Among the imperial crafts of the “Eight Great Arts of Yanjing”, Beijing Carved Lacquer (Large Lacquer Decoration) stands out as a treasure of Eastern aesthetics with its unique charm of “layer upon layer of lacquering and carving with a knife as a brush”. This craft, made from natural lacquer through countless refinements, has been an exclusive luxury of the imperial family since ancient times due to its complex procedures and long production cycle. That warm and thick crimson color not only carries the imperial dignity of the Ming and Qing dynasties but also embodies craftsmen’s persistence in exquisite craftsmanship, waiting for every traveler to explore its thousand-year-old charm.
The history of Beijing Carved Lacquer can be traced back to the Tang Dynasty. According to the Ming Dynasty book “Records of Lacquer Decoration”, this craft originated in Sichuan and Yunnan. It gradually matured in the Song Dynasty, with varieties such as carved red lacquer and carved rhinoceros lacquer appearing. The Song Dynasty “Carved Red Lacquer Box with Osmanthus Patterns” collected in The Palace Museum today is a rare surviving treasure. In the Yuan Dynasty, with the flow of craftsmen, the craft of carved lacquer was introduced to Beijing, and craftsmen began to inscribe their names on the bottom of their works, leaving many traceable artistic treasures. It was in the Ming Dynasty that Beijing Carved Lacquer truly established its imperial status. During the Yongle period, the imperial palace set up a dedicated workshop named Guoyuan Chang under the Imperial Household Department, inviting Zhang Degang, a famous craftsman of the Yuan Dynasty, to preside over it. It gathered top craftsmen from across the country, integrated craft styles from various regions, and finally formed the unique characteristics of Beijing Carved Lacquer—simple, profound, smooth and delicate.
The Qing Dynasty was the heyday of Beijing Carved Lacquer. Especially during the Qianlong period, due to the emperor’s extreme preference, the Lacquer Workshop of the Imperial Workshop was specially responsible for carved lacquer production. The works covered various utensils such as screens, tables, chairs, vases, jars, and boxes, ranging from small ornaments held in the palm to large decorations over ten feet high. There are distinct style differences between Ming and Qing carved lacquer: Ming Dynasty carved lacquer is dark red in color, with smooth and rounded knife work, and the finished products are finely polished, showing simplicity and solemnity; Qing Dynasty carved lacquer mainly uses bright red as the main color, with clear knife marks and no excessive polishing. The patterns are complex and delicate, and the craft of carved colored lacquer was innovated, creating rich visual layers through multi-layer color matching, forming a graceful and luxurious imperial style. In addition, the matrix materials of the Qing Dynasty were more diverse. In addition to the traditional wood matrix, porcelain matrix, purple sand matrix, leather matrix, etc., appeared, further expanding the expressiveness of carved lacquer.
The birth of a carved lacquer work is the most extreme interpretation of “slow work yields fine products”. It needs to go through more than a dozen processes including design, matrix making, lacquering, pattern drawing, carving, and polishing, all completed by hand with almost zero error tolerance. Among them, lacquering and carving are the core links: after the matrix is made, craftsmen need to apply natural lacquer on the matrix every day, one layer at a time, and dry it before applying the next. Only two layers can be completed a day, and a 1-millimeter-thick lacquer layer requires 20 processes and 20 days. The lacquer layer of the whole work is often several millimeters to more than ten millimeters thick, with hundreds of coats in total, taking months or even years. When the lacquer layer reaches the required thickness, craftsmen carve patterns according to the design drawings with a knife as a pen. The knife techniques include relief carving, openwork carving, three-dimensional round carving, etc. Each knife needs to accurately control the strength, not only to carve the layering of the patterns but also not to damage the underlying lacquer layer. A slight mistake will ruin all previous efforts. Finally, after polishing, waxing, gold tracing and other processes, a carved lacquer work is finally completed, which has both practical characteristics of moisture resistance, heat resistance, acid and alkali resistance and high artistic value.
At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, with the decline of national strength, the craft of carved lacquer was once on the verge of extinction. It was not until the founding of New China that scattered carved lacquer inheritors in the folk were gathered to form a production cooperative, which later developed into Beijing Carved Lacquer Factory, giving this ancient craft a new lease of life. Today, Beijing Carved Lacquer is constantly innovating in inheritance. It not only restores traditional carved red lacquer and carved rhinoceros lacquer crafts but also tries to combine the craft with modern life, developing practical cultural and creative products such as desk lamps, dinner plates, and jewelry boxes, allowing the thousand-year-old craft to enter daily life.
For foreign travelers, there are two must-visit places to explore the charm of Beijing Carved Lacquer. Beijing Yanjing Eight Great Arts Museum is located in Chengen Temple, an ancient building of the Ming Dynasty. This four-courtyard temple, known as “Beijing’s most mysterious temple”, collects exquisite carved lacquer works from past dynasties, from Ming and Qing imperial ornaments to contemporary masterpieces, comprehensively showing the evolution of the craft. Wandering in it, you can closely feel the profound heritage of imperial craftsmanship. The Palace Museum collects a large number of rare Ming and Qing carved lacquer works, especially the carved colored lacquer works of the Qianlong period, which are complex in patterns and bright in colors, showing the peak craftsmanship. In addition, Beijing Carved Lacquer Factory still adheres to inheritance. Although it does not open large-scale production workshops to the public, occasional intangible cultural heritage performances allow travelers to witness the exquisite process of craftsmen’s lacquering and carving with their own eyes.
Today’s Beijing Carved Lacquer has long surpassed the object itself and become a living fossil carrying craftsmanship and culture. The layers of lacquer are the precipitation of time; the exquisitely carved patterns are the piety of craftsmen. When you touch the warm lacquer surface and neat knife marks of a carved lacquer work, you can understand the spiritual core of “extreme persistence” in Eastern aesthetics and feel the artistic shock spanning thousands of years.
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