Incorporate Chinoiserie Into Your Gift Ideas in 2022

Chinese Intangible cultural heritage is no longer just stay in the museum for the public today. As of November 2021, the number of Chinese intangible cultural heritage projects is 1,557.

In addition to the old traditional folk crafts to be guarded by the old generation, the most important thing is to combine innovative elements with the deep-rooted intangible cultural heritage.

Tencent Video has crossed over with Chinese traditional craftsmen from different fields to create new peripheral works using traditional cultural elements and skills for a number of popular cdramas, documentaries and variety show IPs.

This is not only the heritage of traditional Chinese culture, but also new ideas for Chinoiserie gifts. Let's see what wonderful artworks they bring together.

 

NO.1 Rong Hua: Tradition, Ultimate Romance

Rong Hua (绒花) was first introduced as a tribute to the royal family in the Tang Dynasty, and was also known as "Palace Flower", which means good luck and blessing. Most of them use a combination of harmonics and artistic images to express.

After "Story of Yanxi Palace" became a big hit, the female character of the costume drama "Court Lady", which was broadcasted this year, wore snowflakes on her head, which again brought attention to the skill of making Rong Hua.

The process of making Rong Hua, which is made of silk, is extremely delicate and requires a high level of skill from the craftsman.

As the only remaining intangible cultural inheritor of Rong Hua in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, Zhao Shu Xian (赵树宪) insists on polishing every process of Rong Hua production, striving to shape the beauty of the layers of the pattern.

This time, Zhao Shuxian used the "Heart Signal" love variety show as inspiration to create the Rong Hua works, the delicate and subtle shape of the Rong Hua can be comparable to the real flower, in the transparent acrylic gift box with the velvet flower made of "love signal fish" and flowers, so that the Rong Hua without gold, silver, pearls and jade is beautiful and romantic.

The process of crafting Rong Hua is like falling in love with your loved one, paying attention to every detail and giving everything you have, because all the beauty is worth the effort.

 

NO.2 Paper-cutting: ancient, mysterious style

The art of Chinese paper cutting has a long history and has been passed down from region to region and from ethnic group to ethnic group.

It looks like only a pair of scissors and paper, but in fact, it is an ancient folk art that is easy to learn and difficult to master.

In the process of paper-cutting, one must not only master the essence of cutting to the end, but also have full patience and skill to make countless meticulous modifications to the composition of the paper-cut, so that every line falls just right.

Different from the northern paper-cutting, Qianxi paper-cutting (黔西剪纸), in Guizhou mainly takes the myths and legends of ethnic minorities and the images of flowers, birds, insects, and fish in nature and other animals and plants as the theme, which contains mysterious religious-cultural information and primitive artistic features, expressing the worship of ancient totems and nature of ethnic minorities.

Qianxi traditional paper-cutting has always been the base pattern of Miao costume embroidery, and nowadays it is a precious historical material for studying the history and living habits of Miao people.

In addition to demonstrating her exquisite paper-cutting skills, Yue Hongxia (岳红霞), the paper-cutting inheritor, also incorporates a lot of real emotions and life into her paper-cutting works, striving to achieve a humanistic artistic context, and is named "Qianxi Artisan".

Besides presenting the landscape scenery, ethnic culture, and human history of minority regions in Guizhou, Yue Hongxia is also keen on combining traditional paper-cutting art with current hot events, modern popular elements, and youthful style.

Inspired by the animation of "Perfect World", Yue Hongxia, the inheritor, created this paper-cutting work, using the combination of paper-cutting and realistic expression to render the grand metaphysical worldview of the film and television work, allowing the Chinoiserie to enter the new young world at once, and also allowing the folk traditional skills to last for a long time.

 

NO.3 Hang fan: elegant, Chinoiserie charm

Hang fan (杭扇) is one of the three famous fans in China, also known as "Hangzhou Ya Shan", with the fan surface as the scene, the curve as the bridge, the bridge in the scene, the style of Jiangnan is collected between the fan, a handle of elegance through the ancient and modern.

The elegant fan culture has been with Hangzhou since ancient times, and the elegance of Hangzhou fan depends on the "Hang painting" on its fan surface.

As a kind of painting technique in the field of fan art, the most distinctive feature of the traditional non-foreign heritage Hang painting compared with the elegant literati painting is the bright colors, bright but not vulgar, and the royal style.

Hangzhou fan brand "Wang Xing Ji", by the founder Wang Xingzhai and his wife Chen Ying to create the masterpiece "black paper fan" inherited for a hundred years, with extremely sophisticated production technology was the tribute of the Qing Dynasty royal family.

Chen Zhiyu (陈稚玉), the descendant of the Hang Fan, also worked at Wang Xing Ji at the earliest. The responsibility of passing on the art of Hang Painting fans falls on her shoulders.

She has made full use of the exclusive techniques of Hang painting fan art in her decades of fan creation, combining the ingenious Hang painting with the soft and beautiful Hang fan in a flawless way, and delving into how to tell a story on the fan surface.

The work of this cross-border cooperation is inspired by the cdrama "The Sword and the Brocade" for the creation of Hang Fan.

Chen Zhiyu, extracted the various plots that happened on the road of love between the Xu Ling Yi and Luo Shi Yi Niang in the drama, and told the journey of the two knowing each other to love each other after marriage, which is especially eye-catching to see the young and lively shape from the picture.

By boldly updating the design of the fan surface, Chen Zhiyu also succeeded in incorporating the creativity of cdrama into the art of Hang painting fan, and the Hang Fan was given contemporary emerging elements and its artistic value was enhanced among the younger generation.

 

NO.4 Porcelain: exquisite, natural

Among all the traditional crafts in China, porcelain is the most in the performance of Chinoiserie, after all, Jingdezhen (景德镇) hand-made porcelain skills is one of the first national intangible cultural heritage representative projects in China.

As the porcelain capital of China and the world, Jingdezhen, where the soil is suitable for pottery, has occupied a central position in the history of porcelain for more than a thousand years, and has flourished since the emergence of blue and white porcelain in Jingdezhen, gathering the essence of pottery-making techniques from all over the world, and is still the world leader in ceramic art, with thousands of years of uninterrupted kiln fire.

In Jingdezhen, porcelain is the universal password to awaken creativity, and its hand-made porcelain process is highly integrated with craftsmanship, calligraphy, painting, poetry, and sculpture in one furnace, requiring the creator's subjective creation to achieve a flawless combination of subtlety and perfection under the craft firing technique.

Out of his affection for traditional Chinese landscape painting, Zhu Yong (朱勇), inheritor of porcelain making in Jingdezhen, prefers to draw the theme of the blue and white landscape, figures and birds on porcelain, in addition to drawing traditional patterns, he is eager to make ceramics closer to contemporary life with the ware.

In order to participate in the cross-border creation of the documentary "Once Upon a Bite", he combined the elements of ingredients, cooking utensils, vessels, and humanistic scenery in the documentary with his own blue and white landscape style to form simple and atmospheric compositions and patterns to produce a series of Jingdezhen handmade porcelain works, which are very much in line with the contemporary minimalist style of life.

This set of handmade porcelain works combining traditional art and modern elements was carefully drawn by Zhu Yong for each piece, fully demonstrating the hand-made porcelain artisan's will to inherit the craft over the years.

 

Not only that, Tencent Video and craftsmen have created a total of more than ten works inspired by the "Chinoiserie Style" of cdrama, documentaries, and variety show.

In these posters, you can see the new and old generations of craft inheritors use interesting creativity to greatly expand the boundaries of intangible cultural heritage and creative products, and enter the gift list of the young consumer generation with a Chinoiserie trendy and fashionable posture.

Hope these Chinoiserie gifts can provide help for your gift selection.