Chapter 606 Collection Category
After looking around the room and furniture, Feng Cang added a red sandalwood architrave shelf to his office, and then followed Zhou Zhou’s suggestion and added the previous two “gifts” I gave up and replaced it with an "official hat tube" that was more suitable for display.
Guan hat tube, as the name suggests, is a porcelain tube used to hold official hats. It can be a cylinder or a hexagonal tube.
This is a very magical thing. Unlike ordinary porcelain, which is a practical vessel born out of a container, it can usually be both decorative and practical. Although the official hat tube is a cylindrical object, there are many official hats. The top and bottom of the tube have holes in the shape of auspicious patterns such as begonia, ruyi, bat, and lantern. Basically, except for placing hats, they have no other practical value.
The key is that this thing started very late. It only began to flourish during the Xianfeng period and became popular during the Guangxu period. As soon as it became popular, even the "official hat" was gone, but it became a necessary dowry for folk marriages. and displays.
But this color is much better than the first general jar used as an urn.
Furthermore, the price of official hat tubes is lower than that of general jars, because the royal family does not pursue the pursuit of displaying official hats on beautiful porcelain, so official hat tubes do not have official kiln wares and are all fired in private kilns. Made.
However, the situation of every private kiln in the late Qing Dynasty is similar. Various skills in folk kilns in the late Qing Dynasty have been perfected, and they also produce high-quality products, especially high-quality products for sustenance.
After careful explanation, Feng Cang replaced the general jar with a pair of white-glazed alum-red red blessing and longevity flower hat jars.
The glaze color of alum red is neither as bright as bright red nor as magnificent as yellow. Its color is between bright red and yellow. It is not orange, but more like Red, with a little yellow, a color similar to "palace wall red".
"If you want to suffer poverty, burn red." Red is a very difficult color to grasp. The Ming Dynasty came to the world with the virtue of fire and used the power of the country to burn red glaze. As a result, it was still lost in the Xuande period. It is recorded in the "Da Ming Huidian" : "In the twenty-sixth year of Jiajing's reign, the Chief Secretary of Jiangxi reported: There is a reward box for the bright red wares. The firing has not been completed, but can only be burned with alum. Red. "
The "bright red ware" mentioned here refers to the famous "underglaze red" porcelain of the Ming Dynasty. During the Xuande period, "underglaze red" could be used with blue and white or alone, and the color also changed from The black and gray pig liver color and the yellowish and light "burning away white" have turned into a true "ruby red".
This process was not restored until the Ming Dynasty, and it was not until the Qing Dynasty that a breakthrough was achieved.
The alum red wares have been the most important red glaze wares for a long time and have been highly valued.
The pottery superintendent Lang Tingji brought about a breakthrough in the traditional red glaze. Later, the kiln where the red glaze was fired was called "Ling Kiln". Many red glaze wares such as "rouge water", "coral red", "sacrifice red", "cowpea red" and "wiping red" have appeared one after another. Among them, the most noble "ruby red" is known as "Langhong".
Correspondingly, the importance of alum red is becoming less and less important day by day.
However, this situation changed slightly in the late Qing Dynasty. During the Guangxu period, alum red porcelain once again achieved a breakthrough in folk kilns. Many kiln mouths were able to use copper glaze at a lower cost. Using this material, alum red porcelain with a color close to "bright" was fired. Although the quality is not as good as Xuande's "ruby red", it is closer to red than the previous "coral red" palace wall color.
Paired with the white porcelain base, it looks very festive.
The mouths of this pair of hat tubes are classic representatives of the Tongmo Guangchu era. The rims of the utensils are also painted with gold. Below the gold mouth is a circle of Ruyi dizzy, followed by branches, flowers and leaves, and bat patterns. Fu character pattern, longevity character pattern.
The hollowed-out holes are in a crabapple pattern, and the edges are also traced outside the holes.
All these patterns are connected by the lotus pattern, which means "continuous happiness and longevity", which is as good as you want.
The only shortcoming is that the six-character seal script on the base is "Made in the Yongzheng Year of the Qing Dynasty". It is not that the imitation of the base is not good enough, but that there was no such type of vessel in the Yongzheng period. The combination of the two makes a Looking at it, I feel that the handwriting of the person who wrote the bottom line is superficial, not strong enough, and seems to have a guilty conscience.
However, apart from this flaw, the imitation grade of the entire object is on par with the Yongzheng official kiln. The craftsmanship is exquisite, the painting is exquisite, and the alum-red flowers and leaves also render out the layers. Although in Zhou Zhi's eyes, the painting skills of this pair of porcelains have improved, they are still "out of the ordinary". In other words, the imitations are not perfect. Except for the guilty Yongzheng era deposit, everything else has never been the same. From the shape of the vessel to the painting techniques to the colors, they were all designed to please everyone's aesthetic appreciation of porcelain during the Tongguang period.
This is a bit outrageous.
However, in the eyes of Feng Cang and others, this object is more "beautiful" than the authentic Yongzheng alum red porcelain, and more colorful and lively than the previous pair of general jars, so of course they are willing to replace it.
This also made Master Ma secretly give Zhou Zhi a thumbs up. Zhou Zhi boasted that in the blink of an eye, Tongzhi official kiln was replaced by Guangxu folk kiln, which saved him more than 10,000 yuan.
Finally, Feng Cang chose a pair of square huanghuali stools and two "not easily broken" tripod-style stoves with copper tires and cloisonné enamel, one square and one round, to be placed with the painting table. Together, the visual effects will be the same.
"It seems like something can be hung on the wall behind the painting table..." Feng Cang was very satisfied.
"Hang the painting." Zhou Zhi felt that the "Sitting on the Dragon" at home would definitely be perfect with this set, but it was impossible to let the thing out of his hand again. He could only Suggestion to Feng Cang: "According to old custom, Brother Feng's office should have an eight-foot central hall. That would be called grandeur."
"Hang paintings?" Liu Zhengyun was also stroking his chin and thinking: "I think everyone is hanging paintings, so it has become vulgar... How about... hanging a dragon robe?"
Zhou Zhi wanted to cry. , these days hanging calligraphy and painting has become tacky, but hanging dragon robes has become elegant?
Unexpectedly, King Shuo Pan Shiya of Jiangwu unanimously applauded, saying that the idea was very good and could reflect the grandeur of the company.
What made Zhou Zhi even more unexpected was that there were quite a few collectors of dragon robes in the capital. After Ma Ye made two phone calls, he heard about several of them, and they even had a royal robe seal. There are many types of casual clothes, and the prices are so low that I can't believe it. The cheapest one, which is a mahogany-colored Jifu with colorful clouds and gold dragon patterns embroidered on it, was only priced at 9,500.
Hearing that it was so cheap, Feng Cang and the others got excited again and asked Zhou Zhi and Ma Ye to talk about the secrets in the dragon robe.
So Zhou Zhi had no choice but to tell them that in theory, any clothes worn by the emperor could be called dragon robes, but the best and highest-level ones were of course the imperial robes worn by the emperor in the main palace.
That suit of clothes does not only have dragons, but also has twelve chapters representing the status of the emperor, namely, the sun, moon, stars, mountains, dragons, Chinese insects, Zongyi, algae, fire, pink rice, and 黼, Twelve kinds of decorations with special meanings.
The emperors of the Qing Dynasty had a court meeting every ten days during the May Day meeting, but such court clothes were not worn every time.
Because it is too grand, it is usually only worn at the Zhengdan court meeting at the beginning of each year, the Winter Solstice meeting at the end of the year, and when the highest power in the secular world makes sacrifices to heaven and earth.
A dragon robe like that would cost a thousand taels of silver, two thousand weavers, and a year to make, so its stock in existence is naturally pitiful.
After saying this, Feng Cang not only did not restrain himself, but became even more enthusiastic: "This is fun, but it's hard to find."
So Liu Zhengyun came up with another bad idea: "If I collect some of all styles and colors, it will be fine. It's also an idea to hang it instead. ?”
So it was decided happily. Feng Cang agreed to create a collection category for himself, which was dragon robes. He would start with the cheapest Jifu with embroidered colorful clouds and gold dragon patterns. The ultimate goal was of course yellow robes. Twelve chapters of satin tapestry Wen Da court clothes!
(End of this chapter)