Zhu was born in 1944 when the flames of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45) forced the closure of his family's generations-old copper workshop in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province.

But the craft survived the war and decades later, Zhu resumed the business.

He had bold ideas. He wanted to imbue the craft he had inherited with a strong artistic sense of modernism, not only creating decorative items but embodying an aesthetic vision that would appeal to audiences both at home and abroad. The molten copper method became the crux of this goal.

"It seems that when unbound by molds, copper is set free, and the true nature of this material turns it into forms that are even more expressive, conveying a feeling of artistry never seen before,"Zhu says.