The art of carving various patterns and images on stones, usually also refers to sculpture handicrafts carved from stones. Chinese stone carving can be divided into bluestone carving, marble carving, white marble carving, talc carving, black crystal stone carving, colored stone carving, pebble carving, etc. Hui'an, Fujian, is famous for its bluestone carvings for architectural decoration and stone lions, among which the mouth of the stone lion contains stone beads that roll freely, and is famous in Southeast Asia. The marble carving in Yunnan is made from the marble of Diancang Mountain. Its patterns are like colored mountains and rivers, or dangerous peaks and valleys, or waterfalls follow the clouds. The inlaid furniture is unique. The white marble carvings in Quyang, Hebei, Fangshan, Beijing and other places were mainly used for palace architectural decoration in the Ming and Qing dynasties, such as Huabiao, Shishi high quality Sculpture hand painting Railings, etc; Modern times are used for decoration of public and memorial buildings, such as the Great Hall of the People, the Monument to the People's Heroes, Chairman Mao's Memorial Hall, etc. Talc carvings in Haicheng, Liaoning Province and Laizhou, Shandong Province use small and cute animals as traditional varieties. The carvings of black crystal stone in Dongkou, Hunan and Lichuan, Hubei are dark and bright. Caishi carving is mainly produced in Qingtian, Zhejiang, Shoushan, Fuzhou and Liuyang, Hunan. Pebble carvings are mainly produced in Lanzhou, Shenyang and other places. Chengdu Sculpture hand painting Stone carving techniques include intaglio (contour carving), shadow carving, relief, round carving (complete three-dimensional carving without any background), and openwork (also known as openwork). Shadow carving is a unique technique of Fujian Hui'an bluestone carving. It uses steel drills of different sizes to chisel on the bluestone, and uses the size, depth and density of the drill points to express the images of landscapes, birds, animals, people, flowers, etc.
Most of the jades mentioned in daily life refer to nephrite, and there are many kinds of nephrite products. Generally, they refer to white sheepskin jade, white jade, topaz, purple jade, black jade, jasper, sapphire, ruby and northeast Xiuyu produced in Xinjiang. In the jade carving, the white jade with sheepskin is fine in texture and strong in luster, as white as sheepskin, which can be called "the king of nephrite" and "the crown of white jade". In addition, Nanyang jade, Lantian jade, Hotan jade, agate, crystal, coral, turquoise, lapis lazuli, etc., all belong to the category of nephrite. Later, due to the opening of the Silk Road, the jade produced in Hotan, Xinjiang, was unanimously recognized and began to play a leading role in the processing of royal, official and folk jade. Nephrite gradually evolved into a synonym for hotan jade.
The types of stone inscription monuments include monuments, memorial monuments, merit monuments, temple monuments, Dianzi monuments, mausoleum monuments, etc. Except for a few wordless steles, they are generally literal steles. Usually, characters are carved on the body of the stele, and some are accompanied by carved patterns. The pedestal and cover of the stele are mostly carved with decorations, birds, animals, flowers, and mascots. The cover of the stele of the imperial family is also carved with dragons and phoenixes. Marble is the most commonly used stone for making the stele, and sandstone and granite are also commonly used. Some of the steles are huge, and some of them become a group of steles. Stone books are written with stone instead of paper, and carved instead of pen, which is very ingenious. There are many famous works of stone tablet processing and stone calligraphy carving. For example, "Xi'an Forest of Steles" includes more than 3000 historical steles from Han Dynasty to Qing Dynasty. It is the largest collection of stone books in China. Together with the "Forest of Steles in Hanlin" under construction in Kaifeng, it can be said that it is a sea of steles, and it is a collection of calligraphies of regular script, line, grass, seal script, clerical script and Wei style by famous calligraphers of all ages. In addition to large-scale carvings such as stele books and cliff carvings, there are also some stone carvings, such as mourning volumes in imperial tombs and modern fine carved small stone books, such as more than 100 mourning volumes of white marble excavated in the tomb of the prince of the Tang Dynasty, and six stone books of "Thirty six Strategies" carved in tile slate in modern Chengdu, a total of 26 pages and 1278 words, bound into a volume with eyeliner, each page is 2.2.6mm, which can be read.
Sculpture art is a kind of plastic arts, also called sculpture, which is the general name of three creation methods of sculpture, carving and sculpture. It refers to the art of using various plastic materials (such as gypsum, resin, clay, etc.) or hard materials (such as wood, stone, metal, jade, agate, etc.) that can be carved or carved to create a visual and touchable artistic image with a certain space to reflect social life and express artists' aesthetic feelings, emotions, and ideals. It is diverse, so the law of development has different ups and downs. For example, the bronze ware manufacturing and decorative carving in the Yin and Zhou Dynasties in China were unmatched by future generations. The themes of the Han Dynasty's stone reliefs fully reflect the real life at that time. The sculptures in the Tang and Song dynasties certainly exceeded those in the Han Dynasty, but the works of the Tang and Song dynasties never fully reflected the reality as the Han Dynasty stone reliefs did. The handicraft industry and commerce of the Ming Dynasty were improved compared with those of the Tang and Song Dynasties, but the sculptures of the Ming Dynasty rarely showed the characteristics of each work as fully as those of the Song Dynasty. Although the sculpture of the Ming Dynasty is not as good as that of the Tang and Song Dynasties, other artistic achievements of the previous dynasties are naturally behind.