Project: sourcing old pear wood in the countryside of Sichuan

Date: 2004

With: Lan Jian, student from the Printmaking Department, Sichuan Institute of Fine Art, Chongqing

 

For centuries, the preferred wood for woodcuts has been pear in China and cherry in Japan. The relative hardness of these woods allows for the cutting of fine lines and detail, and their durability means that multiple images can be taken from them. Nowadays in China and Japan, faster growing trees for softer plywoods are used for woodblock printing, mainly because harder fruit woods are rarer and more expensive. However, many woodblock printers in China still hold several valuable blocks of pearwood in their studios. These blocks may be cut across the trunk for wood engraving or lengthways for woodcuts, both ways often preserving the original shape of the wood, so that the quirky outline of the tree trunk can still be seen. Kang Ning, a famous artist and professor in Chongqing, is one such printmaker who uses pear wood for his dramatic black and white woodcuts.

When I was a visiting artist at Sichuan Institute of Fine Art in the damp riverine city of Chongqing, I met a local carpenter there in a lane behind the school on its old city campus. One of the tasks he did from time to time was to plane the surfaces of printmakers' pear wood blocks to a beautiful smooth finish ready for cutting. In fact, once an edition had been printed from a cut block, the surface could be planed off and a fresh design cut in. The carpenter mentioned that a farmer in his village had some old pear wood planks that he had been curing for several years and which might be suitable to divide into blocks. So, we set off one day with one of the printmaking students from the school, Lan Jian (now an established artist), to source some pear wood in a mountainous region some four hours by bus outside the city. 

On our first trip there, it was immediately obvious that the wood could not be used. It was riddled with wormholes from boring insects, plus it was rotting and unstable in parts. It would not be worth cutting into pieces and transporting back to the city. Instead, we decided that it would be an interesting project to pay respect to the wood by returning another day with paper and ink and to make an impression of its pitted and scarred surface. Besides, the rural countryside was dramatic and unchanged, despite its proximity to Chongqing one of the largest cities in the world with a population of over 10 million. The old pear wood offered a balance to the city and a reminder of the natural beauty of organic growth and shapes; stirring thoughts for the printmaker.

On our second trip, we took a surface rubbing first with crayons. Then we blacked the whole trunk surface with Chinese ink and laid sheets of strong handmade pizhi paper on top to take a series of impressions by gently dabbing the surface with our hands, a two-way transfer of energy. 

 

  

We hung each impression on a line and admired the natural images the wood offered. I have several pearwood blocks in my studio, too, now, but have yet to work on their beautiful surfaces.