The practice of bamboo handcraft spans millennia in China, generating products that are deeply embedded in cultural life. In our electronic age bamboo still has an intrinsic allure, engaging the senses and the imagination at even a casual encounter, and inciting a strong intuition that its possibilities have yet to be exhausted. A recent series of bamboo handcraft ‘playshops’ put this intuition to the test.
Fourteen kids and adults have gathered at the studio on a Sunday afternoon to make kites. Charlotte is already head down, working out how to tie together the center braces for a classic diamond kite. John too is already at work with William –they have in mind a snowman kite. Kitty and Joanna are not sure. Miranda is thinking, toying with the bamboo strips.
The strips are made by drawing a knife or chisel down the length of the culm (stem) and then making another split parallel to the first one. Each strip is about 2 millimeters thick and a half-meter long. They bend easily to 45 degrees, indicative of the natural flexibility of the bamboo plant that has adapted to survive typhoons. By turning the strips between thumb and forefinger the fibers can be further stretched until the two ends are joined in a circle. Stretch too far and they crack and splinter. The splinters are sharp and rigid: watch out! With finesse a crack can be controlled, however, so that the thickness of the strip can be peeled away in layers resulting in a more flexible piece.
Miranda weaves the strips into a form with three-dimensional curvature. Weaving creates a balance of counter-forces– mimicking the polylamellate structure of bamboo fibers themselves. With a little dexterity and patience a pile of strips can be transformed into a floating apparition of geometric beauty, entirely self-supporting without adhesives, bindings or fasteners. Woven too tightly, however, and the form is too rigid, too loosely and the strips fall apart. Everyone shares a common sense of humility in the face of something not yet entirely understood.
Perhaps the most distinguishing quality of bamboo is its hollowness. This anomaly confers an advantage in forests where the canopy is high and thick. The wide circumference provides stability for height, and with about a third the plant mass of a similarly sized solid tree stem, a moso bamboo shoot can reach the sunlight 25 meters above the forest floor within two months.
The hollow tube that has resulted from this evolutionary trajectory can happily serve many purposes. Ellen has used it as a container for putting insects; Ricard has turned it into a body cavity for a flying raptor figurine; Theo has conceived a launch-tube for missiles; it is employed as a base for several intriguing architectural constructions.
As with any hollow, air pressure within the tube wall can be isolated from pressure without, creating the conditions for resonance, e.g. amplification and modification of sound waves. Ricard’s rice-shaker, Charlotte’s clapper, Argos’ flute, Chen Lian’s chimes, Miranda’s erhu—blowy, brassy, stringed or percussive, the resonant quality of bamboo’s hollow interior draws the mind to consideration of all manner of inventive instruments.
Bamboo is considered to be one of the “four gentlemen” in the Chinese literati tradition, but a conception of bamboo as a marvelous young playmate may also be apt. After all, its rapid growth and evergreen coloration are symbolic of youth; its culms rarely grow older than 6-7 years (usually succumbing to fungi that colonize its short-term advantageous hollow); and it is a relatively young subfamily in the plant kingdom, having propagated a mere 15-20 million years ago. Most simply, it is an endlessly absorbing material for play, inviting explorations in balance, structure, sound, and much more to any inquisitive mind.
From a broader perspective, bamboo has a wondrous capacity to open our apprehension of the material world as a realm of possibility, not simply where designs are realized, but where interaction elicits impromptu discovery, taking us down unimagined pathways of learning.
To view more artworks and photos from past bamboo handcraft ‘playshops’ view the archive.