Decorative Art Symbol Of Ancestral Hall And Its Inheritance

The ancestral hall is the center of local clan religion and the main venue to for worshipping ceremonies. It is built by a family clan in honor of their ancestors to enshrine the ancestors’memorial tablets, hold worship ceremonies, practice domestic disciplines, discuss important affairs and host banquets.Ancestral halls in Longtan Town, Xupu County are located in southwest Hunan Province and have their unique ethnic traits and regionalism in terms of ancestral hall art. At present, relevant researches on the decorative art of these halls are very limited. But it is undeniable that this town houses over a dozen of magnificent ancestral halls that have exquisite carvings and beautiful decorations. Decorative art is an important part of civilization achievements and also carrier of entity symbols. And the decorative art symbols of ancestral halls are epitomization of local ethnic culture and folk formative art. The standpoint of this thesis is that the decorative art symbols of ancestral halls belong to traditional decorative art patterns and are in a great variety; moreover, they shoulder the responsibility of spreading and inheriting clan culture.After inspection visits to the well-preserved ancestral halls and data collection and analysis, the author takes the ancestral hall complex in Longtan Town as the entry point to analyze the decorative art symbols of these halls from the perspective of semiology. These symbols are analyzed from the aspects of shape, color, texture, skills and other aesthetic characteristics. The focus is on the symbolization of the decorative art of ancestral halls, and in-depth analysis is carried out on the "pattern" and "connotation" of these symbols; meanwhile, the design wisdom underlying in the culture reflected by ancestral hall is explored and converted into our modern designs. In this thesis, a case study is carried out and the culture reflected by these ancestral halls is taken as the thread and specific study is conducted around it. The author looks beyond the surface, proceeding from studying the appearance modeling of decorative arts to studying the inherent cultural meaning and design wisdom of these symbols. The author also integrates theory and practice by adopting relevant theoretical study in actual design practices, thus appropriately employing the unique symbols used in the ancestral halls of Longtan Town in modern visual design, realizing an effective transformation of traditional decorative art to modern design and also carrying on the vitality of traditional decorative art.