Midas Touch

The advancement of globalization and industrial civilization has increasingly impacted the inheritance of handicraft culture.Two major problems appear in consequence.Firstly,the industrialized,undifferentiated production of processed materials affects their expression of materials,hardly revealing the "spirituality" and the flavor of works of art and limiting the craftworkers’ "imagination" on materials.Secondly,under the influence of modern tools,some artisans have changed their attitude towards natural materials in their handmade activities,embodied in a state of "Human skill is better than heavenly creation" in their works,lacking initial thinking before creation.Therefore,it is necessary to adjust contemporary artists’ concept of handicraft to avoid them becoming "operators" of tools.Based on that background,this paper mainly takes "the significance of the Eastern view of nature for the perseverance of handicrafts" as the primary point of reflection.Accordingly,this paper is divided into three parts.Firstly,by understanding the origin of the Eastern view of nature,its primary connotation,and the traditional concept of nature,this paper clarifies the relationship between human beings and nature in the Eastern view of nature and finds inspirations derived from that understanding for handicraft.Secondly,it analyzes the significance of the Eastern view of nature to handmade creation and people’s spiritual life today,such as the need for personal emotion and the persistence of national culture.The concrete claims of that concept in practical applications are sorted out by combing the author’s graduation work and study cases.Finally,this paper demonstrates the source of the inspiration and creation process of the author’s graduation work.It presents the work as an embodiment of the Eastern view of nature,the origin of the handicraft concept.The Eastern view of nature is a unique traditional cultural resource with practical significance,encompassing ancient people’s understanding of nature.In this paper,from the concept of "human beings should follow nature,and give full play to their subjective initiative to appropriately transform nature," people derive the ideas of creation: "act according to circumstances" and "suit the capability to the ability." They advocate that craftworkers should develop the concept of "consciousness before skill" when selecting materials and the idea of "intention before skills" when making things.Therefore,the Eastern view of nature as the "origin" of the concept of creation helps solve the problems presented by contemporary craftworkers in selecting materials and producing.It also helps them have a clear idea when handcrafting,effectively avoiding superficial design in form so that they can find the purpose and meaning of handicraft from culture.