The Group Adopts the Name Hebei Gaodashi Art Group Co., Ltd.

Handing Sculpture Group Becomes Hebei Gaodashi Art Group

Hebei Handing Sculpture Group, a leading name in bespoke high-end sculpture in China, has formally adopted the name Hebei Gaodashi Art Group. Anchored in five generations of inherited craftsmanship, the change marks a strategic move into full-service high-end art commissions and sets a new benchmark for the branding and artistic development of the Quyang sculpture industry.

1. Decades of Accumulation, and an Industry at a Turning Point

The craft foundation of the Gaodashi Art Group comes from a carving family in Quyang that reaches back more than a century. Gao Luoduo, the first generation, was one of the Two and a Half Masons of late Qing and early Republican Quyang and a carver of his age. He directed the carving of Zhaozhou Bridge, took part in the carving programme for the Ten Great Buildings in Beijing, and in 1915 won a silver medal at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco with Crane and Winter Plum, bringing Quyang stone carving to the world's attention. His son Gao Guolin and his grandson Gao Zhiru were both carvers of consummate skill. The fourth generation, Gao Yingpo, began his training at thirteen, later studied at the Central Academy of Arts and Design, and went on to become a Master of Chinese Arts and Crafts and a Master Craftsman of the Nation. Today the fifth generation, Gao Minglu, has taken up the chisel — five generations writing a history of Quyang stone carving that spans a hundred years.

On that foundation, Handing Sculpture Group grew over twenty-six years into a leading enterprise in Quyang. It has built two production bases, one for stone carving and one for metal casting, holds a national-level master craftsman studio, and is a National Demonstration Base for Cultural Industry. It has completed more than a thousand large-scale sculpture projects in China and abroad.

This is not a simple change of name. The sculpture industry is at a critical point of transition: clients are no longer buying a sculpture so much as seeking a complete artistic solution, and a production-led brand can no longer carry an artistic positioning. The name Gaodashi Art Group moves the company's core asset from capacity and technique to the authorship and creative capability of the master.

2. A Name That Sets the Standard: Rebuilding Confidence in High-End Commissions

The heart of the Gaodashi brand is the binding of a century-old carving family, and the personal artistic reputation of Gao Yingpo, to the company's standards of quality. In answer to the loose use of the word master in the market, the group has instituted a master's end-to-end responsibility system: for every master-level commission, from the first concept and the approval of the clay model to the carving of key passages and final acceptance, Gao Yingpo personally reviews and signs off. Collector-grade works are issued with a signed certificate of collection and a written account of their creation.

The principle that the brand is the master and the master is quality is the first of its kind in the Chinese sculpture industry. It turns a personal reputation into corporate credibility, and settles the question of trust in high-end commissions at its root.

3. A Fuller Chain of Capability, and an Ecosystem for High-End Art

The group now works across three areas. The first is bespoke high-end sculpture: urban landmarks, cultural plazas, sculpture for corporate headquarters and other major public art projects. The second is collector-grade sculpture: hand-carved pieces by the master, bespoke white marble sculpture, bronze art works and other private commissions. The third is integrated spatial art: for luxury hotels, private museums and corporate buildings, a single service running from artistic planning to the commissioning of individual works.

Design, modelling, production, installation and maintenance are all carried out in-house; core craft processes are never outsourced. This combination of artistic authority and delivery capability is what sets the group apart from ordinary workshops and from design-only practices.

4. Guarding the Craft, and Continuing to Lead

The brand has changed; the craft has not. Gao Yingpo observes that the roots of Quyang carving, the handmade core of the work and an uncompromising standard of quality are the things that will not change. The group will go on investing in the training of craftsmen and in the transmission of technique: using the national-level master craftsman studio to develop young carvers, deepening cooperation with art academies, and bringing traditional carving into dialogue with contemporary artistic ideas.

In that work of transmission and renewal, Gao Yingpo's most distinctive achievement is the crossing of Quyang's two national intangible cultural heritage crafts, stone carving and Ding ware. He has translated the high relief and full-round volume of stone carving, together with the aesthetic of bronze ornament, into porcelain. He originated the techniques of Ding kiln porcelain carving and Ding ware appliqué, solved the cracking and distortion that beset firing, and established Ding porcelain with stone carving as an art form of its own — opening a new path for bespoke work by heritage masters. In September 2026 he brought both crafts to the National Art Museum of China for a solo exhibition, the first from Quyang: one stone, one porcelain, hard and soft in balance.

He has also carried the same idea into the aesthetics of daily life, developing Ding ware tableware, tea ware and a line of cultural objects, so that carving enters vessels of use and a craft of a thousand years enters contemporary life.

The founding of Gaodashi Art Group marks a shift in Quyang's sculpture industry from a cluster of workshops towards branding and artistic practice, and from a regional signature — the Home of Chinese Carving — towards an art brand of national standing.

Conclusion

From Handing Group to Gaodashi Art Group, what has changed is the positioning of the brand and the reach of its business. What has not changed is a commitment to sculpture as art, and a sense of responsibility towards five generations of transmission. From this new point of departure, the group will continue to work from Gao Yingpo's national-level master craftsman studio, deepening its practice in bespoke high-end sculpture and in the crossing of two heritage crafts — making fine works with care, building a brand on art, and carrying China's sculpture towards a higher level of quality and ambition.