New York Times STYLE Magazine (also known as T Magazine), Sept 22, 2019 (I)

choi

Molly Young, Play Dough; Upholding an ancient Chinese craft, the New York City chef Joe Ng shapes miniature scenes of human life out of little more than flour and water.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/ ... edfarm-dim-sum.html
("At his [chef Joe Ng's] restaurant RedFarm, in New York's West Village, which he opened with the restauranteur Ed Schoenfeld in 2011 * * * In his spare time, when he's away fro the sensorium-busting clamor of a commercial kitchen, he sculpts tableaus depicting everyday scenes from traditional Chinese life. There are bustling markets, vibrant fruit trees and children waving flags for Chinese New Year-- the scenes are like something from the mind of Pieter Bruegel the Elder if Pieter Bruegel the Elder had lived in Song dynasty China. Every baby and tree branch and bundle of bok choy is made out of a mixture of high-gluten flour, rice flour water and salt. It is, after all, the material Ng knows best.  Born in Hong Jong, Ng moved to Park Slope, Brooklyn, with his family when he was 14. Today he's considered by his peers one of the best Chinese chefs in the West, and he and Schoenfeld have expanded to London with a new RedFarm that opened in Convent Garden last year (there's also a location on Manhattan's upper West Side). * * * Dioramas requires the same dexterousness as dumpling [here meaning dim sum this chef also makes with hand] making, but also greater attention and patience. After the dough is steamed and sometimes plunged into boiling water to make it softer, it is tinted with artist's paint and then left overnight to dry and cool. * * * 'Your hands have a high temperature,' he says. 'If you touch the dough too much, it melts.' In the windowless work place of his Staten Island home -- filled with about a hundred completed pieces, which keep indefinitely if left in dry conditions and away from sunlight -- a fan blows cool air at the works in progress. More elaborate structures, like the peach tree pictured here, begins with a wire base. Ng also allows himself nondough extras, like a swatch of faux grass purchased at a model-railroad shop in New Jerseyor a tuy bench made from wood bought at home Depot. A scene can takes weeks of labor. * * * SCULPTING DOUGH FIGURINES is a dwindling folk art in China, one that is said to date back at least 2,000 years. What likely began as an offering to gods or ancestors * * * The practice belongs to a global history of crafts * * * [which lists a few examples all involving sugar and starting 16th century, such as the following but I doubt because cane sugar was very expensive everywhere in the world] and when Henry III of France visited Venice in 1574, he sat down to a lavish banquet where the plates, knives and linens were all fashioned from spun sugar. * * * Fun, yes, if your definition of fun involves hours of historical research, days of dough-drying * * * ")

Note:
(a) This article carries a photo, which can be found when one searches images.google.com with (redfarm "play dough").
(b) The en.wikipedia.org has a page for Play-Doh, but does not explain the name.
(i) Who Invented Play Dough?  Wonderpolis, undated
https://www.wonderopolis.org/wonder/who-invented-play-dough
("Play dough was actually invented by accident. In the 1930s, Noah McVicker worked for his family's [Cincinnati-based] soap company. It was called Kutol Products. There, he made a new kind of wallpaper cleaner. It looked like putty and was made of flour, water, salt, and many other ingredients.  McVicker's cleaner * * * didn't stain the wallpaper. However, he had no idea that it had another use. * * * Years later, Noah McVicker's nephew, Joseph McVicker, joined the company. He's the one who learned that teachers were using the wallpaper cleaner for arts and crafts. Joseph suggested giving the product a new name — Play-Doh®")
(ii) Both putty and the present-day Play-Doh are made of whiting ("finely ground chalk" (calcium carbonate): en.wikipedia.org; its etymology has to do with white or whiten (v, in gerund form)] AND linseed oil.

(c) "restauranteur Ed Schoenfeld"
(i) restauranteur (v): "the operator or proprietor of a restaurant"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/restauranteur
(ii) The German/Jewish surname Schoenfeld (German spelling: Schönfeld) is name of numerous places of the same name, from Middle High German [adjective] schön beautiful + [noun neuter] velt open country, field.

(d) 面塑
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/zh-cn/面塑
(麵塑 in traditional Chinese)
(e) Pieter Bruegel the Elder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder