Feature: Four Hands project links Chinese handicraft with Italian design

A cultural and educational project named Four Hands kicked off here this week to promote Chinese traditional handicraft and ethnic heritage in collaboration with Italian designers.

Four Hands features an exhibition of handicraft firms from different places of China -- Fengxiang, Tongchuan and Yijun, Yanchuan and Xiangxi -- hosted in the city center, and a workshop held at the design school of the Politecnico di Milano university on Thursday to involve students in the project.

"We started to be interested in this kind of ethnic feature early in 2007. It was because we were attracted by the Miao embroidery, whose motifs express very profound and spiritual topics," Yi Hua, an artisan and founder of Xiangxi Valley Resident Culture Communication, told Xinhua in an interview.

Yi recalled the Miao ethnicity, one of China's 56 ethnic groups, doesn't have a written tradition so that history is mostly handed down through its embroidery. Thanks to the help of experts and scholars, Yi and her collaborators were able to get deeper in touch with this precious cultural heritage that they managed to bring closer to this day and age through combining the ethnic spirit with modern technology.

Miao ethnic embroidery, tapestry, batik, silverware, paper-cut and blue-and-white porcelain are among the products created for modern use by the company.

Peasant painting and paper cutting from Tongchuan, Yijun and Yanchuan, as well as clay sculpture from Fengxiang were the other creations on display at the Italian capital of design.

In particular, a series of clay goats symbolizing the current Year of the Goat in China was a valuable work able to tell the world many stories about Chinese astrology, noted Ding Zhijie, who was in Milan on behalf of the Shanghai-based Hengyuanxiang Group.

Presenting Four Hands at the ongoing world exposition in Milan earlier this week, Zhou Guanglian, from China's ministry of culture, highlighted the role of the event both in promoting China's artisan tradition, and also in strengthening cultural relations with Italy.

Zhou said he wished the event, supported by China's ministry of culture and Beijing design week (BJDW) in addition to other organizations, would be the starting point for more knowledge exchange and active collaboration between Chinese, Italian and European artists and designers.

"Four Hands refers to the close collaboration of two pairs of hands, those of a designer and those of an artisan," Luca Fois, a design professor at the Design School in the Politecnico di Milano, told Xinhua.

He explained that world-renowned Italian design was born and developed in the ancient artisan workshops, "which means that design cannot be separated from manual skills."

"Artisans first have an idea and then transform it into an item, which is key in the design process," Fois said. Wednesday and Thursday's activities, the professor added, were only the first step of a long-term project aimed at "fostering new languages through ancient research."

Launched in 2009, BJDW is a citywide event co-hosted by the Beijing municipal government, the ministry of culture, the ministry of education, the ministry of science and technology, to nurture a culture of design in a Chinese context.

The Design School in the Politecnico di Milano is considered to be the largest international university for the training of product, communication, interior and fashion designers. Endit