Focus

A more modern touch for an ancient craft

By Wendy Qian (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-06-04 08:00

 

Zhong Liansheng says enamel design should incorporate more contemporary influences. WANG JING / CHINA DAILY

As a sensible artist and practical businessman, Zhong Liansheng provides alternative roads for Beijing's traditional enamelware. He is known for his innovative and conceptual designs.

In Zhong's prized work Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, each of the four vases represents different seasons, not only with different colors but also with different shapes and designs.

"Winter comes abruptly, which explains the sudden end of the vase, while spring is mellow and gradual; I represent that in the flowing shape," Zhong said.

Cloisonne enamelware is a traditional craft of decorating and coloring metal. Enamel technology entered the Forbidden City during the Yuan dynasty with Chinese designs that pleased the royal families and earned its beautiful name "Blue Jing-Tai".

More than 600 years later, enamel technology was on China's first list of Intangible Cultural Heritage and carried on by hardworking art technicians and designers from the time-honored Beijing Enamel Factory. Among these perfectionists, Zhong is a notable figure.

Zhong's ideal state of enamel design is where new themes are expressed with new technology. For The Beijing Feeling, he decorated a vase with detailed siheyuan - or courtyard houses - designs. Even though siheyuan existed in Beijing for centuries, this type of design was unprecedented in the royal families' enamels.

Unlike the older designers who guard traditional aesthetics, Zhong has a more flexible concept of enamel crafting. He factors in public taste for art: "You have to be flexible enough to preserve heritage, or else it will not be 'heritable'."

Zhong believes that since consumers of enamelware have expanded from exclusive royalty to the upper middle-class, enamel design should incorporate more contemporary influences.

More people are receiving higher education, which results in higher artistic tastes, he said. Zhong is proud to describe his use of color as more "pale" than those of the older designers and less glamorous than colors used for royal enamel.

He believes that as a national enterprise, Beijing Enamel Factory is responsible for preserving traditions but it should also "keep up with the contemporary trends" to be financially self sustaining.

Even though Zhong values popular response to his factory's enamel designs and uses it as a guide, he is not dependent on it.

"The factory has to lead the market, which is why half of our output originates from our own innovations, rather than customary orders."

Zhong, well aware of his artistic license, experiments with combinations that are even startling for a modern public.

In 2005, he designed and directed the installation of enamel on a rectangular-shaped fountain in front of an office building in the CBD. A floral design named Wealth of Blooming Flowers was the first experiment that combined enamel with architecture.

Zhong later directed many other similar projects, such as the brazened doors of the latest Beijing airport terminal.

Despite official affirmation and public acclaim of enamel now, it has not always been popular. Zhong said many of hundreds of his colleagues have left the field.

There are hundreds of steps in enamel crafting that are impossible to undertake alone, each requiring profession, patience, precision and perseverance.

Asked what motivated him to learn enamel, Zhong simply said: "Because I like it." Still, "it's a lonely career. You have to endure."

Zhong has serious concerns over the lack of potential successors. There are six national traditional crafts masters who specialize in enamel, but Zhong is the youngest and only one working full time. Most of the others are over 70 and retired.

It is difficult to find art technicians and designers at the high end. "Young people these days would rather learn how to make practical goods, like TVs, rather than enamel."

But Zhong is confident about his factory and his creative efforts. "New styles and traditional crafts are not in conflict."