Fire-Pen Painting (Pyrography)

Fire-pen painting, also called pyrography, is the craft of burning pictures onto wood, bamboo, paper or silk with a heated iron pen, with a long history. Hefei fire-pen painting developed its own subjects and style through transmission, and is listed among the provincial-level intangible heritage items of Anhui under traditional arts.

The craftsman wields a soldering iron like a brush, controlling its heat and dwell time to burn gradations of "ink" onto the surface, needing no pigment; subjects are mostly landscapes, flowers and birds, figures and Luzhou scenes, demanding unity of heat, wrist and composition.

Fire-pen painting fuses the pictorial with the craft of fire as a singular branch of Chinese folk art, carrying the ingenuity of Hefei's artisans and holding considerable artistic value.