Yanggu Wood Carving: Carving Everything on Good Wood, Seeing All Life in Small Space

Wood carving is an important part of the traditional Chinese carving art. Yanggu County, Liaocheng City, Shandong Province is a millennial ancient city, where the Yellow River culture, canal culture, Water Margin culture, and Dongyi culture are blended, providing a cultural soil for folk art and traditional crafts, as well as the deposits of various traditional folk arts, among which Yanggu wood carving has a history of more than 200 years. The local wood carving works mostly originate from the story of Water Margin and local folk customs, with extremely complex production process from design, material selection, cutting, woodworking, to carving, assembly, polishing and waxing. Camphorwood, nanmu, sandalwood and other precious woods are often used as raw materials. In 2013, Yanggu wood carving was selected as intangible cultural heritage of Shandong Province, according to the Information Office of YangGu District People’s Government.

68-year-old Wang Chuancheng is the representative inheritor of Yanggu wood carving in Shandong Province. In his exhibition hall, the wood carving works embody smooth and simple cutting technique, lively characters, and vivid natural shape. His representative works include Confucius, the Founder of the Thought of Great Harmony, Nine Phoenix Screen, Screen with Mountains, Waters, and Saints, etc.

Source: The Information Office of YangGu District People’s Government