Iron Artwork Culture

The iron art has a long history. The craftsmanship and the materials for iron art have developed for over 2000 years. As a decorating art for buildings, iron art emerged in early 17th century, during which baroque style flourished and all the way accompanied the development of European building decorating art. The traditional European craftsmanship has an ancient, elegant and rough styles and brilliant history, which is breathtaking and has been passed so far.

As the elapse of time and development of technology, people’s lifestyle and daily items have been changing constantly. After generations of inheritance and ablution of emotional furnace, the iron products have shaken off the ancient “rusty appearance” and emerged enormous life. The iron products have made a big leap from pragmatic nature towards decorative, artistic and poetic state. The artists are what behind the iron artwork revolution, and it is the involvement of artists that makes iron products gain vitality.

In Europe, the iron artwork is usually used in building section. In early Middle Ages, iron artwork mostly adhered to the ancient Roman style and characterized as elegant & solemn artistic style. During 12th century and early 13th century, Gothic style prevailed in iron artwork, which has splendid styles and abundant colors to seek magnificent & bright-colored effect. By the 14th-16th century, Renaissance broke the feudal decoration of Middle Ages and emphasized the significance of humanism. It shifted the cultural and artistic center from palaces to common people. During this period, the increasing superb iron artwork emphasized the splendid surface decoration instead of the structure, and it is slowly accepted and acclaimed by people for its unique artistic charms and environment-friendly safety. Iron craft products existed in both public and private buildings with colorful diversify.

In China, during the late Qing Dynasty, cast iron craftwork products were slowly used in China and other south-east asian countries. These iron craftwork products were mainly brought in by Germans, Italians, Britons & Russians and were primarily used to build consulates, banks, churches, office buildings and mansions within the western concessions in China. So a lot of old-time iron craftwork can be seen nowadays within cities that were used to be concessions, such as Shanghai, Tianjin, Haerbin, Dalian, Qingdao, Yantai, Weihai, Xiamen, Guangzhou, etc.

After the opening-up in 1980s, iron craftwork wins the popularity again in China. It was introduced to household decoration in consideration of safety and started with the burglar-proof doors & windows. With the development of society and constant innovation of decoration art & materials, all kinds of artistic decoration styles emerged, among which the thoughts of returning to innocence become a new fashion. The iron artwork, as an ancient and traditional decoration style, has been given new life and contents, and has been widely used in building external & internal decoration, furniture decoration and environment decoration. The iron craftwork played an important role in modern decoration for its distinguished characters, simplified styles, economical & easy-to-make properties.

Now more and more people want to bring the iron craftwork showed in classic pictures to their houses to decorate their homes. The iron craftwork designers have fully performed the wisdom of Chinese to master the essence of western traditional iron craftsmanship and created masterpieces with perfect curves, precise angles and unique styles to match the ideal home seamlessly.

Art is priceless. The value of iron craftwork has transcended the production value of normal cast iron products. The artistic value has increasingly added the value of the product. This has motivated iron craftwork plants to pursue perfection unremittingly and innovate constantly. The collection value of iron artwork lies in its unique culture, which is everlasting, inheritable and wealth-preserving. The metal texture and the special transforming processing make the iron craftwork look thick, simply, masculine & feminine, classic, elegant, kind and suave. More and more people are intrigued by its black metal gloss, beautiful soft curves, simple lines and deliberately made weather-beaten rust.

Nowadays, the renaissance and wide applying of iron craftwork are not simple repeating of history. The special characters of iron craftwork materials and craftsmanship conclude its properties of thickness, simplicity, masculinity & feminity, thus make people feel pleasant and delightful. With the combination and melting of iron craftwork culture and Chinese culture, a new iron craftwork culture with the characters of the Chinese nation will be born soon.