Miniature sculpture is an art with an ancient tradition in Chinese culture, but one that was nearly lost. In this art form, words or patterns can be carved into any of various firm surfaces, such as ivory, dolphin teeth, fruit pits, tortoiseshell, fish scales and coral. Since it is impossible to appreciate the full intricacy of these works with the naked eye, viewers use 20x magnifying glasses.

A difficult and time-consuming art that attracts few practitioners, it requires meticulously nimble fingers, outstanding vision, and superhuman patience and perseverance. In light of modern people's habits and inclinations, that is truly a remarkable skill set.

Even more surprising is that Chen Feng-hsien, this internationally known miniature sculptor, is only 51. With his head of long hair, he shows visitors a wall of carved bricks that forms a long alley in front of his eponymous museum. Chen directed local school children in constructing the wall. As he describes the youthful exuberance of the design, his laughter reveals a childlike innocence of his own. One can almost see him as he was on a certain day in 1966: a ten-year-old smiling gloriously because he had won a set of crayons for taking first prize in a drawing competition.

At Wanhua Junior High School, Chen honed his skills in calligraphy. With his love of drawing, painting and calligraphy, he took and passed the test for the commercial art program at Taipei's Tsaochiang High School. There he studied various fine and commercial arts, with a focus on sketching and oil painting.

Half a month before he finished his military service, Chen read that the Central Engraving and Printing Plant, which was under the Central Bank of the Republic of China, was hiring a graphic artist, and he asked his commanding officer for a half day of leave to take the test for the position. In 1981 he began his work at Central Engraving and Printing, where he was responsible for engraving and maintaining currency plates.

The miniature sculptor Chen Feng-hsien is among the world's greatest makers of miniature books. Collectors around the world admire his marvelous and meticulous craftsmanship.

A creative road less traveled

The job gave Chen experience with special equipment used for engraving, such as magnifying glasses, steel needles, and extremely fine brushes. As he gained mastery with these tools, he began to think about combining his fine arts training with his newly learned miniature carving skills. As a first attempt, he used a steel needle to carve a landscape on a pumpkin seed that was about the size of a fingernail. The work earned praise from his colleagues and confirmed his intention to throw himself into the world of miniature sculpture.

"On this road of artistic creation--whether landscape painting, sketching, or sculpting--it is very hard to surpass the achievements of earlier generations of artists. So why not try an entirely different route?" Once his mind was set, he decided to create a first for Taiwan: a miniature 300 Tang Dynasty Poems, which was not even a centimeter wide and long.

Without any masters' footsteps to follow or previous examples to base his work on, Chen had to grope in the dark through the entire process--from preparing the tools, to researching the materials, to honing his technique. Apart from a magnifying glass, which Chen could buy, he had to specially make his own tools--fine brushes and needles that he designed to suit specific materials.

There are two kinds of miniature books: printed books that can be produced in quantity and one-of-a-kind handmade books. Largely because he was working at Central Printing, his first miniature book--the 10,000-plus-word 300 Tang Dynasty Poems--was a printed book. He carved the text onto plates that were at least 0.3 centimeters thick. It is not hard to imagine that tremendous amounts of time and energy would be required to carve printing plates with a needle far finer than a sewing needle.

After the plates were finished, the processes of printing and binding the pages into a finished book threw up their own hurdles. If the paper used were too thick, then after the pages were turned a few times they would quickly become ragged and torn. If it were too thin, then the ink would go through the paper, making the text on the other side illegible. The ideal paper would absorb the ink without letting it spread on the page. Eventually, Chen discovered that 40-lb paper was best suited to the task. And skimping on the ink was out of the question: Chen used oil paint as a substitute for printer's ink.

After cutting the pages, Chen experimented with the thickness of the glue: Too little glue, and the book would fall apart. Too much, and it would seep out and blemish the spine. Moreover, if the spine of the book couldn't be pressed flat, its angle wouldn't be pretty.

Chen spent two years producing 300 Tang Dynasty Poems. Immediately afterwards, he took on the challenge of a handmade book, putting four Tang dynasty poems per page on pages only 0.9 cm square. He removed hairs from a fine brush until there was only one strand left, and then painted the characters one stroke at a time.

In recent years Chen has been vigorously promoting brick carving. His museum provides opportunities for visitors to study and try out the art for themselves.

Canyon of Forsaken Love

As he flips through the pages of a book no larger than a fingernail, Chen explains how he made miniature books of representative fairy tales from around the world in their native languages, including the English "Snow White," the Japanese "Peach Boy," the French "Little Prince," the German "Frog Prince," and the Swiss "Little Polar Bear." Apart from text, every page of these books features exquisitely lined and gorgeously colored illustrations.

Each of these books took three to six months to complete. After making 15 of them, Chen, who loves new challenges, felt that he didn't want to be limited to one field of creation, so he boldly tried miniature sculpting with various kinds of materials--from paper, wood, bamboo, cotton, stone, sand and metal, to common everyday objects like toothpicks, dental floss, toothbrushes, sewing thread, matchsticks, rice grains, noodles, eggs, watermelon seeds, and even ant heads and dragonfly and housefly wings. With his great skill, he was able to turn each of these materials into outstanding unique miniature sculptures.

Housefly wings? Surely, one thinks, he must be joking.

In Louis Cha's The Return of the Condor Heroes, the leading female character Xiao Longnu keeps white "jade bees," which have especially toxic stings. Those who get stung by them will break out in terrible itchy hives. Xiao Longnu uses them to drive away Prince Huodu when he disturbs her at the ancient tomb in which she is hiding out. Eventually, Xiao Longnu gets trapped in the Canyon of Forsaken Love, so she carves out the characters "I am trapped in the Canyon of Forsaken Love" on bee wings, hoping that the message will get to Yang Guo, the man she loves.

Chen has a childlike love of martial arts novels, so when he read that passage, he got some bees and tried to carve those Chinese characters on their wings. "In fact, it wasn't hard," he says. "And my skill is definitely superior to Xiao Longnu's!" Outdoing Louis Cha, he has taken houseflies, which are smaller than bees, and carved "I am in the Canyon of Forsaken Love" on their wings. Chen Feng-hsien may indeed be demonstrating superior technique, but would the black-headed flies ruin Xiao Longnu's pristine otherworldly image? The thought really bothers him.

Apart from houseflies, he also turned his attention to ant bodies in a composition that has four ants carrying a rice grain. On one of the four ant heads he wrote four Chinese characters that mean: "Success through cooperation." But the work posed one difficulty after another. Ant bodies are covered with oil and prickly hairs. To prevent slippage and make it easy to apply the ink, he had to rub them repeatedly with alcohol. Then he would brush on the characters and use a steel needle to clean up the calligraphy. He ended up shattering countless ants' heads before finally succeeding.

Magnifying glasses are one of a miniature artist's most important tools. A supporting stand gives these magnifying glasses their special look.

The world in a grain of sand

Apart from requiring a strong foundation of artistic skills, miniature sculpting also taxes one's vision and energy to a degree that is hard for those not in the field to imagine. Chen notes that "quieting the mind and concentrating" is an absolute necessity for carving miniatures. If one is fidgety, one won't have the concentration to wield a knife properly, let alone enter the miniature world.

While sculpting, each cut requires that he hold his breath for more than a minute, and his grip must be totally steady. If you don't take the greatest of care, extremely small carving materials, such as sesame seeds and grains of sand, will break or fall to the ground and be forever lost.

Chen Feng-hsien once experienced the frustration of losing a grain of sand that he was halfway through carving. Ever since, he has used two-sided clear tape, which fixes the grains in place and aids smooth carving. To lower the number of errors, he has naturally learned tricks about how to hold his breath, suck in air, keep his mouth shut, maintain even breathing, strengthen his arms and increase his stability. These skills aren't far removed from qigong techniques.

This miniature 300 Tang Dynasty Poems is less then one centimeter long and wide. Even when open, the book is narrower than the eyes that behold it.

Wordless heavenly book

The various miniature carving skills can generally be divided into five categories: carving, engraving, writing, painting and forming. Collectively, they are known as the "five arts."

When carving, he uses steel needles, specially designed fine and sharp artists' knives, angled razor blades, and electric drills (with steel or diamond bits). Among the five categories of miniature sculpting skills, carving uses the most tools, and its skills are most difficult to master.

Engraving involves using a sharp steel needle to carve out writing or patterns on the surface of a material. Because the steel needle itself leaves no ink, it is then necessary to apply color to the engraved areas, so that they are easier to see. Chen is forever seeking personal breakthroughs, so after more than 20 years of research and of trial and error, he used his miniature sculpting techniques to complete something truly unique: his Wordless Heavenly Book.

He pulls out this book, which has the same size and content as his 300 Tang Dynasty Poems. But when he flips it open, the pages are blank. One can't help but feel like those who beheld the emperor's new clothes--can only smart people see the characters? Chen picks up a magnifying glass, turns on a lamp and adjusts the angle several times before the tiny characters magically appear. One must use powerful magnifying glasses and special lighting in order to see the text.

Chen was inspired by the Sunflower Treasure Book in Louis Cha's The Smiling, Proud Wanderer. He wanted to move from "large" to "small" to "nothing." To create the effect, he used a sharp steel needle to engrave words on pages that were thin to the point of being transparent. To prevent the paper from being damaged by the needle, he rounded the sharp tip of the needle (using the same principle as a ballpoint pen) and finally was able to create the Wordless Heavenly Book, which is truly like no other in this world.

"Miniature forming" combines the four techniques of miniature carving, engraving, writing and painting. He uses a special set of knives to create small pieces of a work, which he then assembles and applies color to. Typically, he first creates the main shape of the object and then adds the decorative details. The principal material used in miniature forming is resin. The craftsman must then have mastery of the other four techniques to bring the work to life.

With an especially fine brush, Chen painted the Zhongshan Building on a grain of rice.

Out in the world

Chen, who still works for Central Engraving and Printing, can only work on his creations during evenings. Typically, he takes an hour out for exercising or walking when he gets off work, and then he eats dinner and takes a brief rest. From 8 p.m. until midnight he creates. When he was young and brimming with energy, he would go without food, sitting for more than ten hours at a stretch on his days off. His eyes and back went bad as a consequence. He then made a strict rule that he would create for no more than four hours a day.

Chen boldly looks for new challenges. Even if he has already surpassed the achievements of his peers around the world, the process of applying for recognition by Guinness World Records has posed all manner of unexpected difficulties. From the experience, Chen feels, it is not hard to see both the unfairness with which the outside world treats artists from Taiwan and the difficulties that Taiwan faces in foreign relations.

Take, for instance, Chen's work Panda, for which he applied to Guinness' Asian Witness Center for recognition as the world's smallest sculpture. But Guinness refused to consider the work because it was "too small." Currently, the smallest bear sculpture on record is a Japanese "Teddy Bear" that measures 0.6 cm. But its posture is stiff and its outline unclear. Chen's work is 0.07 cm, making one wonder as to the real reason it was rejected. The miniature book that currently holds the world record is a mainland Chinese work with five-character lines of poetry. In comparison, Chen's book features poems with seven characters on a line. This time Chen applied to Guinness' branch in China, but he received no response at all.

Yet Chen is not discouraged. To give the world understanding of the artistic level of Taiwan's miniature carving and to share these works with the people of Taiwan, he established the Chen Feng-hsien Miniature Art Museum in 1997. The 1800-square-foot museum occupies the second floor of his own residence on Hsintien's Ankang Road. Because he is determined not to sell his work, his entire output, more than 100 finished works altogether, can be found here.

Chen wrote 20 Tang dynasty poems on dragonfly wings. With skills as a miniaturist that are second to none, he stresses the importance of calming the mind to concentrate.

Out among the people

Apart from miniature sculptures, Chen began to research "brick carving" eight years ago so as to turn over a new creative leaf.

In traditional Chinese architecture, brick carving, along with woodcarving and stone carving, was one of the three basic kinds of carving. In fine clay bricks, craftsmen would carve images of objects or patterns. The beauty of brick carving in traditional Taiwanese architecture can be enjoyed along the old streets of Sanhsia and Shenkeng, in the Lin Family Compound of Panchiao, and in the old residences of Yuanli in Miaoli. Carved bricks are in the gatehouses, the lintels, the roofs, and even the furniture, brush holders and fruit platters.

During the era of Dutch rule in Taiwan, brick craft techniques from Quanzhou in mainland China began to make their way to the island. The evolution of brick carving in Taiwan in many ways reflects the course of history and culture in Taiwan over the last 400 years. Yet the art of carving brick gradually died out, and now only its uses as "decorative art" and "architectural art" remain.

There are two main types of brick carving: carving before firing, and carving after firing. Various kinds of intaglio and cameo carving are employed. Chen Feng-hsien has organized his museum around themes, and visitors need only pay a small materials fee to enjoy a brick carving education and the joys of DIY. At the same time, he goes out into the community and into schools to provide instruction to seed teachers.

"Let's take the seeds of our cultural inheritance and spread them among children, so that their imaginations and creativity can be given free rein. Who knows how many Picassos or Monets are in our schools?" Chen stresses that brick carving offers multiple benefits, both bringing a community together and also beautifying public spaces. As an arts activity that gets everyone involved, it's truly worth promoting.

Employing "miniature forming," Chen completed the world's smallest Chinese chess set. The chess pieces are all movable and measure only 0.2 cm in diameter.

Community and personal gain

Chen effortlessly shifts back and forth from his solitary work on delicate miniatures to organizing brick carving that involves great numbers of people.

In tracing his personal history, he recounts the story "Learning to Shoot without Shooting" from the Chinese classic Liezi: A young archer, Jichang, asks the master archer Feiwei to teach him his secrets. Feiwei first tells him to practice not blinking. So for two years Jichang lies beneath his wife's loom and practices watching the shuttle move back and forth without blinking. Then Feiwei teaches him to stare intently at prey. After three years, a tiny bug seems as big in Jichang's vision as the wheel of a cart. At that point, hitting a tiny gnat with an arrow poses no difficulties, so his training as an archer is complete.

Chen Feng-hsien explains that the process he has undergone in learning how to make miniatures is similar to the archer's training. With the penetrating knowledge that Jichang gained, his enemies were in awe of him for the rest of his life, without his even needing to load an arrow in a bow. The story is similar to how Chen shuttles back and forth between miniature sculpture and public art. He brings boundless beauty to a tiny space and then shares his beauty and joy with the public.

The fine brushes and steel needles used by miniature sculptors must be individually designed to suit specific materials.

Chen Feng-hsien has completed editions of several books of fairy tales. Written in various languages, these miniatures, no larger than a thumbnail, feature exquisitely lined and richly colored illustrations. International collectors sing their praises.

Successful in all he sets out to do, Chen has breathed new life into miniature carving and brick carving, art forms that had been facing extinction.