Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1892-07-15
CARVING THE TEA ROOT.

A Curious Industry Which Furnishea
Employment to Many Celestials.
For more than a hundred generations
there has been q guild of artists in this po-
pulous province of Fo-kien whose life work
Is the conversion of the gnarled and inter-
laced roots of the tea tree into things of
beauty, that is, beauty from a celestial
point Of view. The herb whose leaves
gladden. western palates IN the form of
Oolong, Hyson and Souchong is a hardy
plant and takes a firm hold on mother
earth. Its roots seem to have no regular
law of growth. Sometimes they develop
very much as a beard sprouts from the
chin; at others they separate and move
along parallel lines as if they were q lig-
nose centipede.
In general it may be said that they make
one large, clumsy mass from which shoot
out anywhere from three to thirty root
let's. Their surface is never smooth, but
always irregularly corrugated. The value
of a root depends upon it's size, it's outline,
it's freedom from decay and it's suggestive
ness Of some everyday object. 1t is rare
that a main root or root mass is more than
six inches in diameter. Such belong to
trees ranging in age from thirty years to a
century. Infrequently they attain to
| twelve and fifteen inches, and are then
said by Chinese experts to be 400 and 500
! years old.
The roots are dug from the soil and al
lowed to thoroughly dry in the open air
under a shed or else in a moderately warn
room. The loose earth is carefully re-
moved, as is the loose bark and all pieces
%decayed, cracked or wormeaten. The art
list then determines what it is to be-. The
favorite types are dragons, %buffaloes, cows,
carnivores, bears, mandarins, priests, howl
ing dervishes, dancers or mythic heroes.
7 If the root cannot be worked into one of
these shapes it is converted into a pedestal
or platform for a figure piece. The pri-
J mary operation consists in saving it into
rough shape. This is done with a fine
crosscut, and the clean edges are removed
by rubbing them on tiles or bricks. Some
times a root is bent by softening it with
steam or boiling water and then twisting
it in any desired direction.
Now comes the hardest task of all. The
most valued piece is that which shows no
art and seems perfectly natural. The
carver goes over the block, removing here
a fiber and there a net of roots, here thin
ming out one on the under side and forcing
it down, and there burning another and
expanding it at the burned point. l have
one in my drawing room which is a capital
figure of a dragon, rearing and opening his
jaws as if to spring upon his prey. Careful!
examination shows that nothing has been
added to the mass, but that hundreds of
fibers, knots and corrugations have been
skillfully removed.
In nearly every instance q human figure
made in the same manne or carved from
q wood of the same color or else made
partly from tea roots and partly from
carved wood is added to the first piece.
The designs are endless in this field.
Learned men %lecturing birds, mandarins
standing on dragons, boys riding cows and
other ridiculous q~uadrupeds, dancing beg
gars, men fighting each other, are the COM
monest groups, but of the more uncommon
there are thousands. One famous artist in
Foo-Choo claims to have produced, with
the aid of his apprentices, over $4,000
different designs, and Judging from his
stock or hand his claim seems reasonable
enough. 500 S.