Zhang Tong Lu is a master cloisonné craftsman. A profession that this retired Beijing local began practicing by chance and by passion for drawing and painting. More than 50 years later, he is one of the last inheritors of this traditional Chinese art.

"All I wanted to do was draw". That's all that Zhang Tong Lu wanted to do when he was a child. But this 68 year old Beijing local is now neither a painter nor a designer. It was only by chance at a time when the state sent men and women in the professions that it chose that Zhang Lu Tong embraced a career in cloisonné.

This is a profession that this retiree has exercised since the age of 16, when his family lived near a film company. But rather than focusing on the movie stars, Zhang Tong Lu focused on the designers and their sets to give him the necessary inspiration for his own designs. The manager of a craft workshop noticed his talent and decides to recruit him for cloisonné.

For the following year, Zhang Tong Lu, armed with a hammer, manufactured copper supports. But always driven by his passion for drawing, he decided to resign due to the lack of opportunities and change in his position. "My teacher told me that we could have only one specialty in cloisonné," he recalls while drawing over a a piece of tracing paper in his office near Heping Li, in north-east Beijing.

A small revolution

Zhang Tong Lu did in fact show his master it could be done. He enrolled at the Beijing Fine Arts School, where he studied metalwork while putting an emphasis on drawing. Right after his graduation, the artisan returned to the workshop where he made his start and tries everything out. In a year, he goes through all the manufacturing stages of cloisonné, while it would take a normal worker at least three years to do so. Within a short period, he was promoted to the design office where he remained for the next 50 years. He finally became his own boss three months before his retirement in 2001.

Zhang Tong Lu spends most of his time on choosing designs and colors, before starting a small revolution. "Before, it was only possible to use three basic colors for the glazes. I added the black, green and a mix of red and white," he says. "During the Cultural Revolution, cloisonné was seen as a feudal art. Therefore, it virtually disappeared, it was forbidden to do illustrate flowers and other designs regarded as backward."

That's when he came up with the idea of using the symbols of the time. "I first took the Chinese characters from the Mao Zedong's poems and had them reproduced in cloisonné form," he says. "I drew workers, revolutionary elements and Chinese ethnic minorities. This is how cloisonné was able to survive." Later, the master craftsman created a technique inspired by amber which allows the manufacturing of cloisonné without an oven, an ingenuity that won him the invention prize in 1997 in the USA.

Practical Information:
Zhang Tong Lu's Workshop and office:
Open daily from 8 AM to 5 PM
8 Huixin East Street, Sheji Building, Room 801, Chaoyang District.
朝阳区惠新东街8号设计大厦801室.
Tel: 010.84.63.74.67

Visits of the workshop are by appointment only. Photographs by the public are banned. Cloisonné objects start from 700RMB for small objects and can go up to several hundreds of thousands of RMB.