuals and artists of bamboo carving in the middle Ming and Qing dynasties.
In addition to carving themes, bamboo carvers like Zhou Hao and Cai Zhao started to develop their own aesthetic literacy and cultural accomplishment at the same time.
Ren Xiong, a native of the province of Xiaoshan, was an accomplished landscape and figure painter with a graceful and endearing aesthetic.
For the bamboo carving on the stationery, they employed a method known as the embossed technique (fu diao), which made the image appear uncontrolled.
[2] Due to the influence of Chinese social and political culture, bamboo carvings' identities have undergone enormous alterations throughout the 20th century.
On the one hand, bamboo carving is no longer able to satisfy the aesthetic requirements of mass marketization due to this loss in character.
Although ancient bamboo carving is primarily the work of literati, it has gradually gained acceptance as a form of material cultural artwork and is now used by the general public.
But as economic society develops quickly and Western dominant culture spreads, many traditional handicrafts are gradually losing popularity.
The ancient artistry of bamboo, which is directly linked to human production and daily life, has therefore attracted a lot of interest.
On the one hand, bamboo goods that are part of the "intangible cultural heritage" must continue to innovate using traditional handcraft techniques.
