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| Dian cui master Xiao Guangchun works on a piece of jewelry. (China Daily/Jiang Dong) |
"These days, the color is sometimes referred to as 'Turkish blue', after the Turkish turquoise I suppose. But in my view, it's a shade of its own, undefinable by any other worldly thing," says Xiao. "Mother Nature has only this one tube of paint and she lavishes it on the wings of this lucky little bird we call kingfisher."
But there's one thing that could, hopefully, do justice to the beauty of the feather. It's the name assigned to Xiao's art.
"People call the process dian cui, meaning a dipping of blue," he says. "It so perfectly captures the silken texture of the plume, which, under sunlight, seems to melt into a reflective and miraculous pool of indigo."
Not only that, the very term also hints at a dian cui master's light, delicate touch when letting the color flow onto the golden surfaces, one piece of feather at a time. It's a lightness rooted in decades of practice, and rendered possible by a calm, undisturbable state of mind.
"The amount of patience he's shown seems to belong only to a woman, not a man," says Li Dafen, Xiao's wife for nearly 40 years.
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