From sacred totem to folk symbol: a Panofskian iconological and semiotic reading of Huaiyang Nini Dog clay figurine motifs

Decorative motifs on the Huaiyang Nini Dog clay figurines, produced for the Taihao Ling Temple Fair, constitute a rich visual symbol system encoding deep cultural meanings, yet systematic analysis of these motifs as an autonomous symbolic unit distinct from figurine-form typology remains absent. This study integrates Panofsky’s three-stage iconological theory with Peirce’s icon/index/symbol classification and Barthes’ denotation/connotation/myth model to interpret eight core motif types: human-face, frog, concentric circle, serpent, sun/radial, fertility, beast-face, and composite. The motifs share a visual grammar of four basic line types on a black-ground five-colour system, and encode four symbolic themes: ancestor worship, fertility worship, life cycle and cosmology, and totemic interpenetration, tracing a progression from icon to symbol along Peirce’s continuum. Crucially, the motifs have not disappeared under commercialisation but have undergone hierarchical functional shift from ritual-functional to aesthetic-commercial marking, a mechanism characterised by form persistence with meaning migration. The dual iconological–semiotic framework offers a replicable model for folk-craft motif studies, and the findings ground intangible-heritage conservation strategies that prioritise cultural encoding over figurine-form replication, with implications for heritage education, curatorial documentation, creative-industry development.