室雅何须大 Size Doesn't Matter!

Having hung up almost a 'wallful' of carvings, which I did in the past two years, I was very pleased. I thought it looked great and really, to me, a room didn't need to be big(in size) to look elegant, cozy and warm. I wanted to tell others what I thought, I wanted to do a carving to say it, thus this plaque.

It took me a while to compose the verse - this has always been a challenge but I enjoy it! Then I started to think of the style of the characters to use, writing them out with my brush, selecting the best written characters, re-selection..., (be very patient!), ... after I was happy with all the characters I wrote, I started to design the layout.

When I was done with the carving and was going to paint the plaque, the idea of adding a little dimension to it came to me. There it went, two strips of wooden moulding were glued to be its roof.

This was the first time I tried painting my plaque with bright and striking colours. I think this makes it a special one among all my other carvings.

羡鸳鸯 The Greatest Is LOVE

This is a pair of mandarin ducks. The mandarin ducks are believed to be very loving and affectionate birds. They are faithful and loyal to each other and always stick together.

This plaque is really eye-catching! The shape and colour of this plaque is what makes it so unique.

The saying is that one would choose to be a mandarin duck over being an immortal that lives forever. It actually means that one would rather be in love than to have an everlasting life. Thus, the original verses are comprised of two parts: envy the mandarin ducks because they are loving, faithful couples, even more than we envy immortals that will live forever. However, in fear of offending the immortals (who have the power to turn me into a duck) I decided just to carve the part which says 'envy the mandarin ducks'.

The wood I got to make the this plaque came in a pre-cut shape, of a duck. I had the exact idea on what to do when I saw the wood.

The fun began when I tried to look for the mandarin ducks on the websites. I searched and found many pictures of them. (Click on pictures to view video clips) :)

Amazed by the colour, I couldn't believe what I saw. WOW....

I found more, and even the video clips showing the ducks on the lake. As many other animals, the males' colour looks more attractive than that of the female. It would be a challenge to paint my ducks like that I thought.

So, its an ancient saying, should go with an ancient font - oracle, just what I like best. They comprised of so many fine strokes and I was glad I didn't mess up the carving.

Anyway, I have to say I am very pleased with the ultimate product.

一山还有一山高
There Is Always A Taller Mountain Elsewhere

This piece of wood attracted me right away when I found it. It was actually one of four slats mounted on two cross rails. I like it because the grain on this piece of wood ressembles a scene of mountains, each being taller than the other. This perfectly reminds me of a chinese idiom:一山还有一山高 - which tells us to be humble as there is always someone out there who is better than us.

The seven characters are, 一山还有一山高. In chinese phonetic, they are pronounced as 'yi-shan-hai-you-yi-shan-gao'.

There is an interesting fact about the way this verse was written. The first and fifth character 一(yi) are actually variations of a same word, which means 'one'. Again, the second and the sixth character 山(shan) are also a same word, 'mountain', written in two different styles. I love chinese!

心心相印
Heart-to-Heart

I love the grain on this plaque. Instead of having one 'eye' in the age-rings, this one is unique, it has two! Like twin. I thought of two hearts, and led to a lover's idiom: 心心相印(pronounced as: xin-xin-xiang-yin), which means two hearts impress each other.

It was fun to read about the various ways 心(heart) could be written. I always enjoyed looking and selecting all the choices I could find in my 'old ancient calligraphy dictonary' for a character to carve. The two hearts on the plaque look different though they represent the same character. Yes, the bigger heart looks more like a tongue sticking out!

As I would like to preserve the beauty of the smooth flowing grain on this piece of wood, I was careful when I designed the strokes of the characters to blend with the curvy rings. So part of the strokes overlapped on part of the grain.

The third character, 相(xiang), is made up of two other characters or components, 木(wood) and 目(eye). That explains its appearance of an eye with twigs on top of it.