Handcraft Papercutting

In Beijing, one of the most impressive folk arts is the papercutting (Chinese: 剪紙). It is the handcraft of Chinese people which use a skillful and creative technique to cut the paper and turn it to a very attractive decoration on the doors, windows, columns, walls and lamps. Every time when I visit Beijing, I take many photos for the papercuttings as they are very beautiful and unique.

Checking the history, the tradition for papercutting was started in 6th century. It was served for religious purpose at first. There are two ways for doing the papercuttings: scissors method and knife method. Today, papercuttings are chiefly used as decoration in many special events, like Chinese New Year, Marriage and cerebrate the birthday.

There is a quite funny study: In the countryside, papercuttings are usually made only by women and girls. This used to be one of the crafts that every girl was to master and that were often used to judge brides. Professional papercutting artists are, on the other hand, almost always men who have guaranteed incomes and work together in workshops.

You can have a look of our papercuttings, we have many different kind of topics, like the Chinese Drama Face, Dragon, Butterfly and many other different animals.

Feel free to contact us at arranke28@gmail.com if you're interested in our papercuttings! Enjoy!

References:
1. Wikipedia: Chinese Paper Cutting
2. Wikipedia: Papercutting
3. Global Chinese Language And Culture Center: The History and Art of Paper Cutting
4. Hong Kong Civil Service Bureau: Chinese Papercutting
5. ChinaVista: Paper Cutting

Comments

Anonymous said…
Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!
January 10, 2010 at 10:09 AM
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