Designer has an eye for the best bamboo carvings

Li Jiaming with some of his favorite bamboo carvings.

Wang Anqi and Shen Li

When I got one fine quality bamboo carving I would hold it in arms when I was asleep.

Li Jiaming

Designer and bamboo carving collector

Li Jiaming is a renowned soft decoration designer, but when meeting friends, he prefers to talk about his bamboo carving collection.

In 2005, he became enthralled by the elegant and fine quality carvings at Jiading Museum and he has been collecting ever since.

Li has only 21 bamboo carvings but each one is an excellent example of the art, and he is the envy of his fellow collectors.

The first bamboo carving he set his heart on was a brush pot dating back to the late Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

As a novice collector, Li was accompanied by Jiading Museum staff to bid for the carving in Suzhou in neighboring Jiangsu Province but Li gave up because the price soared too high.

But years later, Li accidentally found it again. “I skimmed the shop windows at an antique market and was attracted by this brush pot.” Without hesitation, Li bought it.

The next day, he took it to Jiading Museum for expert verification and the expert was taken by surprise. It was the same brush pot Li had given up on because of the high price several years before.

The purchase boosted Li’s confidence that he had an eye for the bamboo carvings worth collecting.

Li’s most expensive carving is a brush pot depicting a number of people welcoming an emperor by Gu Jue for 5 million yuan (US$812,500).

Gu was a distinguished bamboo carver who lived in the early Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) and his works defied the simplistic tradition of the time. Each of his works is complex and refined, and took one to two years to accomplish.

Only half a dozen or so of Gu’s works exist today and most are in museums, such as his bamboo root carving depicting a group of celestial beings offering birthday blessings to elders which is in Shanghai Museum.

Li’s piece was bought by a friend for 4.1 million yuan in the United States. But when Li saw it, he knew he had to have it. Over the next six months, he managed to persuade his friend to sell it to him.

“When I got one fine quality bamboo carving I would hold it in arms when I was asleep,” Li said.

Among the different schools of bamboo carving, Li is most fond of the Jiading school. Although the school uses common bamboo, it has the finest techniques and highbrow feel, which are as valuable as precious materials applied such as jade, rhino horn and ivory, he added.

“The Jiading School represents the top level of Chinese bamboo carving, and the one that casts the most artistic spell on me,” he said.