Journal

What Is Bamboo Weaving? Seven Thousand Years, from Basket to Dragon
What Is Bamboo Weaving? Seven Thousand Years, from Basket to Dragon
Bamboo is split into thin strips and woven over and under. Seven thousand years ago people made mats this way; the same method still makes baskets, lanterns, and the dragons... Read more...
Who Says a Yi Girl Cannot Paint Lacquer?
Who Says a Yi Girl Cannot Paint Lacquer?
Yi lacquerware has been made in Liangshan for seventeen hundred years, and the rule was taught to sons, never to daughters. Qumu Shiwu broke it at twelve, blistered her hands... Read more...
The Year He Had No Choice
The Year He Had No Choice
Zhou Shuangxi was eighteen and wanted out. He stayed at the drawloom for fifty years, and became the national inheritor of Nanjing Yunjin — silk woven with gold, five centimetres... Read more...
Above the Porcelain White: The Cut a Machine Cannot Make
Above the Porcelain White: The Cut a Machine Cannot Make
Feng Guohua has made porcelain in Jingdezhen for thirty years. A machine works to a pattern, he says; by hand, every cut carries a decision. His vases are fired to... Read more...
Put On the Mask and You Are a God
Put On the Mask and You Are a God
In Shiyou, a village in Jiangxi, eight farmers called bo dance Nuo for sixteen days a year. On the first day of the New Year the drum sounds, the wooden... Read more...
She Could Not Read, and Cut a Nine-Metre Yellow River
She Could Not Read, and Cut a Nine-Metre Yellow River
Gao Fenglian was fifty when she began cutting paper in earnest. She had spent her life in a cave house in northern Shaanxi; in the end her Yellow River, cut... Read more...
Six Months for a Bridal Set: The Silversmith Village of Kongbai
Six Months for a Bridal Set: The Silversmith Village of Kongbai
In a village on the shoulder of Leigong Mountain, four hundred years have gone into one thing: silver. Yang Guangbin started at thirteen. The bridal set he made for his... Read more...
Passing the Lacquer On: Three Generations, One Craft
Passing the Lacquer On: Three Generations, One Craft
Lacquer is applied in dozens of thin layers, each one left to dry in the dark. Liu Zhanggan is eighty-seven and still lays them on, in a Fuzhou workshop his... Read more...
Zhou Guizhen: Sixty Years at One Workbench
Zhou Guizhen: Sixty Years at One Workbench
Zhou Guizhen joined the Yixing teapot factory in 1958 and has never left the bench. A portrait of one of the last makers trained by Gu Jingzhou. Read more...
What Is a Yixing Zisha Teapot?
What Is a Yixing Zisha Teapot?
A simple guide to Yixing zisha teapots: what the clay is, why the pot breathes, how to choose a clay and a shape, and how to use one. Read more...