Bayina
SunShui Min’s birchbark working tools: shaped bone, stone worn after years of use, thimble inherited from her mother.
Meng Chai Hong makes her own modern embossing tool from an old cigarette lighter.
Monthly Archives: August 2012
Canoe
Shibazhan
Tools of canoe maker GuoZhiLin.
“My Ruler is in my Head”
Shibazhan
The moment GeShuxian energetically greets you, you know you have just met someone unique and creative. Running around, she brings out intricately decorated and carefully constructed boxes, hats, bags, clothes, and pictures that spill out from every corner of her temporary home.
During a tea break, while chatting and smoking, she peels into layers a piece of birchbark lying on the floor and starts cutting away to reveal a whole arrange of beautiful patterns. Nothing is pre-drawn, she doesn’t use the computer, no cutting patterns or tape measures. Everything is by eye. In this age of technology, you forget that life and design can flourish without Apple macs. Perhaps it is time for us all to discover our inner ruler!
Linked Lifestyles
Beijing
Bai Ying, director of Earthpulse, enthusiastically pulls out stamps and postcards of Eskimos and nordic european countries. Rummages through his desk for books and photos of native American Indians. Retrieves from bookcases birchbark items from Russia. All these people live in the same latitudinal band as the Oronchen, and over the years have developed lifestyles to cope with similar challenges of living in such a harsh environment. While each of their traditional way of living have distinctions, they also show fascinating similarities, arising from the fact that their environment has presented to them the same materials in their living habitat. Appears nature has circumnavigated the Earth to link these people together.