Qingming Festival Riverside Picture

We have been busy preparing for the art festival next week. We bought a display tent and are building up a portfolio of my father-in-law's work.

One of my father-in-law's ambitions is to someday engrave a replica of one of the most famous paintings in China. The "Qingming Shanghe Tu"--"The picture of a riverside scence on the day of the Qingming Festival". This picture is believed to be from the Song dynasty (12th Century) and has been long admired by emperors who have commissioned reproductions of it. There seem to be many intrigues in the history of the picture and it is surrounded by much mystery and legend. It is very long (16 meters long!) and the original has only been displayed in public very rarely. On an anniversary of the Forbidden City Palace Museum in 2005 the painting made its debut when a special hi-tech display case was designed to contain the peice. The display case was made out of bullet proof glass and able to be climate controlled so as to protect the painting. The display case weighed five tons and on its own cost almost $250,000 dollars to make. Read more about this here. Here is a picture of the painting below. You need to click on this image and then click one more time when you arrive at the page so as to zoom in.

My father-in-law has reproduced just one portion of this painting using his stone engraving technique.

His largest engraving so far is 12 feet long and is also a reproduction of another famous work.