The Shanghai Museum of Arts and Crafts

Originally posted 27th January 2015 A trip back to the French Concession today – this part of the city was run by the French – the buildings are only three or four stories high, the roads are lined with plane trees, which will be lovely once the leaves come out and there is some interesting colonial architecture. I inadvertently found the home of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and in the environs counted at least 10 violin shops – some were makers and repairers as well as sellers.

But I was on my way to the Shanghai version of the V&A, which although significantly smaller, is interesting nonetheless as there are craftsmen and women in situ recreating past crafts and developing their art in pastures new at the Shanghai Arts and Crafts Museum.

Carvings predominated – of jade, wood and I’m afraid to say ivory. And some of it was exquisite and highly skilled and mainly copies of traditional work. Of these, I liked some of the simple modern teapots best, as well as the complex wooden work. I remember paper-cuts from my trips to China some 30 years ago, when I picked up some paper-cuts of traditional Chinese opera heroes and heroines, but some of the craftsmen have moved things forward a bit to create striking modern designs and have also made 3-D sculptures from paper or fabric stuck on wire

frames, a technique I have used with leaves in floral design in the past, but nowhere near as complex as these models of dragons and birds, which might also be a traditional craft. There were some interesting pieces of jewellery I liked in a side exhibition, but which unfortunately had a hefty price tag, and some

tapestries – one or two were interesting in the complexity of the work. The painters were producing both traditional and modern work, some of it quite striking. Not all the crafts were being demonstrated and I would have loved to

have found out a bit more about these wooden vessels. I got the impression that the demonstrating craftsmen did’t know whether to copy what had been created in the past, much of which was destroyed in the Cultural Revolution, or to relearn the old skills and use them to take their art forward into new areas. Should they be reproducing the old work exactly as the embroiderers and most of the carvers were doing seemingly hidebound, or should they be trying to use the traditional skills to express themselves in new ways, as the painters were doing? The overall effect was one of coughing and spluttering between the old and the new.