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February 13, 2015

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Home » City specials » Hangzhou

Artisan thrives on old Japanese iron works

By Xu Wenwen | February 13, 2015, Friday | Print Edition

AN iron plate, after being heated, forged, and cooled repeatedly, becomes a dark, weighty, glimmering patina of the past. The technique originated in Japan during the Edo period (1603-1867) and has mostly disappeared, but a young Chinese artisan is thriving on it.

This kind of ironware’s surface has nothing to do with being sleek and shiny. Instead it is rough with a matte finish that sends out a diffuse reflection under light. Its rim is chunky and uneven. It’s mostly used for tea sets.

“I like its solemn, serene beauty,” says Li Gongbiao, 31, an artisan who was formerly a stone carver who became aware of the old Japanese technique when he visited an exhibition held in Hangzhou four years ago.

The exhibition showcased hundreds of Japanese iron teapots, including some made by this method a century or two ago. Some of them also feature patterns with butterflies and chrysanthemum, and some are combined with silver. They can be worth tens and even hundreds of thousands of yuan each, due to the demanding artisanship, the history and the scarcity.

Li was shocked when he saw the prices. By instinct, he believed he could make them — maybe not as well as the top Japanese masters but at least in a good, basic way. Time has proved him right.

The methodology is very demanding but the principle is simple: Forging a piece of iron into an ironware is done by heating, forging and cooling again and again until it is well shaped.

Unlike sand mould or wax mould methods, this technique requires repeating because iron is of weakest ductility among all metals yet a blacksmith needs to make sure the entire ware is of the same thickness and is cornered perfectly. The process is very slow: To make a simple plate takes at least two weeks.

In Japan, this technique has very few successors, while Li, who started his career as a stone carver when he was 16, decided to devote his life to this artisanship, without a teacher.

At that time, he had finished his nine-year stone-carving career in his hometown of Luoyang in Henan Province, and was in Hangzhou helping local artists make sculptures.

After touring many iron studios in the country and studying from books, he opened his studio at the foot of Fenghuang Hill in Hangzhou.

“What the past masters have done is an end point, and what I am doing is a starting point,” Li says. “I am not copying what they did before, but using the method to create the things that I want to make.”

Li’s works are not of many types. He makes tea sets including saucers, tea spoons, tea knives, tea filters, stoves and plates (round or square), and he also makes vases for Asian-style flower arrangements, and shelves.

And he is picky about material. He uses only old, rusted iron plates dismantled from used machines. The ironware therefore rarely rusts because “it has been rusted once so it features an oxide layer,” explains Li.

Some have pits and a dim rainbow color on the surface because they were corroded by rain.

The artisan also tries to be creative. To make the tea filter he does not cut holes on the plate, instead forging the piece so thin that natural holes emerge. Once an iron plate split during heating and a piece was shaped like a crescent. Li kept it as a decoration on the wall of his studio. He never solders.

“I like to retain the material’s nature, which is given by time — something that human work cannot do,” he says.

His studio demonstrates how meticulous this contemporary blacksmith is. There are some 20 vices and about 50 hammers that to outsiders may look the same, but that Li uses for different functions.

Even all the dark ironware pieces in his eyes appear in different colors. Those stroked by human hands daily shimmer a polished glimmer; those soaped in tea water everyday wear heavy black; and those new plates just made, look “raw,” rough, and are in light black.

Being a blacksmith on a hill and living alone requires patience. The production is so slow that during the almost four years Li has made only about 200 pieces of ironware. But he believes in what he’s doing and thinks he can do it for the rest of his life.

Hangzhou


 

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