Shandong Folk Clay Toys Traditional Origin Investigation And Research

The Shandong hand-made folk clay sculpture has a long and strong tradition, standing with its unique and impressive visual style at one hand, and as an oral cultural tradition on the other hand. Thus, the hand-made clay sculpture has been serving as a critical way by which the folk culture and local religion keeps itself reserved and carry on from generation to generation, and also being shaped by the formation of that folk culture at the same time. This inter-relationship exists in both the preserve of visual style, and the oral cultural tradition.This article is based on an ethnographic research carried out from August, 2004 through May, 2005 in the major clay sculpture production sits in Shandong province, and taking Nie Jiazhuang of Gaomi County and Henan Zhang of Huimin County as two separate case study.Starting from the craftsmanship and art style of Shandong's folk clay sculpture, and its inter-relationship with the formation folk culture and local religion, this article tries to offer an overall description of the production and life style of the clay sculpture as one specific form of folk art, and then go on to an analyze of how it serves as a way of cultural preserve.The most important social and cultural value of this research is to help preserving a dying folk art from total oblivion by recording, re organizing and analyzing the unique folk art style and the general value it represents, and also to highlight the key relationship between folk art and folk culture, and between art style and the formation of aesthetic habitues. In an age of globalization, to trace, to record and to preserve the historical and ethnographical factors inherited in folk art forms, and its inheritor, is a more and more pressing job for us scholars.