All That Glisters...Tainan Silversmiths Keep a Tradition Shining

"Tainan first, Lukang second, Mengchia third." Such was the pecking order of Taiwanese towns in the 18th century. As silver workers from China crossed the Taiwan Strait, their craft took root on the island, and Tainan became a thriving center of silvercraft. In the Japanese era, Japanese silversmiths arrived, and the smiths of Tainan began to meld the traditions of China and Japan to create works with a unique Taiwanese style. Viewed with favor by Japanese buyers, they fostered rapid growth in the industry. Back then many silver shops were established in old Tainan, clustered on a street known as "silversmith street" in what is today the Minchuan Road area. Here a few shops remain, a living testament to the booming industry of an earlier era.

Surrounded by deities and devils, the City God sits serene in Taipei's Hsiahai City God Temple, his glittering silver hat only adding to his authority. The hat is the work of Lin Chi-feng.

Forging silver in air-raid shelters

Today the "silver houses" commonly found on commercial streets throughout Taiwan are actually filled with gold. But back in the Japanese era you wouldn't have found any gold in them. Master silversmith Lin Chi-feng explains that although gold was discovered in Taiwan in 1893 in Chiufen and Chinkuashih, the Japanese colonial government tightly controlled it, and ordinary people had little chance of owning any pure gold. The little that was available was largely used as gold plate over silver. Hence, back then what "silver houses" crafted and sold was indeed mostly silver.

Silversmithing in Tainan reached its peak early in the Japanese era, when sugarcane was the Taiwanese product most prized by the government. Silver collectibles related to sugar production, such as knickknacks depicting sugar factories, or water buffalo pulling carts loaded with cane, were all the rage with Japanese tourists. Sensing a business opportunity, silversmiths crafted all manner of such items. The industry boomed.

With the coming of war, however, the Japanese government put tight controls on the use of silver, which was used to purchase military supplies. The island's "silver houses" lacked any gold or silver to smith, and many silversmiths went out of business, unable to pass their legacy on to their children. Yet Lin Chi-feng remembers hearing elders say that during the war the gentry still placed much importance on displays of wealth during weddings, so that silversmiths would hole up in air raid shelters and secretly practice their craft, risking having their stocks of silver confiscated and serving a prison sentence of 29 days.

In times gone by, when daughters of Taiwanese gentry married, a silver betel-nut basket was an impressive item to include in a dowry. This basket was created by Lin Meng-hsiu and won an honorable mention in the silvercraft category at the First Annual Tainan Handicrafts Exhibition. (courtesy of Lin Chi-feng)

A tarnished Matsu hat

Born in Chiehting, Kaohsiung County in 1938, Lin Chi-feng moved to Tainan with his family when he was ten. The war had just ended, and ROC military families crossing the strait from mainland China had brought much gold with them. Lin Chi-feng's parents opened a "silver house" in Tainan, where they sold gold jewelry. When Lin was 18, he graduated from vocational high school. Business was tepid, and his father disliked his hired goldsmith, who put on airs, so he asked his son to learn the craft.

"In that authoritarian era, a word from a father could decide a child's fate for life," Lin recalls. "The child's wishes didn't matter." Lin apprenticed with Lin Teng-shan, a famous Tainan goldsmith. By 26 he had mastered the craft and opened his own workshop, making items of gold and platinum.

In the 1970s the industry hit hard times, and Lin's sales sharply declined. But then a friend brought him an old silver Matsu hat that was tarnished and in bad need of cleaning. Lin, who had always held traditional craftsmanship in high regard, decided to change career tracks and make the silver hats worn by deities in Taoist worship.

"Although gold and silver are similar, silver hats are large and intricate, and require a huge amount of delicate work by hand," says Lin. "They are much harder to create than most gold jewelry." To make the switch, Lin began studying various silversmithing techniques, including how to hammer and carve sheets of silver and how to use silver wire. Tainan's silver industry was regarded as preeminent in Taiwan, but its master silversmiths, unwilling to pass the skills outside their families, didn't take on apprentices, so Lin traveled all around Taiwan to view the silver hats of temple deities.

It was an unwritten rule back then that you couldn't take pictures in temples. Nor was even drawing allowed. Lin would burn paper money as an offering to the gods, all the while stealing glances at their silver hats to imprint an image of them in his mind. Then he'd go home and draw them from memory. Relying on his foundation in goldsmithing, over eight months he gradually grew acquainted with the delicate techniques used to make these silver hats.

To attach pieces of silver, craftsmen use a soldering torch fueled with cleaning alcohol.

Under the net

Taiwanese silversmiths use two basic traditional methods when working with fine silver: "making sheets" and "drawing wire." When making sheets, silversmiths must first create an even sheet as thin as an eggshell. Then, at the stage of "hammering out patterns," they use a variety of different chisels of bronze or stainless steel to make all manner of delicate patterns. They can also heat the silver sheet, place it on a soft rubber mat and hammer it, making patterns in relief. Or they can create shapes or patterns by scraping out material with very sharp knives.

"Drawing wire" refers to pulling silver through a drawplate, which contains holes of various shapes and sizes to create different kinds of silver wire. These various kinds of wire are used for inlaying, or for twisting or twining. And various wires can be used together in sheets of wire netting.

In Taiwan mostly recycled silver is used, typically about 99% pure. But thin silver wire cracks easily, unless using more ductile imported fine silver which is 99.9% pure.

At age 34, Lin Chi-feng established Chi-feng Silver Hat Studio, becoming one of a small number of silversmiths to specialize in making these silver hats. He struggled for four or five years until he gradually made a name for himself. Taiwan's economy was growing by leaps and bounds, and the pious, after making some money, would go to temples and fulfill their promises to the gods by bedecking them with gold and silver. Orders for silver hats poured in. Lin hired more silversmiths, and even his wife and his son, then in junior high school, helped out. Lin's finely crafted silver hats can now be found in temples all over Taiwan, including Peikang's Matsu Temple, Hsinkang's Queen of Heaven Temple, Taipei's Hsiahai City God Temple, and Tainan's Hsiluo Palace Temple.

For Lin, deadline pressure, rather than style or technique, poses the greatest challenge. That's because temples usually decide to change to a new hat for a deity's birthday. Before the birthday of a deity such as the "Third Prince" Li Nezha, who has temples all over the island, Lin works night and day and scarcely has time to stop and eat.

When making these hats for deities, Lin often enters temples, but he doesn't have particularly spiritual experiences in them. Lin, who has a good mind for business, discovered that representatives of temples would first throw divination blocks to ask the deities if they would like to change hats. If the deity was unwilling to impose a financial hardship on the congregation, he would respond by saying no, which meant Lin had lost a business opportunity. So Lin urges temple congregations to show sincerity in their desire to reward the deities, by first commissioning a hat and then asking the deity when would be a good day to don it.

"The deities are just as vain as people and usually respond in the affirmative, asking for their hats as soon as possible," says a smiling Lin, who clearly is sensitive not only to the gods' outer appearances but also to their inner states of mind.

Early on in Taiwan's history, silver could only be owned by the families of officials or the very wealthy. The photo shows a delicate silver dragon-and-phoenix incense burner. It was used to burn high quality incense, such as the kind made out of sandalwood.

From craft to art

However hard Lin may work, when with smooth, practiced motions he uses a gas torch to weld silver wire, he's luckier than the silversmiths of previous generations. Lin recalls that when silversmiths used to join silver they had to light an alcohol lamp and blow through a bronze blowpipe to heat the metal. Then it could be hammered and brazed. This technique of using a blower to control the heat is known as "blowing fire."

"What with all that blowing and spitting up phlegm at such a young age, and with all the ashes that would get stirred up, many past silversmiths died in middle age at the height of their skills," sighs Lin.

Working as a goldsmith in his younger days, Lin cultivated artistic powers of discernment that differed from the traditional craftsmen of these silver hats for deities. And because he had long researched all kinds of equipment, over the years he discovered many unique techniques, giving his works an unrivaled exquisiteness. Apart from the silver hats for deities, the dazzling works in his studio include "officials of heaven" silver necklaces (used to bless children), decorative halberds, dragon-headed walking sticks, incense burners and so forth. He also has gone a step further to reapply these techniques to create unique works of art.

In 1998 George T. H. Chang, then mayor of Tainan, specially organized a handicrafts exhibition in an effort to foster a local renaissance of arts and crafts. Lin won third place in the silver category (in which no first or second were awarded) for his work Headdress of Bride and Groom. His son Lin Meng-hsiu also received an honorable mention. With father and son each winning awards, they became the talk of the town.

"Drawing wire" involves hammering out thin strips of silver and then pulling them through holes in a drawplate. These holes have various different sizes to create silver wire of various diameters.

Following a silver thread

Although Lin Meng-hsiu took up his father's career, he walked a circuitous path to do so. Born in 1966, he grew up amid his father's silver ornaments and piles of silver thread, but at first showed no interest at all in working as a silversmith. Yet perhaps it was his fate that after graduating from high school and doing his military service, he would follow in his father's footsteps. By then his father's silver hat business had acquired a measure of renown, and a steady stream of orders was keeping him busy. Meng-hsiu's younger brother, Lin Meng-Chen, had begun training as a silversmith immediately after finishing middle school, but when he began his military service, his father, so as to keep up with his orders, asked Meng-hsiu to learn the craft.

In 1997 a woman in her eighties asked Lin Chi-feng to repair a silver betel-nut basket. Seeing the poor condition of the basket, Lin suggested she might as well commission a new one. Yet the old lady insisted on having the original repaired, for it had been part of her dowry. Some 70 years earlier a silver betel-nut basket included in a daughter's dowry was a sign of wealth among the gentry. Most families could only afford baskets of bamboo or bronze. But a few would make a conspicuous display of affluence by renting a silver basket from a silver house.

In order to meet the old woman's wishes, and also moved by its exquisite craftsmanship, Lin carefully observed the piece's style. Because he had three sons, he decided to have three of these betel-nut baskets made and give one to each son as a wedding present. The task of making the baskets he assigned to his eldest son, Meng-hsiu.

"The baskets, in the shape of a betel nut, were completely hollowed out and covered with ornamentation," Lin Chi-feng explains. "Each one took over a month to finish, which is why he only made three." In a field that few are now entering, Lin Meng-hsiu has become a master himself.

Unlike his older brother, who came into the field with some reluctance, Lin Meng-chen, who is one year younger than Meng-hsiu, began learning the basics of cutting, forging and chasing silver from his father while still a student in the design department of Changjung Senior High School.

"At first I would use scissors to cut out patterns from a sheet of silver. Because I didn't position my hands correctly and didn't apply the proper pressure, I often cut my fingers or was injured by the silver sheets," recalls Meng-chen, smiling at some of the embarrassing moments of his early apprenticeship. "I often burned my hair and even more often hit myself with the hammer."

The three masters of the Lin family-the envy of many in the field-need patience and endurance because workmanship done completely by hand requires sitting down for ten or more hours at a stretch. They earn less than they would working as goldsmiths of fashionable jewelry. It's a discrepancy that deters many youths from learning how to craft silver. Yet it comforts Lin Chi-feng no end to see his sons carry on his work-and even surpass him in their skill.

Late one fall afternoon, beams of sunlight lazily enter the Chi-feng Silver Hat Studio, which is located in a back alley of Tainan. Lin Chi-feng and his two sons busily sit at their worktables, soldering, chasing, and drawing silver wire.

"Boat of Kings"

The Lins, father and sons, have made a name for themselves with their hats for deities, but expanding the realm of the art is their future challenge.

Lin Meng-hsiu's Xiu Zhu Ying Tingtai (Tall Bamboo Reflecting Pavilion) was selected for the Second National Crafts Awards. He explains that while planning this work, he perused many volumes in the library in order to get a firm grip on the structure of pavilions, and also went to various sites to take photographs.

In the piece, three ancients in classical garb are enjoying some wine amid swaying branches and the sounds of flowing water. Lin Meng-hsiu poured his all into this vision of leisurely elegance, his first attempt to depict people in three dimensions. He spent two weeks on the three faces, which had to look a little tipsy. The hardest part was depicting the knots and ornamentation on the traditional clothing. At a loss after trying all the techniques he could think of, Meng-hsiu asked his father's advice, and Lin Chi-feng fashioned the knots using techniques he had learned long ago for fashioning gold.

To create his Emperor's Boat, which is half a meter long and has three masts, Meng-chen often went to Anping Harbor to study the appearance and structure of boats.

Lin Meng-chen explains that most model boats are shaped from a single block of wood. The measurements are very easy. But for a silver boat, the material has to be forged one bit at a time, then soldered together. Even the ropes for the yards and rigging were twisted from three strands of silver. Emperor's Boat took first prize in the silver category at the Third Annual Tainan Handicrafts Exhibition and made a big splash among fellow silversmiths.

The Lins, with three master craftsmen in one family, are well known in Tainan. Father Lin Chi-feng (middle) is gratified that his sons Lin Meng-hsiu (left) and Lin Meng-chen (right) have not only followed him into his trade but are working hard to move silvercraft toward the realm of modern art.

Awaiting collectors

Though the three Lins have had notable success in raising the art and creativity of silversmithing, for practical reasons most of their income still comes from traditional silver hats. Lin Chi-feng candidly states that silver handicrafts don't have much utilitarian value. Few customers can appreciate or afford top quality works, so there's a very limited market.

"It's not hard to make works of art; it just takes so much time-sometimes three or four months. In Taiwan, where there are few collectors, it's just not worth the effort, and it's hard to make a living from it." He recommends that as in Japan, the government should actively collect silver art, so that silversmiths can carry on their creative legacy.

Late one fall afternoon, sunlight filters into Chi-feng Silver Hat Studio. The Lins sit at their worktables, each busy with his craft, unaware that the sun is sinking. In the light of the sunset the finished silver hats flash brilliantly as Lin Chi-feng applies a layer of clear varnish to prevent tarnishing. His practiced motions reveal the passing down of the legacy of a craft in its twilight....

Lin Chi-feng has been researching his craft for many years, over which time he has developed many unique tools and techniques that give his works a style all their own.

Silver bullion and fine silver wire, which has been pulled through a draw plate.

Lin Meng-chen, Lin Chi-feng's second son, won a third place in the Second National Craft Awards for his Hats for the Highest Placing Mandarin and His Wife. The mandarin's hat (left) was entirely made from thin silver wire and took more than two months of painstaking work to finish. (courtesy of Lin Chi-feng)

Items of handmade silvercraft require tremendous patience and passion. With careful, well-practiced motions that amply convey his love for the craft, Lin Chi-feng carefully assembles pieces of gold-plated silver to create a hat for a Taoist deity.

Protectors for the back of the neck can usually only be worn by deities who are generals or commanders, such as General Zhenhai.