Clay Figurines and Big Afu
From the Song Dynasty, urban economic development brought about the prosperity of folk culture. With the emergence of folk style small sculpture works, the trend towards folk art became quite significant. The style could be found in paintings of the same period. There were also many paintings with the themes of folk custom and babies. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, small clay sculptures with secular subjects became important sculpture varieties. Different from the small palace exquisite carvings, folk clay sculpture boasted of the fun of typical folk living. The fun is more real and more directly reflects the general public’s expectation of life and simple aesthetic features.
Qiaoer “Muhura”
The themes of children playing were common during the Song Dynasty. Paintings with 100 children and children playing and the scenes of playing children done on ceramics emerged during the dynasty. Accordingly, there were similar baby themes in small folk clay sculptures.
Clay babies from the time were called Muhura or Qiaoer. The emergence of these small clay sculptures was directly related to folk customs from the Song Dynasty. During the Northern Song Dynasty, the Double Seventh Festival (the seventh day of the seventh lunar month) was an important day, and clay figurines were made meaning qiqiao (pleading for skills) so they were called qiaoer.
Double-Seventh Festival
The 7th day of the 7th lunar month is the civil “Festival to Plead for Skills” in China, which is one of the most romantic civil festivals in China. Zhi Nv and Niu Lang, the legendary characters in the folklore, will meet on a bridge built of magpies across the Milky Way on this evening each year. Zhi Nv is a clever, beautiful and intelligent fairy in the tale. On this night, women from the earth will plead for wisdom and skills as well as a happy marriage and intelligence from her, thus, the 7th day of the 7th lunar month is also known as the “Festival to Plead for Skills.” Nowadays, the festival has developed into the Chinese “Valentine’s Day.”
Clay figurines from the Song Dynasty were known as Muhura, and were closely related with the secularization of Buddhism. The Buddhist story holds that Muhura was the son of Yasodhara and Sakyamuni before he became a monk. Yasodhara was pregnant for six years and gave birth to Muhura when Sakyamuni achieved enlightenment. Later, Muhura become one of the Buddhist disciples.
About at the age of 6 or 7, Muhura brought his mother ’s token to visit his father. To show creditability, Sakyamuni took other disciples. With innate intelligence, Muhura told his father apart from them at first sight. It was just because of this reason that people called this kind of clay figurines Muhura. People connected this story with the custom on the Seventh Day Festival, marking the origin of the tradition of displaying clay figurines during the festival. At first, the custom was prevalent in imperial chambers and later became popular among the general public. At the time, imperial Muhura was quite luxurious, some were made with ivory, gold and jewels. However, the Muhuras with the greatest artistic and vitality are folk ones.
The making of Muhura was most prevalent during the Northern Song Dynasty. Muhura color sculptures from the time represent a naive and fat baby holding a lotus leaf in one hand. South of the Yangtze River, Suzhou was the manufacturing center of clay figurines. Yuan Yuchang was a famous master of color sculpture, well known for his baby sculptures. It is said that he installed reed whistle on the color baby sculptures. When the babies were pressed on the head, the sculpture could give off a cry. In Lin’an (today’s Hangzhou), folk color sculptures were prevalent with the emergence of a lane named after the clay figurines sold then, and where there were various small workshops specialized in making clay figurines.
In 1976, some small clay sculptures were found in one of the ruins of the Song Dynasty in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province. There were five complete clay figurines sculptures, about 10cm tall. The five clay figurines are similar in look, but in different postures. Without glaze, the sculptures have traces of gold dust. All children sculptures are portraits of boys with thin clothes, standing with their hands in their sleeves or playing.
Sculpting techniques are realistic, giving off a simple and kind feeling. These works adopted the techniques of modeling and handforming. The heads were modeled, so the five clay figurines A Porcelain pillows in the shape of a child, Song Dynasty. had similar looks but the bodies gave them slight changes in position, so the sculptures showed different faces. Besides the five individual Muhura sculptures, a porcelain pillow in the shape of child emerged during the Song Dynasty. The work shows outstanding sculpture techniques. Its shape and look are quite similar to folk clay figurines, but are more elegant and the shape of the baby is exquisitely combined with the shape of the porcelain pillow.