Stone carvings

I love stone carvings.

Ever since I bought my first piece of stone carving, I fall in love with stone carvings. It is a basket full of Yangmei, a type of oriental fruits that make you mouth watery. My visitors almost reached out for the fruits as if they were real. Thanks  to the skills and creativity of the master carver. Later I bought another stone carving which is a basket-full of lychees. This time my grandchildren wanted to pick the fruits from the basket.

I admire the intelligence and skills of the stone carving artists who can turn ordinary stones into beautiful art pieces. Stone carving is an interesting art form. The artists study the stones well before they start work to create the masterpieces based on the texture and colour distributions in the stones. Sometimes a stone may seem to have a lot of imperfections on it but the craftsman can turn these defects into marvelous objects that can enhance the theme of his master piece.

My first piece of stone carving

A basket of lychees

For instance, there was a raw stone that had some black patches on it and the craftsman skillfully carved it into the face of a African leader who was seen seated beside Chairman Mao during the latter's state visit to China.

What a contrast of colour in this carving

Here a seemingly worthless stone with little good quality material could be turned into a masterpiece. It all depends on the creativity of the craftsman. He craved the quality part of the stone into bunches of grapes while leaving the majority part of the bad stone as background.

Grapes hanging on rocks

Stone carvings are beautiful pieces of art. Due to the scarcity of raw materials, these carvings are quite expensive to acquire. If they are carved by grand masters, it is almost beyond the ability of the average collectors to buy and keep them.

And this piece is priceless.

Impressive work of art - not for sale