Chapter 726: Turning the Heart Vase
Based on this, Sister Xiao Juaner also expanded the scale of production, reluctantly cutting off many products such as stinky tofu, sweet and sour garlic, and focusing on the development of mustard, sauerkraut, dried radish, and other products. There are three other items that can beat these three at a profit - beef chili sauce, soy sauce, and balsamic vinegar.
The last three items have become the flagship products of Xianshi Jiangyuan. In order to expand the business, Zhou Zhi made a tough move for Xiaojuan'er, poaching people with high salaries, and relying on Miss Liujie's connections, from Laojiao Liquor The factory's sales department hired a vice president and his sales team.
This manager has an extremely wide network of contacts in the national food industry. As expected, he is worthy of a high salary of 10,000 yuan a month. He soon sells spicy sauce, soy sauce and balsamic vinegar to all parts of Sichuan, even in Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and the Yangtze River. The impact has been felt in the midstream areas.
With these big things going on, Zhou Zhi’s little troubles are not worth mentioning.
The so-called small trouble is the steady rise of Microsoft's stock price and the historic bottom of IBM.
Zhou Zhi only spent 7 million U.S. dollars to become the majority shareholder of Microsoft's outstanding shares, and the remaining 13 million U.S. dollars, under Jack Lee's routine operations, completed a position in IBM. .
It took a year to establish a position, at a cost of forty dollars per share, and now both stocks have begun to make profits, making Jack Li look at Zhou Zhi with admiration again.
With the remaining five million US dollars, Zhou Zhi began to try to invest in Lin Wanqiu's Haitong Auction House for short-term lending to purchase overseas cultural relics.
However, there is no profit at all from these investments, because Lin Wanqiu will always offer Zhou Zhi a bait that Zhou Zhi cannot refuse, exchanging Zhou Zhi's due profits for cultural relics to offset the debt.
It was like Zhou Zhi lent her money to gain performance. In the end, Lin Wanqiu exchanged Zhou Zhi's profits for cultural relics and threw them to him to gain another wave of performance.
But Zhou Zhi simply couldn't refuse, because in his opinion, many things were simply the lowest price.
For example, Lin Wanqiu helped Zhou Zhi receive two rotating bottles from the Qianlong Dynasty.
The rotating bottle is a special-shaped porcelain. Like the Jiaotai bottle and the rotating neck bottle, it is similar to a matryoshka doll. A certain part of the porcelain can rotate.
The three types of bottles are actually somewhat similar. The outer bottle, inner bottle, or bottleneck can be rotated, and you can see different pictures of the two layers of bottles.
Rotating bottles are divided into two forms: rotating bottles and rotating bottles. The inner bottle can rotate is called a rotating bottle, and the outer bottle can rotate, which is called a rotating bottle.
The revolving bottle is the most expensive among them.
Inside a perforated outer bottle, a rotatable inner bottle is set, with various patterns painted on it, including scenes of the four seasons, landscape figures, flowers, birds, insects, fish, etc. Each bottle is fired separately to create the inner bottle. The bottle, outer bottle and base are then put together.
The upper part of the inner bottle has an exposed mouth, and the bottle body is cylindrical. When the inner bottle rotates, different scenes can be seen through the holes in the outer bottle, just like a revolving lantern.
Xu Zhiheng recorded in his famous work "Drinking Liuzhai Talking about Porcelain", "The belly of the bottle is exquisite and clear, and there is a bottle inside the bottle that can also rotate. If so, it is called 'turning the heart', and it is a treasure of the inner palace. It’s a special product.”
How difficult is it to make? You can know it from the process flow.
The inner bottle needs to be made first; then the outer bottle needs to be made. The outer bottle needs to be fired in two parts, one for the mouth and neck, and one for the shoulders and belly.
After that, the mandrel needs to be processed, and the bottom of the outer bottle should be made into a raised heart-shaped button, and the bottom of the inner bottle should also be made into a heart-shaped groove that matches each other. The buttons and grooves must be absolutely consistent.
Then the inner bottle and the outer bottle are put together, first glue the outer bottle and the shoulder of the inner bottle, then glue the outer bottle belly and inner bottom, and finally combine the inner bottle and outer bottle. Fire again.
During the process of combining and firing, it is necessary to correctly control the drying rate of the outer bottle and the inner bottle, and more importantly, the shrinkage rate after firing. A slight error will cause the chicken heart button and chicken heart groove to become inoperable. Doubling, or glaze flow and adhesion, resulting in wasted effort.
Therefore, production requires superb craftsmanship, and at the same time, it also requires a huge cost, and this price is often "one in a hundred".
In addition to this one, there is another kind of revolving bottle, which is even more amazing. This kind of bottle has a vertical shaft between the outer bottle and the inner bottle. There are switches and conduits in the neck of the outer bottle. The vertical shaft is connected to the inner bottle, and there are copper paddles underneath.
Fill the bottleneck with clean water, turn on the switch, and the water droplets will drip through the conduit onto the paddle, thus driving the inner bottle to rotate.
There are holes in the bottom of the bottle, and the water will be collected by the base and will not flow everywhere.
No matter what kind of revolving bottle it is, its exquisite design and high difficulty of firing make it the pinnacle of porcelain.
Qianlong's "Archives of the Construction Office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs" records: "On May 12, the 18th year...the decree...Jiangxi burned a dragon boat with a door and a rotating bottle with a lamp touching people...19 Delivered on the fourth day of the new year.”
It takes more than half a year to make a revolving bottle, which shows how difficult it is.
Moreover, behind its complicated craftsmanship, a lot of manpower, material resources and financial resources were consumed. Even the "local tycoon" Qianlong felt that the financial resources consumed were too great, and he approved in the memorial: "It is not necessary to burn as many porcelains as usual. ", telling Tang Ying to just burn a few during the holidays.
Now Lin Wanqiu has brought two of them.
One was found at an unknown small auction house in Europe. The auction house kept it secret in order to protect the identity of the owner, but it was known that it came from a British family and has been in a room of this family since around 1930. It slumbered on top of a bookshelf in a dusty attic for seventy years.
Zhou Zhi and Lin Wanqiu speculated that this thing was plundered to the West during the Boxer Rebellion.
This bottle is very "Qianlong-style", with a height of 40 centimeters, a well-proportioned body, and a full and rich color.
The body of the bottle is engraved with four carps, which are lifelike, and the hollow water ripple carving design makes it look majestic and rich, which perfectly reflects the auspicious meaning contained in the red word "吉" on the bottle neck.
The outer bottle is made of foreign color, enamel color, and pastel color, with enamel color as the main glaze, and uses various techniques such as gold tracing, hollowing, turning, relief, and shallow engraving, which is extremely luxurious and breathtaking. .
The inner bottle is decorated with blue and white flowers. Through the holes, the bottom of the bottle is rotated, just like a revolving lantern, which is very interesting.
This bottle is called "Qianlong Enamel Colorful Auspicious and Prosperous Turning Heart Vase". At that time, before the small auction house was preparing to put it up for auction, Lin Wanqiu discovered it. After negotiation, they spent 200,000 pounds to help Zhou Zhi get it.
The other one also comes from overseas. It was specially made by Emperor Qianlong for his mother's 60th birthday. It can be called the best of the revolving bottles.
This bottle is sixty centimeters tall and is currently the largest in the world, larger than all known revolving bottles.
The outer wall of the neck bottle and the bottom bottle are decorated with carmine red ground rolling and foreign colors, with plastic dragon ears on both sides.
The upper part of the outer wall of the belly vase is engraved with auspicious clouds and mountains and forests, and the lower part is engraved with mountains, rocks, and vegetation.
The overall picture is of beautiful mountains and streams, lush flowers and trees, and a colorful phoenix flying on the top of the white clouds. The theme is "A Phoenix Comes to the Ceremony";
The picture is complex but not cluttered, revealing the royal family everywhere. Majestic, ingenious, and extremely beautiful.
Turn the neck of the bottle gently, and the inner tank will rotate accordingly. In the hollow area, you can see quail, reed geese, golden pheasants, eagles, peacocks, mandarin ducks and other birds. They may stop and look up, or fly gracefully, mostly in pairs. , like a hand scroll slowly unfolding in front of your eyes, as if you can hear the singing of hundreds of birds, and the sound of nature in your ears.
Each of the birds has its own auspicious meaning. For example, quail sounds like "an", which means peace; golden pheasant symbolizes wealth; and mandarin duck means the harmony of husband and wife.
As the bottle rotates, all the birds seem to be coming towards the phoenix. It is like a procession for pilgrimage, and the overall meaning is "a hundred birds heading towards the phoenix". The fragrance of flowers is filled with the chirping of birds. The painting is complex and the brushstrokes seem to be inspired by the Qing Dynasty painters.
Looking at the Qianlong dynasty, the person who enjoys the status of a hundred birds paying homage to the phoenix must be Qianlong's biological mother, the Empress Dowager Chongqing.
(End of this chapter)