Luoyang Palace Lanterns

A Luoyang palace lantern is built to fold. Most of what is particular about it follows from that.

A Lantern That Folds Flat

The frame is not a fixed box. Two wooden seats — one at the top, one at the bottom — are grooved around their edges, and thin bamboo ribs are threaded into the grooves. The whole assembly opens and closes. Spread it out and it holds the shape of a lantern; close it down and it lies flat.

One thing is worth separating out early. A palace lantern is not a sky lantern — nothing in this craft is designed to leave the ground. A palace lantern hangs from a fixed point, and its construction assumes that point from the first step.

That is the first thing to understand about the craft, and it is not a small detail. A lantern that folds can be packed, stored and shipped at a fraction of the volume it takes up when it is open — which matters a great deal when the lantern has to leave the city it was made in.

National Heritage Since 2008

Palace lantern making in Luoyang is carried on China's national intangible cultural heritage list under the heading of dengcai — the craft of the coloured lantern. The heading itself entered the first national list in 2006. Luoyang's palace lantern was added in 2008, in the second batch, as an extension of that existing entry.

Local accounts trace the craft back much further, to the Eastern Han. The written record does not reach that far back, and the two claims are not of the same kind: one is a tradition, the other is a listing.

The city holds nine entries on the national list. Two of the crafts on this site are among them, and both arrived in the same 2008 batch: Tang sancai, and the palace lantern.

Bamboo, Basswood and Silk

Two materials do the structural work. The top and bottom seats are cut from basswood — a light, close-grained wood that turns cleanly on a lathe and holds a groove without splitting. The ribs are bamboo, split thin, and chosen for a hardness and a spring that let them hold a shape while the lantern is open and bend without breaking when it is closed.

The bamboo is grown locally, and good bamboo for this work needs two things at once: it springs back, and it does not attract insects.

The panels are silk. It is the surface that carries both the light and the decoration.

Seventy-Plus Steps

The figure given officially is more than seventy steps, and they run in a fixed order.

The two seats are turned on a lathe, then grooved. Bamboo is split into ribs and the ribs are threaded into the grooves, and the fittings that hold the frame are attached. Then the frame is spread open and shaped by hand — the point at which a bundle of ribs becomes a lantern — and the ribs are fixed in place. Silk goes on after that, and only then the lettering or the painting.

The lettering has a convention of its own. Characters are written in a flattened form, a style the craft calls dengti zi, lantern-body script.

That is the spine of the process. The rest of the seventy-odd steps are smaller ones arranged around it.

Lanterns for the Forbidden City

One chapter of the craft's modern history gets repeated. In the early years of the People's Republic, the city's lantern makers were brought together into a single dedicated workshop, and the lanterns made there were sent to Beijing — to the Forbidden City and to Tiananmen.

The point of the story is scale. A palace lantern is not a small object with decoration on it. It is built for large rooms and for looking at from a distance, and for a period the craft was organised to produce exactly that.

From Luoyang to the World

The craft has travelled before, and the accounts of when it first went abroad do not agree. One dates the earliest export orders to 1957. Another places the opening of overseas markets in the 1980s. The two differ on the date and agree on the thing itself — lanterns made in this city and sold a long way from it.

Both accounts are old, and neither can be settled from what is written down. What is not in doubt is that the trade happened.

Light, Folded Flat, Shipped

A palace lantern does the oldest thing a lantern can do: it puts a surface around a light. What is particular to this city is the frame underneath — two wooden seats, a set of bamboo ribs, and a shape that opens when it is wanted and closes when it is not.

That one property is most of the craft's history in a single line. It is why the lanterns are still made here, and still sent out from here.

You can see the forms we carry, and the sizes they are made in, on our palace lantern page.