Chrysanthemum Stone Carving

　　Chrysanthemum stone carving is a unique handicraft of Liuyang City. Each piece was carved by making use of chrysanthemum stone generated more than 200 million years ago, and produced independently. Therefore, there is no two pieces are identical. It is understood that this kind of natural stone is only produced at Liuyang around the world until now. That’s why Liuyang's chrysanthemum stone sculpture was praised as the "world's No 1". Like chrysanthemum, this stone possesses single, double, triple stamens or no stamens, as well as flower forms similar to those of Boltonia Asteroides, Daisy Hydrangea Nigrum, Po Ye Ju and Coreopsis Tinctoria. Based on these features of chrysanthemum stone, craftsmen exquisitely carved it into chrysanthemum by shaping petals, adding twigs and leaves. In recent years, the carving technique has broken through plane modeling by developing multi-stratum flowerage, and furthermore people have played a part in this unique art, with pieces reflecting historic figures in those fairy tales such as "Huang Chao Composing Poems on Chrysanthemums", and "Celestial Beauty Scattering Flowers", etc.