Silk Carvings And Paintings Like Dream Silk, The Folk Costumes And Handicrafts That Have Been Forgotten By Us

Just as we know beautiful women today as "white, rich and beautiful", "virtue, words, appearance and work" are the criteria for ancient people to see beautiful women. Nuhong can not only reflect whether women are clever and handy, but also can cultivate their mood and mind and refine them in a calm and tranquil atmosphere temperament Skills.

There are many strange women who are famous for their "work" in history. Lady Zhao, the King of Wu during the Three Kingdoms period, had "three wonders": it is "machine wonder" to weave the brocade of dragon and phoenix with colored silk between the fingers, it is "needle wonder" to embroider the map of "Five Mountains and Countries" on square silk with needle and thread, and it is "silk wonder" to break out the silk light curtain with glue and silk. In the first year of Yongzhen in the Tang Dynasty, there was a strange woman named Lu Meiniang. At the age of 14, she could embroider seven volumes of the Fahua Sutra on a foot of silk. The characters were as big as a grain of millet, and clearly defined. In the Ming Dynasty, there was Han Ximeng's Gu embroidery, while in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, there was Shen Shou, who had entered the palace to teach embroidery and traveled to Japan to investigate.

Of course, Zhu Kerou of the Southern Song Dynasty was the first woman to be famous for Kesi. Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty wrote a poem in her fabric "The Painting of Peaches, Butterflies and Sparrows": "Sparrows tread on flowers and branches to make a beautiful appearance. People once heard that it is hard to carve silk. If you know it should be a Xuanhe object, don't do ordinary embroidery."

Kesi is the most time-consuming and ultimate kind of needlework.

Kesi, also known as "cut silk", is the most traditional decorative silk fabric in China, which selects warp and reveals weft. The weaving method of general brocade is all through warp and weft. The weaving method of "through warp and broken weft" is used for the weaving of silk cut. The weft threads go through the whole width of the fabric, making the silk cut like carved threads, and there is a strong double-sided three-dimensional feeling. The front of the old style fabric is clean, but the back is messy. The "through warp and broken weft" makes the front and back the same, which is very different from ordinary fabrics.

There are many varieties of the "warp and weft cutting" weaving method of Kesi, each of which has its own characteristics: this Kesi is thick in texture; Aluminum tapestry, soft and light; Ming Dynasty Kesi, elegant and magnificent, with foil inserted; Nowadays, the thick ones are called Benkesi, and the softer ones are called Song Kesi. In Kesi, the technology of "Hehuaxian" is unique to China. For example, weaving a peony petal, from bright red to white, requires a gradual transition spin It uses transitional color blocks to fade the halo gradually, and the composite yarn technology can be made into a gradual change. It is twisted together with silk threads of different colors, as if color mixing in painting.

Because of its ingenious techniques, high labor consumption and expensive materials, people in previous dynasties equated the value of Kesi with that of gold. The word "one inch of Kesi, one inch of gold" has continued to this day. In ancient times, there was also a saying, "... like a woman wearing one garment, she can live forever."

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Kesi has a history of thousands of years. In the Pre Qin period, the area of Xinjiang has begun to produce the Kemao, a kind of Kemao fabric made of wool. At least in the Sui and Tang dynasties, our country began to make silk tapestries. The silk tapestries in Dunhuang Grottoes were mostly geometric patterns with gorgeous colors, which shows that the technology of weaving silk tapestries was maturing at that time.

In the Song Dynasty, Kesi transcended the category of practical handicrafts, turned to purely appreciative artistic creation, and achieved high artistic achievements, reaching a peak that would be insurmountable for future generations for thousands of years. In the Northern Song Dynasty, with the development of the school of academy style painting, Kesi began to use traditional Chinese painting as the manuscript. The technique of combining lines could realistically show the intensity of the brushwork, and it leaped from pattern making to art appreciation.

Kesi has a special loom - Kesi loom, which is a simple plain wood loom. In the process of knitting, the warp thread shall be installed on the loom first, and the drawing or manuscript shall be lined under the warp thread. The weaver shall use a brush to draw the colored pattern of the drawing on the warp thread surface through the warp thread, and then use the boat shaped small shuttles about 10 cm long with various silk threads to knit in blocks according to the pattern.

Kesi can freely change colors, so it is particularly suitable for making calligraphy and painting works. The weavers who cut and weave colored weft must have certain artistic attainments. Tapestry fabric Its structure follows the principles of "fine warp and coarse weft", "white warp and colored weft", "straight warp and curved weft", etc. That is, the natural color of the warp is fine, the color of the weft is thick, the weft is used to cut the warp, and only the color of the weft is displayed without revealing the warp. Since the colored weft is fully covered on the upper part of the fabric, the effect of the picture pattern will not be affected due to the shrinkage of the weft after weaving.

The completion of a work requires 16 processes, such as lowering the warp, drawing the warp, reeding, bending, inserting the rear axle warp, and pulling the warp surface. It can only be completed by replacing tens of thousands of shuttles, which often takes years. By the time the work is completed, the movement of the drawing under the tapestry cannot exceed 5mm. The difficulty of making Kesi can be seen.

The weaving of Kesi is very complicated. The weavers not only have to endure loneliness over the years, but also have some artistic skills in painting. Otherwise, they are difficult to be competent for the task of making Kesi. Zhu Kerou, an extraordinary woman of Kesi in the Southern Song Dynasty, was the most famous Kesi creator at that time.

By the Ming Dynasty, famous Kesi artists were constantly emerging, the most famous of which was Zhu Liangdong. The scroll of auspicious celebration in Yaochi is Zhu Liangdong's masterpiece.

The "finch gold fur" added by Qingwen in "A Dream of Red Threads" is woven by combining the down and velvet on the peacock feathers. The silk cut dragon robe of Emperor Wanli of the Ming Dynasty unearthed from the Dingling Tomb is also a dragon pattern woven with peacock feathers. These patterns, woven from peacock feather tapestries, look "resplendent in gold and emerald, glittering in green" and never fade.

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After the Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty, more and more royal families loved the exquisite cut silk. They not only took it as a practical product in life, but also collected it as a work of art.

Among the fine silk carvings collected in the Palace Museum, the proportion of silk carvings copied from calligraphy and painting works is the largest. These silk tapestries use pure knitting techniques throughout, even the eyes of figures clothes The wrinkles and other details are all woven with silk thread one by one, which is vivid and reflects the superb level of silk carving technology. Kesi related Clothes & Accessories Among them, dragon robes are the most dazzling goal. Most of them are made of cut silk. It takes three or four people at least a year or two to make a dragon robe.

Both the huge labor cost of Kesi and the effort devoted to art make Kesi show its dignity and luxury.

When it comes to the collection and protection of modern Kesi, we have to mention two key figures: Zhang Xueliang and Zhu Qiqian.

Zhu Qiqian is from Shuangliu Town, Kaiyang, Guizhou Province. He was an important figure in the "transportation system" at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China. He once served as Acting Prime Minister of the State, and was also an ancient architect and collector. Out of his love for Kesi, he spared no expense to purchase a large number of Kesi boutiques. At that time, there was a saying in the collection circle that "Zhujia Kesi is the best in the world".

Most of the Kesi he collected were bestowed by the emperor from Prince Gong's residence in the Qing Dynasty, including the Peony Painting and the Butterfly Painting of Camellia in the Song Dynasty by Zhu Kerou, a famous scholar in the Song Dynasty. He also studied Kesi and wrote a book named "Cunsutang Silk Embroidery Record", in which he described the collections one by one.

The Japanese have long coveted Zhu Qiqian's collection of these silk tapestries. In 1924, Japanese industrial tycoon Yoshiro Okura proposed to Zhu Qiqian that he would pay 1 million silver dollars to buy these Kesi.

At this time, Zhu Qiqian, although his family was in dire need of money, was not moved by the huge amount of money. He told his family privately that these national treasures were for sale, and they should not be sold to foreigners!

When General Zhang Xueliang learned the news, he immediately contacted Zhu Qiqian, expressed his willingness to take over these Kesi, and promised that "they will never be lost overseas, especially in Japan". With Zhang Xueliang's promise, Zhu Qiqian was relieved to hand over the batch of Kesi to Zhang Xueliang at a price of 200000 silver dollars, half sold and half given land.

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After taking over Kesi, Zhang Xueliang did not dare to be careless and carefully stored these treasures in the vault of the Northeast Frontier Bank at that time.

However, something unfortunate happened. After the "September 18th Incident", the Japanese invaders occupied the Northeast, and these Kesi, together with the Border Bank, fell into the hands of the Japanese Zhengjin Bank and were transported to Changchun for storage. At that time, the puppet Manchukuo also regarded these Kesi as "national treasures", and printed them in Japan into an atlas called "Zuo Yinghua".

Fortunately, after Japan surrendered, Zhu Qiqian, with the help of cultural relics expert Wang Shixiang, airlifted these Kesi from Changchun to Beijing and handed them over to the Palace Museum, which has become a national treasure in today's Palace Museum and Liaoning Provincial Museum.

In the spring auction of 2006, Sotheby's and Christie's in Hong Kong successively launched the Qing Emperor Qianlong's Kesi armor and the Qing Emperor Qianlong's Kesi three-star scroll, which were successfully sold at a high price of 15.267 million yuan and 18.179 million yuan respectively.

Compared with Hong Kong, the popularity of cut silk in the mainland market is also not weak. Not long ago, a full volume of cut silk with Shilanting pictures and stickers in the Qing Dynasty was sold at an auction company in Beijing at a price of 35.75 million yuan, and another rosewood carved, inlaid, cut silk and silk screen with paintings was sold at Shanghai Chongyuan Auction House at a price of 83.72 million yuan. Judging from the record high performance of Kesi works at auction in recent years Tapestry silk It can be expected that the work will achieve another success.

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