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KEITH G. STEVENS
and Kwangtung, the Southern maritime coastal boat people's stylized wooden images and the stone, porcelain and hard stone household images of the wealthy. However, it is the Fukienese style I am about to describe, although the carving styles of the Teochew and Hokkien in Singapore do not differ all that markedly (Plates 6 and 7).
The Singaporean god carvers were well versed in recognizing the mode and marks of craftsmen from the other Southern Chinese maritime provinces, particularly the handiwork of their forefathers, and each master carver has a widely recognized style of his own. One carver spent considerable time showing me the variations which principally occur in the decoration on the front face of the base of the image. A hundred years ago special artists were employed to paint this "front face trade mark”, one of the more exquisite being a rose on a long stem adopted by a Foochow city carver of note,
The carvers did not work from plans or sketches, having a clear idea of the image in their mind; but it took all my powers of persuasion to make one of the carvers sit down and sketch the main features of as many gods as possible, as he knew them (Plate 8).
When questioned about how specific were the individual gods' features and markings, it was soon apparent that each carver had his own ideas about head-dresses, robes, beards and also, rather surprisingly, over posture. An example was the carving of Lu F'ung P'in (Plate 7), a famous doctor, the patron of barbers and one of the Eight Immortals. There were many variations, the carvers agreed, and each carver knew he wore a flat “tile” hat, carried a fly whisk, an umbrella or a gourd and was robed in blue; and when I produced an image of him wearing green robes, they fell over themselves claiming the decorator had been either ignorant or colour blind. Having been unanimous about this, however, they promptly disagreed over the Northern Emperor (✯✯✯) whose recognition features are a snake and tortoise, bare feet, unkempt hair and a fore finger of the left hand pointing vertically at waist height. Quite a riotous scene ensued during which snippets from various books such as the Ming dynasty novel "The Deification of the Gods" (###), and quotes from great carvers, together with recollections of their handiworks, were voiced to prove a point.
It was quite obvious that the carvers were far from unanimous about details of the Northern Emperor figure. The tortoise could