Ash Plastering

It is also called Ash Sculpture, commonly called Wall Paiting, which is one of the architectural arts, mostly with contents of landscape, flowers, birds, animals, figures and handwriting etc.

The ash plastering workmanship is rather fine, in which the lime is used to make sculpture shapes on the building.

The manifestations include multi-layer “stereo” ash plastering, embossment type “semi-up and down” ash plastering and carving type individual shape “single” ash plastering etc.

The multi-layer ash pastering is the most difficult, for which the side-open tiles and steel wires are used for body, structure and support, root ash or low root ash is used for individual figure shape, then embossment is made on the wall before the individual carved figure is fit on the wall.

The craft is exquisite and hierarchic with striking theme. The semi-up and down craft is rather simple, for which the wall is fixed with steel nails, pasted with root ash to create half-down carving shape. The last process of ash plastering is color painting with bold lines and large color lump, which creates a striking effect.

In Foshan, Nanahi, Shunde and Panyu regions, the common people liked to use the Wall Painting as the building decorations. For the general residential houses, paintings were put on the door heads, doorframes, frontispieces and eaves and tile ridges. For example, the house ridge and attic ridge (commonly called “rolling ridge”), corrider and aisle wall tile ridge (commonly called “Kan Ridge”), house frontpiece top (commonly called “Single Tail” or “Bazi”), gate tower or door back (commonly called “Reversed Look”) were decored with ash plastering or painting. “Rolling Ridge” is mostly decoreated with turtle, containing the meaning of being the champion.

Besides the residential houses, in Foshan Nanhai and Shunde, ash plastering arts were also used on the ancestor temples and Buddhist temples, which were decorated with fables, historical or opera stories, figures and animals, as well as the birds and animals such as the “Wulin”, such as phoenix, peacock, pheasant, tiger, lion, and Kilin etc.

In Foshan Zumiao Temple, Sanshui Lubao Zumiao Temple, Shunde Xishan Temple, there are many fine ash plastering works, such as “Tang Ming Emperor Visiting Yue Palace”, “Taoyue Sworn Brothers”, “Guo Ziyi Congratulating Birthday”, “Nezha Making Trouble in Sea”, “Three Visits to Kui Village”, “Chang Ban Po”, “Three Heroes Fighting Lü Bu”, “Meeting At Broken Bridge”, “Two Dragons Playing Pearl” and Eight Immortals, carps, birds, animals, flowers etc.

The folkway ash plastering and wall painting arts reflect the people’s pursuit for beauty and their simple feeling for praying for luck and fortune, which have been a special folkway custom in Foshan in the folkway architecture.