Waist fan: fanning the spirit of scribes and wisdom of craftsmen for thousands of years
The waist fan is an important branch of traditional Chinese fan culture. It has a unique shape and structure, and has profound cultural connotations. It occupies a unique position among the representative projects of national intangible cultural heritage.
Silk or rice paper is used to paper the fan surface. Bamboo wood corners are carefully selected as the fan bones. They have both practical and aesthetic functions. These two aspects are reflected when opening and closing.
According to the ancient book "An Examination of Ancient and Modern Things", "The fan began with Shun, and was used as a barrier fan in the Zhou Dynasty system." The evolution of the waist fan is secretly consistent with the intertwining of ancient etiquette and life aesthetics.
The waist fan made by craftsmen has to go through the steps of material selection, bone making, surface mounting, decoration, etc. Among them, when polishing the fan bone, use fine sandpaper to polish it repeatedly until it is as warm and moist as jade. When mounting the surface, the concentration of the glue must be controlled to make the fan surface as smooth as a mirror. Every detail embodies the creation philosophy of "exquisite materials, beautiful workmanship".
The current inheritors have integrated the technique of stone rubbing into the fan calligraphy and painting, turning the waist fan into a movable art museum that can be held in the palm of the hand. Its historical documentary value and artistic aesthetic value shine brightly in the intangible cultural heritage protection system.
Movable type printing: the code of civilization carved on pear wood
Bi Sheng's tombstone was discovered in Yingshan, Hubei, and wooden movable type printing existed in Dongyuan Village, Ruian, Zhejiang. Both of them confirmed the living inheritance of this "ancient information technology revolution."
The craftsman selected pear wood for engraving in accordance with the techniques recorded in the "Qin Ding Wu Ying Dian Treasure Edition Program", and used a reverse pen to carve out the old Song style characters. The depth of each character cavity must be controlled within half a centimeter to ensure that the characters are clear when ink is applied.
When typesetting, the characters were checked according to the "Hongwu Zhengyun", and the bamboo pieces were embedded in the character plate to make it tight. They were dipped in pine smoke ink with a brown broom and gently brushed. They were covered with jade-buttoned paper, and then were rubbed sequentially with a bristle brush. Finally, the text with even ink color and straight handwriting that had lasted for thousands of years was revealed.
This technique not only retains the complete technical chain of ancient book reproduction, but also established a three-level protection system of "museum + inheritance center + campus transmission" after being included in the intangible cultural heritage list in urgent need of protection in 2009, allowing the continuation of the oriental aesthetics in the shelf structure of movable type typesetting.
Burnt Foil Painting: An Epic Painting on Metal Sheet
Burnt foil paintings, which have elements derived from the bronze gilding process of the Shang Dynasty, evolved into a unique craftsmanship system in Foshan, Guangdong, and gradually developed another craftsmanship system with a unique flavor in Zhangzhou, Fujian.
The craftsmen heat the gold, silver and copper foil to over 400°C, using the thermal expansion and contraction characteristics of the metal to produce a rainbow gradient, and then use special glue to adhere it to the paint board or paper.
During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the "sprinkling gold" technique and the "covering the bright" technique recorded in "Painting Record" were transformed into a three-dimensional expression form of multiple layers stacked in contemporary burnt foil creations.
Just like the inheritors of the national intangible cultural heritage project "Foshan Lanterns", they apply the foil-burning process to the lantern decoration, so that the metallic luster and the painted patterns form a symphony of light and shadow.
This comprehensive material art continues the traditional gold and silver craftsmanship, and creates a visual language through the chemical reaction of mineral pigments and metal foils. This visual language has both a sense of history and contemporary aesthetic qualities.
Creative wood carving: French creation and craftsmanship in the chisel marks
Flat relief carving belongs to Dongyang wood carving, round carving technique is possessed by Yueqing boxwood carving, and openwork carving technique is possessed by Chaozhou gold lacquer wood carving. These three come together to form the three major pedigrees of Chinese wood carving techniques.
According to the material selection principle in "The Construction Method", "wood can be divided into eight grades", craftsmen will follow it and develop design compositions according to the grain direction of the wood. They will use more than 30 kinds of tools, including flat chisels, round chisels, and triangular chisels, to perform different cutting techniques.
Just like the "deep relief" in Dongyang wood carving, it requires the control level to be above five levels, and the character's clothing pattern must present the elegant feeling of "Wu belt in the wind".
In the contemporary inheritance school, the "stacked carving" technique created by Master Lu Guangzheng breaks through the limitations of wood size and reassembles scattered components into magnificent giants with the help of mortise and tenon joints, sublimating wood carving from architectural components into an independent art form. The essence of its craftsmanship has been empirically inherited in the Kuangqinzhai restoration project of the Forbidden City.
Cloisonné Enamel: The meticulous and heavy colors on the copper body and the universe of glazes
As one of Yanjing's eight unique cloisonné production techniques, the most exquisite ones are the filigree process and the blue-pointing process.
The craftsman breaks the flat copper wire into the outline of flowers according to the pattern, and the craftsman breaks the flat copper wire into the outline of birds and animals according to the pattern. When bonding these folded flat copper wires to the copper body, the lines must be kept as smooth as bending iron wire.
The mineral raw materials borax and quartz are used as the glaze, which is ground to a fineness of 200 mesh, then filled into the gaps between the silk patterns, and then sintered at a high temperature of 800°C. The glaze color ranges from turquoise green to sacrificial blue, showing a gem-like luster.
According to the archives of the Palace Building Office of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, during the Qianlong period, there was the firing of pagodas. The pagoda was more than ten feet high. During the firing, it was divided into seven sections and fired separately, and then connected with gilt copper. This situation reflects the ultimate integration of royal aesthetics and craftsmanship wisdom.
In the current intangible cultural heritage protection work, the Palace Museum Research Institute uses spectral analysis methods to restore the lost glaze formula, which has contributed to the revitalization of this palace-related technique in the contemporary cultural and creative field.
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