On a sweltering summer afternoon, Pan Kun-ti (潘坤地) is perched 8m above ground on the roof of the Shefu Temple in Taipei City's riverside Shezi District (社子).
The master of jiannian (剪黏) — a traditional mosaic-like art form — has been working in the scorching sun for several hours, decorating the ridge of the 40-year-old Taoist temple dedicated to the Earth God.
He is in the most laborious stage of his job — cutting up ceramic bowls and trimming the shards into the desired shapes before fitting them into the surface of a pre-sculpted dragon that appears to breathe fire.
The figure is just one of an elaborate series of birds, flowers, beasts and characters from folk legends that the 56-year-old artist has been working on in recent months.
“Creating jiannian pieces is very demanding,” Pan said after climbing down the scaffolding. “Apart from the long hours of indoor work, it also means toiling on the roof in the summer heat or winter chill.”
Pan’s skills, perfected over 40 years in the trade, are widely recognized, and his creations can be seen on temples throughout the nation.
One of the highlights of his career came in 2003 when the restoration of Taipei City’s 204-year-old Dalongdong Baoan Temple, which he participated in, won the annual UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Award for Cultural Heritage Conservation.
ENDANGERED ART
While Pan continues to refine his skills, however, the traditional art form, literally translated as “cut and paste,” is in danger of extinction because of its high cost and labor-intensive nature.
“The craft of cutting and pasting assorted ceramic shards to create elaborate ornaments on temple roofs and eaves is fading and may become a lost art due to government ignorance and unreasonable regulations governing historic site restoration projects,” said Wang Ching-tai (王慶台), a National Taiwan University of the Arts professor.
The Cultural Heritage Preservation Act (文化資產保護法) states that the restoration of historic sites requires a survey, design submission, cost estimate and open bidding to qualify for government funds.
In the process, Wang said, architects play a dominant role while traditional craftsmen are often ignored and denied access to the overall design work.
Temple decoration is incorporated into restoration projects that are often awarded to the contractor that offers the lowest price, he said.
BUDGET CUTS
“With project budgets cut to the bone, the winning bidders tend to allocate only a tiny share of the overall budget to decorations,” Wang said. “As a result, cheaper materials and methods requiring less labor are used and second-rate craftsmen are hired to do the job.”
This leads to poor quality work, including the use of low-cost pottery shards or pre-molded pieces rather than mosaic collages to form, for example, the heads of phoenixes on many temple roofs.
Unlike the figures made with colorful ceramic shards affixed with a sticky mixture of glutinous rice and lime, which can remain vivid for more than 30 years, “the jiannian pieces made by cheaper methods fall apart quite easily,” Pan said.
Sensitive to the criticism over preservation law, a council spokesman surnamed Huang said the agency was holding a series of forums to solicit opinions on how the law could be amended to encourage the preservation and evolution of traditional crafts.
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