Trip to Suzhou - part 2 - Taohuawu New Year woodprints

As I anticipated in the first part of the post about the trip to Suzhou, one of our destinations was the workshop of Gu ZhiJun, a multiple award-winning artist who merges ancient techniques with modern design.

Gu ZhiJun workshop is located in Taohuawu, literally the Peach Flower Port, a district in Suzhou that produced many folk artists, and is one of the two best-known homes of Chinese New Year pictures. 

The entrance to the workshop

Taohuawu New Year woodprints, listed as one of China's national intangible cultural heritages in 2006, developed into a folk artistic style during the Ming Dynasty in a workshop on Suzhou's Taohuawu Street, which gave the style its name, and reached their peak during the Qing Dynasty.

Although this fact is almost unknown (I admit it was a surprise for me as well) Taohuawu New Year woodprints largely influenced Japanese ukiyo-e during Edo period, which then affected Western Post-Impressionism, contributing this way to the history of global art.

In earlier times almost every family hung Taohuawu New Year woodprints on the door and/or on a wall on the first day of the New Year and left them there for the whole year. They were very popular because they reflected the hopes or wishes of people, and were highly decorative and inexpensive.

The designs for the paintings are rooted in traditional Chinese realist art, and themes of good fortune and happiness, manifested by deities and auspicious symbols, are dominant. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties the prints were mostly created by imagination according to legends and, later on, images from dramas, novels, became a source of inspiration.

To emphasize the celebration of the New Year the colors used in these carvings are usually strong, such as red, lemon, emerald green, shocking pink, and cobalt blue.

This is the New Year wood print we bought, it represents a tiger, and the coin-like circles have words of good fortune and happiness inscribed on them, symbolizing the hopes or wishes for the New Year. I love the bright colors and the energy that this print transmits!

The wood printing process is quite complicated, but I will try to explain it as best I can.

Step 1: The design is drawn or painted on a special thin paper and transferred to the woodblock. Next the paper is rubbed off, and only the design itself is left on the block.

Step 2: The wood is carved with a special knife with two metallic ends for cutting and carving. The complete design might not be carved into only one woodblock, especially for color printing.

Step 3: The woodblock is coated with color with an ink brush and the sheet to be printed is laid over the woodblock and rubbed with a baren.

At the workshop we had the chance to see an apprentice in the process of inking and rubbing the wood block.

Unfortunately Gu ZhiJun wasn`t in the workshop when we visited, but we are planning to go back some other time to talk with him.

Anyway, his art is very interesting. Besides producing traditional New Year paintings, he creates prints where ancient and modern times overlap, disorienting the viewer and raising a smile at the same time. 

Back to Part 1 - Trip to Suzhou