Chushi Iron Painting 储氏铁画

The House

Iron painting, first called "iron flower", is a Wuhu speciality the archive traces to the Kangxi period, when the ironsmith Tang Tianchi and the painter Xiao Yuncong worked at it together. Chu Yanqing, the house's founder, was born in Zongyang, Anhui, in 1902; apprenticed to an iron shop in 1912, he came to Wuhu in 1921 and worked at Shen Yixing's iron-flower shop, learning the craft by watching, since the owner would not teach it. In 1928 he opened his own forge, the Chu Yongchang Qingji blacksmith shop — the founding of Chushi iron painting — taking custom orders for iron paintings, chiefly from officials and foreign missionaries.

The archive records that by 1949 the only Wuhu shop devoted to iron painting had closed for want of an heir and the craft was close to dying out. The city brought Chu Yanqing back; a restoration group formed under him in 1955, and in 1956 the Wuhu Arts and Crafts Factory was set up. From it came the giant "Greeting Pine" in the Great Hall of the People, the iron calligraphy of the "Long March Poem" for the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall, and "Auspicious Clouds Through the Ages", Anhui's gift to the Hong Kong SAR. The factory was restructured in 2001, when the second-generation Chu Jinxia took over its iron painting work and set up the Chushi Iron Painting Crafts Factory; the present company followed in 2004, led by Chu Jinxia with the sixth-generation Chu Tieyi.

Later works are recorded too: "Greeting Pine", presented as a provincial gift to the Ministry of Science and Technology in 2006; a live demonstration in Moscow and St Petersburg for the "Russian Year of China" in 2007; "Chicken Fun", collected by the National Museum in 2007 and awarded gold at the China Arts and Crafts Hundred Flowers Award in 2009; and the iron calligraphy "Ode to China", 18 metres by 4, made in 97 days in 2009 and hung in the central hall of the Great Hall of the People.

What They Make

Iron paintings: flat pictures forged from iron rather than drawn. The archive sets out the stages — cutting the material, polishing, attaching the draft, chiselling, trimming, annealing, hammering, and coating the surface — and notes that a maker needs both a high level of forging skill and a grounding in calligraphy and painting. Large and very large pieces are the house's particular strength.

Timeline

Passing It On

Chu Yanqing, the founder, is given as the fourth-generation inheritor of Wuhu iron painting as a whole and the first of the Chushi line; he brought the endangered craft back in 1955 and trained eight disciples between then and 1974. His eldest daughter, Chu Jinxia, the second generation, is a national-level representative inheritor of the craft and a China Arts and Crafts Master; she began studying with him in 1959 and took part in the six giant iron paintings made for the Great Hall of the People for the tenth national day. Chu Tieyi, the third generation, was named "iron art" by his grandfather. The house keeps a collection that includes a late-Qing "Pine and Crane", 1960s model-opera scenes, and a 1957 work by Chu Yanqing shown on CCTV in 2016; Chu Jinxia funded and curates the Wuhu Jiuzi Iron Painting Museum.

Source: official materials published by Wuhu Chushi Iron Painting Crafts Co., Ltd. Translated and condensed from the house's own record; no information has been added.

Historical facts on this page come from Official materials published by Wuhu Chushi Iron Painting Crafts Co., Ltd. Designation recorded 2024-02-01. This page is editorial content; it is not a product listing and nothing here is an offer for sale.

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