The origin of paper-cutting in Yu County

Yixian paper-cutting is a new variety of paper-cutting developed on the basis of the ancient Chinese folk monochrome paper-cutting, with a history of about 150 years ago. During the 50 years from Daoguang of the Qing Dynasty to before Guangxu, people in Yu County had been using single-color paper "window grilles" cut with scissors. By around 1850, artists were still carving window grilles on single-color paper.

It was not until the Xianfeng and Tongzhi years of the Qing Dynasty that a silversmith named Liu Laobu appeared. He switched from scissors to carving knives in making window grilles, and carved the flowers and characters on "straw window paper" and other trademarks into window grilles. Although immature, todays window grilles are indeed developed on this basis. Therefore, he is known as the earliest folk artist of Yuxian window grilles.

Yuxian paper-cut

During the Guangxu and Xuantong years of the Qing Dynasty, the Lu family and the Zhai family, whose whole families were engaged in paper-cutting, appeared in Yu County. The Lu family specializes in carving opera characters, and it was from his family that paper-cutting of opera characters really became popular among the people. The opera characters carved by the Lu family began to have a "hui" arrangement. The character shapes were relatively rough, but they were finalized. There are now more than 100 sets of plays preserved, the earliest examples of which all came from his family. The Zhai family specializes in carving flowers. The Zhai family improved the popular flower styles with numerous names and chaotic compositions one by one, and unified them into a certain format. Because his family was very particular about their knife skills and color work, the flower pattern became a standard model. Many of the flower patterns in paper-cutting today originated from the Zhai family. It can be said that the works of Lu and Zhai represent the level of window grilles in the period when they were finalized. During this period, the basic patterns of flowers and opera characters in window grilles had been roughly formed and began to take shape.

For more than 30 years from Guangxu to the late Qing Dynasty, Yuxian paper-cuts carved and dyed with a carving knife have become widely popular. The Lu family specializes in carving opera characters, while the Zhai family specializes in carving flowers. This division of labor shows that the production of paper-cuts in Yu County had become large-scale at that time, but it was not yet mature.