Southern Anhui root carving has been popular in Guangde for hundreds of years. According to records, there was a root carving artist named Tang Zu in Taiping County in Southern Anhui during the Qing Dynasty. He went to the mountainous areas of Southern Anhui to collect roots of ancient trees to create figures, birds and beasts, and was quite famous. After continuous inheritance and development, Southern Anhui root carving has formed a multi-variety series, which has continued to this day. The heyday of development was in the late Qing Dynasty and the early years of the Republic of China. With the acceleration of personnel mobility, Southern Anhui root carving was spread to Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Fujian and other places, and became a collection of celebrities, literati, and dignitaries at that time, and they flocked to it. With the changes in society, there are still a group of people engaged in root carving art in Guangde. They have played an important role in the development and inheritance of root carving art. Their works have won gold medals in national root carving competitions many times and have attracted widespread attention in the industry. Southern Anhui root carving is the abbreviation of tree root modeling art. It is a unique artwork made of certain natural forms of dead trees, strange roots and wood as the base material, and is artificially selected, observed, conceived, and processed. It originates from nature but is higher than nature. It is a comprehensive expression of the aesthetic psychology and technical aesthetics of natural aesthetics. It has various shapes and is full of wildness, showing the charm of nature's uncanny craftsmanship. Root carving works are valuable in nature and wonderful in vividness. Each piece is a unique piece. There is no fake. Its beautiful and natural form cannot be artificially copied. This is why root carving is so popular. No wonder foreign friends call root carving "the most distinctive artwork in the East". The types of root materials used in southern Anhui root carving are dozens of local camphor, yellow vitex, azalea, elm, beech, maple, crape myrtle, plum, bamboo, purple bamboo roots, etc. Except for bamboo roots, living roots cannot be dug. Instead, the materials are the dead tree roots floating and sinking in the mountain pond reservoir, the thousand-year-old dark wood buried in the riverbed and underground, the stumps, dead roots, and rotten wood abandoned in the mountains, forests, and roadsides. Different carving varieties have different material and shape requirements. Southern Anhui root carving is divided into two major series: artistic root carving and practical root carving. Artistic root carvings are made of tough, peculiar, intertwined, curved and strange root materials, which are washed, peeled, trimmed, carved, polished, polished, oiled and waxed. Among them, the pictographic art root carving series of figures, animals, flowers and plants, landscapes, etc. are simple and elegant, rough and bright, refined and exaggerated, or pictographic; the abstract art root carving series uses the peculiar structure or linear, texture, texture, color and other characteristics of the root material, and gives it a certain philosophical, metaphorical or symbolic meaning through cutting, processing and proposition. Practical root carvings mostly use tree heads, stumps, roots and other materials. The carving process is basically the same as that of artistic root carvings. There are household items such as tables, chairs, coffee tables and daily necessities such as walking sticks, pen holders and writing desks. The unique craftsmanship of southern Anhui root carvings, which makes full use of waste, turns waste into treasure, and turns decay into magic, is a typical embodiment of the wisdom and creativity of Ming Dynasty culture. Information source: Anhui Provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center (No pictures yet, welcome to provide.) Information source: Anhui Provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center (No pictures yet, welcome to provide.)