Microscopic carving(微雕) refers generally to the engraving of infinitesimal characters on ivory or human hair. The art is sometimes described as “carving by one’s will’ because the artist engaged cannot see the work he is doing but has to rely on feel. Artists nowadays have experimented new ways to give the art a new lust.
Micro-carving on human hair is a new art developed only in recent years, being pioneered by Shen Weizhong, a member of the Suzhou (苏州
) Arts and Crafts Research Institute. Relying only on feel of their fingers and without the help of any magnifying apparati, artists engrave poems or other texts on a hair several mm long. Because of the very specific nature of the micro-carving process the artists require an absolutely quiet environment. Artists hold their breath and control their pulses by meditative power while simultaneously using a wire thinner than the hair to carve.
To read the surprisingly neat characters on the finished work, it is necessary to magnify the hair several dozen times with a microscope.
Hair carving is derived from the tradition of fine-character carving. Fine-character carving’s rudiments can be traced back more than 2,000 years. On the fragments of oracle bones of the Western Zhou (西周
) period, unearthed in Guyuan(故园
), Shanxi (山西
) Province, archaeologists discovered small carved characters the size of rice grains with hair-thin strokes. Archaeologists have also found miniature engravings the size of millet on the older Yin oracle shells. The engravings are legible only under 5-fold magnification.
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