Home
» City specials
» Hangzhou
Craft museum celebrates everyday culture
Print Edition
AN exhibition at the newly-opened Craft Museum of the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou is highlighting the artistry of everyday objects and traditional Chinese craftsmen.
Specifically, the exhibition focuses on chairs, window panes and daily-use items (such as nut crackers, basins and suitcases) produced during various eras and gathered from all over the country.
“Folk craft is the art of life,” says Xu Jiang, the director of the China Academy of Art. “If we do not cherish our own traditional art, we will be distant from the land of our culture.”
In the first exhibition area, 100 Chinese chairs are on display. These include several typical Chinese armchairs as well as many with special functions, including one with a chamber pot hidden beneath the seat, an adjustable children’s chair-and-desk set made from bamboo, as well as a post-office swivel chair.
The next display area features 100 daily-use items, including a red wooden wash stand, a wooden basket, a bamboo-woven suitcase, a metal cloth iron and a nut cracker produced several hundred years ago.
The window pane display area features dozens of panes designed with various geometric patterns. Many of these panes are also made without nails using traditional tenon-and-mortise work. According to Hang Jian, the museum’s director, such designs are characteristic of traditional Chinese windows and screens.
Along with these items, an exhibition on traditional Chinese shadow theater is also on permanent display. The museum’s collection of shadow puppets, instruments and scripts includes tens of thousands of times.
Shadow theater is an ancient form of storytelling and popular entertainment that uses flat articulated figures held between a source of light and a translucent screen. Shadow theater spread across the country, where it developed into difference schools and traditions as it came into contact with various local cultures. According to the museum, its collection features artifacts from nearly ever known school of shadow theater.
The shadow puppets themselves are mostly profiles of human beings and animals, which are used to retell classic stories from ancient China. Many are colorful, while others have blackened with age. In the hands of talented puppeteers, these figures can appear to walk, dance, fight and laugh.
The museum is meant not only to exhibit traditional crafts, but “will be a platform showcasing creative modern crafts that carry down old techniques and culture,” says Hang.
The museum’s design is also a work of art in its own right, created by famed Japanese architect Kengo Kuma. Covering almost 5,000 square meters of space, the museum makes ample use of natural light with glass walls and a minimum of partitions.
Date: Through December 31, 9am-4pm
Address: 352 Xiangshan Rd
Tel: (0571) 8671-7707
Admission: Free
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
