Riding the wind of rebirth

This work started in the late Qing Dynasty. Many painters did this out of their hobby or sense of responsibility. Even in turbulent political situations, chaotic current affairs, even warlord infighting, and foreign invasions, there were people who insisted on doing this.

Before the founding of New China, countless authentic works were swept away to the island, but many of these imitations were preserved among the people.

Many are only partially completed.

Many painters donated these imitations.

However, for a long time, the country had neither the energy nor the desire to restore these imitations. Many of the paintings donated by the painters were without any mountings, so they naturally could not be exhibited to the public.

It was not until 1992 that the two sides began to communicate again, and the re-copying of "The Images Composed by Emperor Qianlong for Storage in the Nanxun Hall" was finally put on the agenda.

After cleaning, continuing, and re-creating, and thanks to the strong support of the National Palace Museum in Taiwan, the creation of the painting cores of this batch of 121 imitations was finally completed half a year ago.

The next step is naturally to repair and mount it, which is also a big problem.

The style of "Portrait of Lady Shexiang" is the original appearance of the portraits of virtuous officials of the Ming Dynasty. Qianlong made a major repair and mounting of the images enshrined in the Nanxun Hall. During the mounting process, a lot of information about Ming Dynasty paintings was lost. In some ways, "Portrait of Lady Shexiang" fills this gap.

But now Zhou Zhi is going to take action on it again. If these blanks are not carefully preserved, people in the future may lose some information again.

So when Zhou Zhi called the capital and found an original palace painting from the early Ming Dynasty, Mr. Wang immediately made a series of requests, asking Zhou Zhi to bring the painting to the capital for identification and restoration.

But that would have to be the end of it tonight. Everyone began to discuss the restoration plan. Zhou Zhi also used the information engineering management to produce a project engineering progress simulation table when conducting the project commissioning simulation, breaking down every tiny step of the painting restoration into a long timetable.

This is another case of using science to support the humanities.

The gift given by Zhou Zhi made the elderly people even more satisfied. Until now, the restoration industry still retains strong old traditions. This is a bit like the old skills such as Peking Opera and crosstalk, which still have master-apprentice inheritance, oral and hands-on teaching and other ways of inheritance.

When repairing something, the craftsman is also very confident that the plan is in his mind.

This way of inheritance also has practical significance. In fact, for things that cannot be clearly expressed in writing alone, passing them on in this way is actually far more effective than "modern education."

Of course, there are many problems with this approach. The biggest one is that it is not widely disseminated and is easily interrupted.

The birth of modern photography technology has added an extra layer of insurance to this type of inheritance method, but how to transform such restoration skills into scientific, modern restoration techniques has actually always been a topic that the Palace Museum and the National Museum have been working hard to explore.

The "restoration project roadmap" designed by Zhou Zhi is also a very good management method and can be regarded as a good supplement to this topic.

In the next two days, the two of them responded to the experts' inquiries in the Sea Eagle Building during the day, and restored the statue of Lady Shexiang in the National Museum's calligraphy and painting restoration room at night. Later, Mai Xiaomiao was taken to the Science Branch to participate in the grid connection design of computing power equipment to facilitate the experimental monitoring of the blockchain mechanism in the Science Branch, and also to train the experimental personnel of the Ship Power Research Institute. In the future, they will have a group in the Clover Group responsible for program calculations, and another group in the headquarters will be responsible for experimental data monitoring together with the Science Branch. At this time, Zhou Zhi was no longer needed, so the two began to act separately. Zhou Zhi participated in the restoration and taught the design and use of the "Restoration Engineering Roadmap" in the National Museum, bringing the concepts of "process standardization" and "action standardization" into the restoration of cultural relics, completing the first step of the transformation from "craftsmanship" to "technology".

In the evening, the driver-soldier took Mai Xiaomiao back to the National Museum, where he had dinner with Zhou Zhi, and then watched Zhou Zhi repair the paintings. He also visited many places in the National Museum.

The National Museum’s collections now number more than 1.2 million pieces, which is full of treasures. When people go to the National Museum to see the exhibits, they are shocked by the number and quality of the exhibits. But in fact, it is not even a fraction of the total number of collections.

It's like an iceberg. Only one tenth of it is above the sea, while the remaining nine tenths is in places that no one can reach.

Mai Xiaomiao can see much more than tourists, and many of them are in their original and strange states.

There are imitation bronze ware here. After imitating the bronze ware according to the original prototype, the shiny bronze ware needs to be aged so that the imitation product can be exactly the same as the original in visual effect.

Of course, this kind of thing cannot be touched or felt. Some of them have just a layer of paint on the surface. This is not even in the same category as the counterfeiting that requires hands-on skills in the cultural relics market. Therefore, it cannot be said that the teachers who can deceive visitors with fake goods in the National Museum can take their things to the market to stand the test.

Of course, Mai Xiaomiao wouldn’t care whether such fakes could be brought to the market to deceive people. She just thought the projects here were very interesting.

There are many ways to play with bronze ware. In addition to viewing them as imitations, there is also a way to preserve information about bronze ware, called "shadow rubbing."

Shadow rubbing is a method of using ink to transfer the entire shape of bronze ware, invented by intelligent Chinese people before the invention of photography in order to widely spread and study bronze ware.

6◇9◇Book◇Bar

Shadow rubbing, also known as full-shape rubbing and three-dimensional rubbing, is a special technique that uses ink rubbing technique to transfer the original appearance of an object onto a flat rubbing paper.

According to legend, during the reign of Emperor Jiaqing and Emperor Daoguang of the Qing Dynasty, a scholar named Ruan Wenjian obtained four kinds of Yi artifacts from three dynasties. Famous calligraphers at home and abroad were eager to see them. He was too tired to cope with them, so he copied and rubbed them on wood and gave them to his friends. Monk Liuzhou of Jiaoshan Temple in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu felt that the wood carvings had lost their original shape, so he studied with him to make hand rubbings of the entire shape.

At first, the shape is taken with a lamp. The size of the original object is measured and the outline is drawn. Then thick paper is used as a filter. Very thin Liuji cotton paper is used to apply ink. Before rubbing, you must first use white hyacinth water on the brush, then use wet cotton on the paper. After the paper is dry, use silk wrapped cotton as a puff to spread it.

The rubbing obtained in this way is like a black-and-white photo on rice paper, and its size is consistent with the original. It can be said to be an excellent way to preserve, disseminate and study inscriptions.

This is the full-size rubbing created by Monk Liuzhou.

After that, this technique was further developed. The rubbing artists applied techniques such as line drawing, painting, mounting and paper cutting. During the Tongzhi and Guangxu periods, the bronze and stone collector Chen Jieqi adopted the "divided paper rubbing" method, and separately rubbed the patterns and inscriptions on the body, ears, belly and foot of the vessel. Then he used a pen dipped in water to tear off the excess white paper, and glued the rubbings of the various parts together according to the needs of the pre-drawn drawings. Because the drawings were accurate and the ink was of appropriate shades, the full-shape rubbing technique was further developed.

In the modern Republic of China period, Zhou Xiding and others applied perspective and sketching techniques introduced from the West to full-shape rubbings. The ink color was even more exquisite, with different shades of ink, which greatly enhanced the three-dimensional sense of the rubbings. (End of this chapter)