China Cultural Heritage: Qingtian Stone Sculpture

This is another of the films about traditional ethnic arts and crafts in China today, and how they are enjoying something of a revival, not only in terms of support and interest, but also in terms of innovation.

Today’s episode looks at stone carving in Qingtian, which is about 500km south of Shanghai, and where the natural colours of the stone are used in the finished work, producing at the same time some of the most colourful and ingenious examples of stone carving I have seen anywhere.

We follow the work of a number of master craftsmen, who are also seeking to pass the trade onto the younger generation. But of course it takes great deal of time to learn the craft and a lot of skill to produce the finest works.

Besides normal stone carving the stone from Qingtian is also used for making seals, which is an important part of Chinese artistic culture; and recently an innovator has also been using the material to produce fine sounding musical instruments. We see all this and more in this very interesting episode of the series.