Traditional craftsmen are professional practitioners who inherit and innovate intangible cultural heritage (ICH, such as wood carving, embroidery, and pottery, focusing on protecting traditional skills and transmitting cultural values. Here is an in-depth introduction from multiple dimensions:
1. Core Definition
Professional personnel who base their work on historically inherited manual skills, combined with material properties and cultural connotations, to design, make, restore, and handicrafts. This encompasses various fields, including folk art, traditional handicrafts, traditional sculpture, traditional textile printing and dyeing, etc., and is a "living" of traditional culture.
2. Main Responsibilities
1) Creation and Production: Select materials (such as wood, jade, silk, clay, etc., design drawings, and manually complete works according to traditional techniques and market demand, ensuring skill standards and quality;
2) Technique Inheritance: Teach core skills throughiceship, setting up workshops, participating in ICH training, etc., record the skill process (such as oral history, text charts);
3) Restoration and: Restore ancient and old handicrafts, cultural relics (such as ancient architectural wood carvings, traditional embroidered clothing), and restore the original appearance;
4) Innovation and Promotion: Incorporate modern aesthetics on the basis of tradition, develop cultural and creative products (such as ICH elements jewelry, home decorations), participate in exhibitions new media dissemination, and enhance the influence of traditional crafts.
3. Essential Skill Requirements
1) Professional Skills: Proficient in traditional techniques in a specific domainsuch as relief/round carving in wood carving, Suzhou/Shu embroidery needle techniques in embroidery, pottery molding/glazing), familiar with properties and tool use;
2) Cultural Literacy: Understand the historical origins, regional cultural connotations (such as the humanistic characteristics of Huizhou wood carving the pattern implications of blue and white porcelain), and have the ability of aesthetic design and color matching;
3) Manual Skills: Strong ability in manual fine operation,, concentration, and able to cope with complex processes (such as "through the warp and cut the weft" in brocade weaving, filigree in silver jewelry);
4) Innovative Thinking: Able to balance tradition and modernity, and combine skills with contemporary life scenes (such as traditional bamboo weaving into storage supplies, integrating paper- elements into packaging design);
5) Other Abilities: Some fields need to have the knowledge of cultural relics restoration, market research ability (connecting with cultural and creative), and simple marketing skills.
4. Common Sub-fields
| Fields |
Representative Skills |
Typical Works |
| Traditional Sculpture |
Wood car, stone carving, jade carving, clay sculpture |
Dongyang wood carving furniture, Hetian jade ornaments |
| Traditional Textile Printing and Ding |
Dongyang wood carving furniture, Hetian jade ornaments |
Su embroidery, Shu embroidery, Y brocade, batik, tie-dyeing |
| Folk Art |
Paper-cutting, shadow play, New Year's pictures, clay sculpture |
Spring Festival papercutting, shadow play props |
| Traditional Pottery/Ceramics |
Jingdezhen porcelain making, Yixing purple clay, Tang Sancai |
Pple clay teapot, blue and white porcelain vase |
| Metal Craftsmanship |
Filigree, cloisonné, bronze casting |
Filigree jewelry cloisonné vase |
| Bamboo, Vine, Palm, and Reed Craftsmanship |
Bamboo weaving, vine weaving |
Bamboo woven storage basket, vine chair |
5. Career Threshold
1) Education Requirements: There is no rigid education limit, high school or above is acceptable. Some universities offer related majors such as "ICH protection and "traditional crafts" (bachelor's/junior college), providing systematic learning;
2) Entry Method: Most are "master-apprentice inheritance (learning with senior craftsmen for 3-5 years), "family inheritance" (inheriting ancestral skills), or through ICH inheritance
