Liu's Bamboo Weaving in the View of Design Aesthetics

Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 497 Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Literature, Art and Human Development (ICLAHD 2020) Liu’s Bamboo Weaving in the View of Design Aesthetics Meng Jun1 1Sichuan University of Arts and Science，Dazhou, Sichuan 635000,China *Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] ABSTRACT With national cultural and spiritual connotations, folk handicrafts have plenty of scope for survival, continue a nation’s tradition of artwork-making, and have created perceivable aesthetic values. This kind of folk arts combines with daily necessities, and transforms traditional culture and spiritual connotations into the aesthetics of daily necessities. This can not only pass on excellent folk handicraft, but also make daily necessities more aesthetic, leading to an ideal aesthetics in life. This plays an important role in setting design trends with national culture and spiritual connotations. This paper takes the research of aesthetic elements in design as the theoretical framework, and combines multidisciplinary research theories and methods such as in art, aesthetics, and cultural industry to try to analyze the successful cultural industry of folk handicrafts ─ Liu’s bamboo weaving, through material, shape and cultural connotation. Keywords: design aesthetics, traditional aesthetics, Liu’s bamboo weaving cultural industry that conforms to both the current social aesthetics and functions for use. It not only inherits 1. INTRODUCTION extraordinary folk handicraft but shows the traditional Chinese culture. The following content mainly analyzes In bamboo weaving art in Sichuan Province, Liu’s bamboo the woven bamboo products by Liu family from three weaving in Qu County, Dazhou City is the most successful. aspects: materials, shape, and cultural connotation. Sichuan is rich in bamboo resources, and so ancestors here used bamboo to make tools and utensils a very long time ago. From the very ancient times to the Tang Dynasty and to the Qing Dynasty, bamboo weaving industry in the province was very developed and never interrupted. It is fair to say that bamboo was an inseparable part of production and life for people as their houses, chairs, fans, sleeping mats, hats and chopsticks were all made from bamboo. The Liu's bamboo weaving just emerged amid such a unique geographical and cultural background. In the 1970s, the main inheritor Liu Jiafeng successfully developed jacquard weaving and woven calligraphy and painting, laying the foundation of the unique Liu's bamboo weaving and promoting the development of bamboo weaving craft in China. And Liu Jiang, successor of the Figure 1 Bamboo weaving craft─bottom making second generation, integrated bamboo weaving with tea ceremony, incense, bonsais, cultural objects and the like, to bring bamboo weaving back to the daily life of the general public. The older generations focused on craft techniques, 2. PURSUE NATURAL AND AUSTERE OF while the new generations pay more attention to the MATERIALS aesthetic needs of the public. In recent decades, Liu’s bamboo weaving has gone beyond Liu's weaving majorly adopts tall bamboo without joints as towns and opened stores in big cities, with a tranquil raw materials. From selecting materials to making bamboo cultural sense. This traditional craft has entered the urban filaments, it requires more than a dozen procedures. The daily life and gained popularity among young people, bamboo filaments feature different degrees of thickness which has transformed traditional crafts into fashionable and are soft, light, and full of luster. A quality woven daily necessities. Liu’s bamboo weaving is a model of bamboo product often starts with a piece of bamboo transformation of cultural industry in folk handicraft. By filament. The soft filaments taking on varied shapes in the depending on traditional folk handicraft and combining hands of folk craftsmen can be made into production tools contemporary aesthetics in life, public aesthetic needs, and and daily utensils. This represents a traditional pattern of lifestyles, this bamboo weaving brand has become a sort of life in Sichuan with a history of thousands of years, and the Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL. This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license -http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. 631 Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 497 unique geographical and cultural background on which Liu's bamboo weaving has developed as well. In the hands of Liu Jiang, bamboos are gradually turned into everyday items of urban people, presenting a distinct sense of artifact aesthetics. In terms of materials, he focuses more on the beauty of bamboo’s natural texture, in line with the design concept and Chinese traditional artifact aesthetics which both value natural and austere beauty. Confucius once said: “As I know, vermilion lacquer does not need to be mixed with other colors, pure jade not carved, and valuable gem not decorated. Why? Quality things need no decorations. [1]” In other words, when a kind of material is Figure 3 Bamboo over porcelain already beautiful enough, no decoration is needed, because the beauty in the highest level lies in one thing’s intrinsic In artifact design, the materials are used not only for their feature, far from excessive adornments. In most cases, the natural attributes, but for their intellectual and cultural design of daily necessities is to employ the unique color of ones. Apart from natural beauty, bamboo boasts cultural bamboo filaments themselves to make products with a values as well. Since ancient times, bamboo has been single color, and without exaggerated patterns or any admired by Chinese scholars and literati for its obvious discordant colors. Such kind of weavings looks simple and joints were taken as a symbol of exemplary conduct and gentle on the whole. This design concept perfectly echoes noble character. Bamboo grows uprightly, an idea of Confucius that “Even beautiful, external straightforwardly and neatly, which matches Chinese painting is artificially added to the natural things whose literati’s pursuit of character. Where materials are the Tao intrinsic beauty is far better.” Likewise, similar to Lao exists. Materials are not only a carrier of items that meet Tzu’s idea that “great cleverness conceals in foolishness”, the needs of people’s life, but also a carrier of culture, marvelous beauty is hidden in natural things themselves, a mainly manifested in the transmission of unique traditional high appreciation of nature and its beauty. Zhuangzi who culture and special modern elements. Bamboo is not was also for natural beauty and against artificial work, and simply a kind of material in Chinese traditional culture, but regarded natural purity and beauty were synonyms. Liu's shows the Chinese people's evaluation standards on woven bamboo artifacts just manifest the natural and pure morality and beauty [2]. Chinese scholars and literati feeling the bamboo materials themselves express. The would like to express their ambitions via bamboo. As the consideration of the beauty of materials themself exists quote goes, “I would like have no meat to eat than to live throughout the whole bamboo weaving process including without bamboo.” Besides, together with plum blossoms, bark scratching, steaming, cutting, and weaving, each of orchids, and chrysanthemums, bamboo has become an which would avoid over-processing. The Book of Diverse iconic plant that is a metaphor for the character of Crafts, Chinese oldest document about handicraft, points gentlemen, as it looks gentle, elegant, implicit, and out four necessary elements for making exquisite artifacts, dynamic. In a series of daily necessities made by Liu's that is, good timing, geographical convenience, beautiful bamboo weaving, the cultural elements of bamboo are also materials, and sophisticated techniques. In these four well explored and employed. “Original” is just a strongly elements, material quality outweighs skills. The design cultural series, including vases and tea sets. Its refresh, philosophy cherishing materials and emphasizing plain elegant, warm, and vivacious design with soft colors beauty was reflected in the whole history of creation in embodies a restrained design of aesthetics, just like an ancient China. Such philosophy derives from the amiable, easy people with great virtues in a secluded traditional Chinese concept of “harmony between man and world. nature”, which conforms to nature and thus leads to the aesthetics at the highest level, and is reflected in the perfect integration of natural beauty and moderate man work. Figure 4 “Original” series Baoqilai; plain, simple Figure 2 Tea sets series ─ knowing bamboo, four bamboo over porcelain; creative bamboo knots; bamboo seasons porcelain vase; snake neck-like bottle 632 Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 497 3. SHAPE ARTEFACTS WITH reflects his aesthetic principle that even with some work of MODENRATE TECHNIQUES man, marvelous natural beauty following the Tao is definitely different from that of ordinarily-worked stuff. According to the evaluation standards of traditional Shen Chunjin of the Ming Dynasty once proposed a aesthetics of creation, one who excessively shows off his harmony mix of subtleness and natural splendor. The handicraft skills does not deserve applause from literati, “natural” here does not imply artifacts without any since such behavior

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