Master designer helps keep art form alive

Through his apprentices, inheritor of Chongqing filigree inlay ensures craft will live on

Li Changyi, a 72-year-old master who has been preserving and modernizing filigree inlay art in Chongqing for 50 years, is now glad to see it gaining a firm foothold in the domestic art market.

A renaissance of traditional Chinese clothing known as hanfu, brought about in recent years by popular TV dramas, has also helped breathe new life into the 1,000-year-old craft, especially among the young.

In 2008, filigree inlay was listed as a national intangible cultural heritage, and in 2014, the Chongqing style was listed as a cultural heritage of the city. Li is the only inheritor.

Born into a silversmithing family in the city's Shapingba district in 1949, Li showed strong interest in the craft as a child.

A self-taught painter and former fitter at a ship-repair factory, he was recruited as a craftsman at the age of 22 by Chongqing Metal Art and Craft, which sent him to study for a year in the arts and crafts department at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute.

In 1974, Li officially became a filigree inlay designer－drawing outlines, crafting models and completing orders with foreign trade companies in Beijing.