China News Service, Yantai, February 15th (Yang Bing and Yang Funing) Twelve zodiac puppets, tablecloths, table flags, pillows, backpacks, sachets, pendants... During the Spring Festival of the Year of the Dragon, at the Minsheng Printing Intangible Cultural Heritage Workshop in Yantai High-tech Zone , each piece of fabric work that combines traditional handicrafts with modern production techniques attracts tourists.
The picture shows the colorful "dragon puppet". Photo by Yang Funing
Among the many cloth art works, the brightly colored and lifelike "Chinese Dragon", "Colorful Golden Dragon" and "Colorful Auspicious Dragon" puppets are particularly eye-catching. Zhu Wuxue is the designer of these puppets. He gave each puppet a name at the beginning of creation.
It is reported that these dragon-shaped puppets are made of cotton as the fabric and pearl cotton as the filling, and are creatively designed and produced using stereotyped scraping printing, stitching and filling. The main colors of the puppets are blue, red and yellow, which means "the dragon enters thousands of houses and the house is full of gold", "the colorful China is flying", "the business is booming" and so on.
"'Colorful Golden Dragon' is the most popular one." Zhu Wuxue said that the dragon series of puppets he designed were also selected for the "Dragon China·Craftsmanship Qilu" 2024 Year of the Dragon Spring Festival themed intangible cultural heritage competition.
The picture shows Zhu Wuxue and the "Dragon Puppet" he designed. Photo by Yang Funing
"I have been making fabric handicrafts for 18 years. In the 1980s, I did printmaking as an amateur and won awards in national competitions. Later, I wanted to use printmaking techniques in more works." Zhu Wuxue is from Jiaodong. The inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage of New Year paintings, he was engaged in printmaking art in his early days. In order to integrate printmaking into daily life, he combined traditional screen printing techniques to create a series of zodiac puppets.
"We started designing the shape of the Dragon Puppet after the Spring Festival in the Year of the Rabbit. The design alone took more than three months, with repeated modifications and adjustments." Zhu Wuxue said that the "Dragon Puppet" started from the design , receipt, shaping, proofing to production, packaging, and transportation, every link is strictly controlled. A finished product requires more than 30 links and more than 100 steps to complete.
Zhu Wuxue said that he hopes to integrate traditional and modern techniques to give each work a unique charm and temperament, and use his works to show the beauty of life. (over)