Chapter 1613 Preparation
The wood carving is very delicate, so the details of this rubbing are much finer than other stone rubbings. Many dead pens, white spots, and traces of ink spatters cannot be seen in the stone rubbings. , but it is well preserved in this engraving.
It can be said that in addition to Huaisu's four handed down ink calligraphy works with a limited number of words, "Eating Fish Calligraphy", "Self-narrative Calligraphy", "Bitter Bamboo Shoots Calligraphy" and "Lun Shu Calligraphy", only the "Qunyutang Edition" "Thousand-Character Grass" is the best collection of calligraphy stickers that can be used to trace Huaisu's handwriting.
Of course, this set of engravings has long been lost in the long river of history. Even the rubbings of the "Thousand-Character Classic" are now the only surviving set.
So the two items are the only ones, and Ellsworth decided to give them to Zhou Zhi to repair, and paid such a high "deposit", which is a great trust in Zhou Zhi.
Of course, Zhou Zhi cannot be hasty. "The Inscription of the Crane" is a large folded version, and the "Thousand-Character Classic" is a large volume, which is much wider than the six-hand scroll. This is also a challenge for him.
The greatly reduced version of "The Inscription of the Crane" can be carried out by referring to the twelve-character guideline for the restoration of ancient books compiled by Zhou Zhi at Shu University, which is to "repair the old as before, with minimal intervention and leave enough backup." .
When "The Inscription of the Crane" was taken out from the warehouse, it was found to be a camphor wood plywood, a large volume with a brocade cover, and an ivory buckle binding. The book leaf size is 62 centimeters by 34.6 centimeter. The gray-brown cover has cracked, broken, and fallen off, exposing the camphor wood base.
After further inspection after opening it, the color of the top and bottom of the rubbings is already tea-colored, and the color is darker, and there are even some insect holes.
This shows that this precious set of rubbings went through a period of poor preservation before they came to Ellsworth. Fortunately, these holes stopped deteriorating after Ellsworth took over, which is fortunate. .
In addition to wormholes, there are also damages. The damage is mainly concentrated at the top of the head, at the foot, and where the folding pages are folded in half, all accompanied by embrittlement and fracture.
Looking carefully, we can find that this large folded copy was restored by predecessors in the Qing Dynasty, and the head, feet, and center of the book were all restored. However, the repair time was too long, coupled with the frequent flipping of the pages, the loss of stickiness of the paste, the contamination of sweat and grease, the physical damage caused by repeated opening and closing of the album, etc., the previously repaired paper sheets became peeled off, damaged, and damaged again. Wrinkles and other lesions.
In fact, the method of producing a large album of cliff stone rubbings such as "The Crane Inscription", just the way it is opened and closed, creates a paradox with the preservation of the painting core. The only reason for doing this is Even those who once owned it were all great calligraphers. They wanted to learn from it, so they often copied it.
Large album pages are undoubtedly the best way to put them on the desk in the study and copy carefully with pen in hand.
So if you take a closer look at the previous restoration, it was quite detailed at the time. However, they did not change it and kept the binding method of the large album.
If this album were not so famous, and Zhou Zhi had secretly obtained it, he would have dismantled it and replaced it with a large central hall, restoring the spectacular scene of "The Inscription of the Crane" still on the cliff.
However, in ancient times, there was no custom of hanging rubbings in the study room of the main hall. It was something that modern people could think of, and now this large folding book has long been famous around the world, so Zhou Zhi can only follow the principle of repairing it as before. In principle, continue to repair according to the method of large albums.
After the repair plan is determined, the next step is to prepare for the repair. The first thing to do is to measure the paper thickness, color, fiber composition, fiber density, and even pH, and also conduct a color bleeding experiment.
For such an authentic product, you must use handmade paper. Whether the repair paper selection is appropriate, the thickness, pH, fiber composition, etc. of the paper must be taken into consideration. The selected repair paper is related to the repair process. The smoothness of the album pages, their beauty and the quality of their restoration. The science and technology in the United States is quite advanced, and there is even a fiber analyzer numbered XWY-II that can conduct non-destructive testing of rubbings.
After testing, it can be found that the main components of the paper rubbings used in "痗 Crane Inscription" and "Thousand Character Classic" are bamboo fiber, that is, bamboo paper;
Using a paper thickness gauge, the "Thousand Character Classic" was measured. The thickness of the rubbing paper of "Zi Wen" is about 0.042 mm, and the thickness of the rubbing paper of "痗 Crane Inscription" is 0.045 mm.
The pH of the two, due to the large amount of ink color, is acidic, with a pH of 5.05.
The choice of paper is relatively broad, because the paper used for ancient rubbings is far less sophisticated than the high-end calligraphy and painting paper. Therefore, the paper for repairing the rubbings should be the ancient high-end calligraphy and painting paper that still exists in the world, or the modern high-end paper. It is not suitable to repair it with handmade antique paper.
Finally, based on the origin of the original rubbing paper, Zhou Zhi also selected handmade bamboo paper from a small factory in Ningbo, Zhejiang, which is now in the same area. The thickness of this bamboo paper is about 0.043 mm, the pH is about 5.17, and the thickness is between two The rubbings are also very close in pH, so you can "repair two copies with one piece of paper".
In addition, there are also papers used for adhesive and embrittlement reinforcement. This paper uses mulberry paper, with a thickness of about 0.004 mm, a pH of about 6.43, and a color close to milky white.
This paper is also produced in Jiangnan. In the end, Zhou Zhi, on the recommendation of Mr. Qi, chose a three-bar leather paper from Zhejiang Province, which is very close to the original repair paper. Using these two kinds of paper, Basically meet the requirements for paper repair and replacement.
The rest of the things are ready-made, but the brocade silk used for the cover needs to be repaired with new ones. The method of repair is to send back the jacquard pattern and the color card parameters of the colors used. Shuzhong uses the restored antique brocade weaving technology to input the pattern into the computer, uses algorithm analysis to generate a jacquard program, and then uses the computer jacquard machine to weave exactly the same antique brocade.
Master Yang's studio can now complete this job. Although it sounds easy, it is not easy to do it in practice. It also needs to be done carefully and urgently. No matter how good the relationship is, you can only throw away money.
Fortunately, the best thing about Ellsworth is money. With 50,000 "research and development expenses" paid, Master Yang and his apprentices spent five days on color matching, wiring, debugging, longitude and latitude, etc., and the real The production, because it didn’t require much, actually only took one afternoon.
While waiting for the tapestry to arrive, Zhou Zhi still has many things to do, one of which is two kinds of color bleeding experiments.
The two rubbings that need to be repaired urgently have ink and vermilion on them. During the repair process, the paper will be wetted with water spray. The ink and vermilion on the paper may smear when wet, so it needs to be soaked before repair. Color test, and then decide whether the repair plan needs to be adjusted based on the staining results.
The method is to use a brush dipped in water to dot the ink and vermilion, and then use clean plain paper to absorb the water and press it several times. Observe whether there is any color left on the plain paper, and then judge the possibility of the ink and vermilion bleeding based on the color depth.
After several experiments, Zhou Zhi breathed a sigh of relief. The workmanship of the two rubbings was very sophisticated, and no color was found on the plain paper.
But this is not over yet. The same method needs to be tested on two types of repair paper, because after the final repair is completed, the color needs to be touched up on the repair paper. If the ink and Zhu are replenished, it will cause If the stain contaminates the original volume, it will ruin the brand.