Research on Straw and Willow Plaiting in Shandong and Traditional Craft

Straw and willow plaiting is a kind of traditional handicraft technique to plait handicraft works or household items with natural materials, such as straw, wheat-straw, corn bran, willow twig, rattan, palm and etc. as raw materials. The combination of technological process of straw and willow plaiting, humanized design and modern indoor design is more conductive to the development of straw and willow plaiting industry and indoor design arts. This paper discusses the relationship between straw and willow plaiting and traditional handicraft. Straw and willow plaiting, with a long history, originates from Shandong Province and develops gradually across the country. Traditional straw and willow plaiting is mainly for practical application, supplemented by the function of aesthetic appreciation, whereas, modern straw and willow plaiting continuously integrates traditional techniques and modern life and creates the application of willow plaiting products. According to process materials, straw and willow plaiting mainly includes straw plaiting, palm plaiting, rattan plaiting, willow twig plaiting, corn bran plaiting, bamboo plaiting and etc. It can also be divided into flat plaiting, twisting plaiting, tightening plaiting and so on based on techniques. As a kind of traditional technique, straw and willow plaiting is full with national character and techniques, and its products essentially manifest unique artistic concept and aesthetic orientation of Chinese nation, which is also the artistic expression and sublimation of production and life, folk custom and national culture in each nation. Willow plaiting material is sustainable material with rich cultural connotation. 1. History of Straw and Willow Plaiting Straw and willow plaiting is handicraft works or household items plaited with thatch, wheat-straw, corn bran, willow twigs and etc. According to textual research of some scholars, handle products with twisting pattern of red pottery appeared early in Longshan cultural period, and then willow plaited objects follow this widely used pattern. In other words, it was relatively common that people used willow plaited objects in downstream of the Yellow River four or five thousand years ago. Some scholars believe that straw and willow plaiting originates from Shandong area 1500 years ago. It was called “Straw Plait of Ye County” in Ming Dynasty, so straw plait of Ye County is also called “Laizhou Straw Plait”. Straw and willow plaiting products were widely used during the reign of Emperor Jiaqing of the Qing Dynasty. From the history of straw and willow plaiting, in self-sufficient lifestyle of traditional agricultural society, people used local willow twigs to plait large wicker basket, dustpan, plaited basket, food container, bamboo fish trap and so on for agriculture and fishery production, straw and willow plaiting was widely used by people in daily life, mainly self-made for self-use. It is also mainly for practical application, supplemented by the function of aesthetic appreciation. In modern society, straw and willow plaiting has gradually become an industry in large-scale production and operation. With its rich artistic, local and personalized characteristics, straw and willow plaiting even enters commodity circulation in international trade. At the same time, the production of straw and willow plaiting incessantly expands and innovates the application methods of straw and willow plaiting products by integrating traditional techniques and modern life for indoor design. Raw materials for straw and willow plaiting in China are various and diversified all over the 5th International Conference on Education, Management, Arts, Economics and Social Science (ICEMAESS 2018) Copyright © 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 264