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Shawo is a village with about 270 homes in Hebei province of
China. Hundreds of years ago, almost every
household of the village turned wooden bowls by foot-powered
lathe. Besides bowls, they also made wooden cooking
utensils, tool-handles and small toys using foot and hand-powered
lathes.
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Making
end-grain bowls on a foot-powered lathe. Watch the video
above
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Today, only six elderly people in the village
still make treen (wooden utility items) using a
lathe. The younger generation, led by Li Xuemin with a deep
love and respect for traditional skills, realised the importance of
his cultural and artisan inheritance and began to learn the technique
from the few elders left in the village.
With support from
International Wood Culture Society and
the American
Association of Woodturners,
these wood-turning skills are being saved for future generations. In the video, you can see the essence of the traditional
set-turning technique of Shawo village. The demonstrator is Cheng
Jinching (born 1928). His apprentice Li Xuemin says,
"The Chinese people have been
making wood bowl for over 6,000 years. The bowl-making craft is
said to be invented by Lu Ban, the forefather of Chinese
carpenters, and passed down over thousands years. Our village has
been making wood bowls for about 300 to 400 years."
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