The production process of cloisonne is complicated. As mentioned before, it includes tire making, filigree, welding, bluing, bluing, polishing, and in fact there are more than ten major processes such as gold plating.
If you include even small processes, a product needs to go through 108 processes, all of which are refined by hand.
The most amazing craftsmanship is definitely filigree and blue dot.
Often, a filigree master can twist the soft and flexible flat silk in half and eighty with just a pair of small tweezers in his hand, and bend it into a dragon body, a phoenix head, a peony, and a plant.
orchid……
Then stick the flat wires on the copper body one by one, just like the line drawing in painting. It is not drawn with a pen, but with silk.
A bare copper body will be transformed into various beautiful pictures after being decorated by filigree artists with "ingenuity and skill".
Landscape figures, flowers blooming in four seasons, flying dragons and phoenixes, etc., all kinds of pictures appear on the screen, just like a three-dimensional picture without coloring.
In summary, the cloisonné production process has the following main steps.
The first is design, including shape design, pattern design, color picture design, etc.
Since the lines of the cloisonné pattern are limited by the tire shape, silk craftsmanship and glaze, it cannot be too thin or too dense.
Therefore, designers must not only possess certain art knowledge and painting abilities, but also be familiar with the production process of cloisonne and understand the properties of various raw materials.
Only in this way can we fully consider the characteristics of the production process when creating ideas, so that the product has an overall and harmonious aesthetic.
After the design is completed and the image and size and proportions of the vessel are determined, production begins.
Whether the cloisonné product is beautiful or not is first determined by the "tire making" process.
In the past, Chen Wenzhe used the tire casting process to make tires. This was very convenient and could often be formed in one go.
And even with such a convenient craft, not everyone can do it.
Also, this craft was lost in the past, and it was only in modern times that it began to be restored.
In the past, craftsmen made tires by cutting qualified copper sheets according to the drawings.
They would cut some copper sheets into different fan shapes or circles, and use hammers to hammer them into copper tires of various shapes.
Taking a bottle as an example, it consists of three sections: the mouth, the belly, and the base, which are hammered and welded together.
During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, there were tire casting, tire picking, and tire drilling techniques.
With the development of modern technology, some first-time tires now also use machinery to roll, press, roll and spin, and implement mechanical tire making.
Today's craft masters have restored the lost cloisonné method of tire casting after tens of thousands of experiments.
They used copper casting method to make the tire shape and then filigree and glaze.
The characteristics of this type of cloisonné are that the tire shape is thick and the shape of the vessel is complex. Except for the part where the blue brocade pattern is burned, the exposed gold surface is generally larger.
This kind of gold surface is usually plated with gold, making the work more brilliant and resplendent.
After the tire making is completed, it is time to filigree and weld the wire.
The method of filigree is to use tweezers to pinch (break) the soft, flat, thin and tough copper wire into various patterns according to the design draft, dip it in Bletilla striata slurry, and stick it to the copper body.
The filigree craftsmanship is ingenious, and the author relies on his proficient skills to create vivid and charming pictures, which is no easy task.
After liberation, filigree art has made great progress.
The old cloisonné filigree artists in the capital of China all have their own specialties.
For example, Li Qinglu's "Wandering Shrimp", Shi Wancai's "Ancient Figures", Wang Baocheng's "Chrysanthemum", Lu Yugang's "Bogu" and "Characters", etc., all have a high artistic level.
After completing this step, it is time to blue and solder.
After the wire-wrapped carcass has been welded, pickled, leveled, and straightened, it then enters the bluing process.
The method is to use a blue gun, which is a small metal shovel, to fill the gaps in the silk work with the finely ground glaze color.
Then put the blue products in a high-temperature furnace.
After melting at a high temperature of 800 degrees Celsius, the glaze can be melted.
Generally, cloisonne needs to be fired three times to complete this process.
Before liberation, the point colors of cloisonne were dull and monotonous.
After liberation, master craftsmen used techniques such as rendering, cover dyeing, drying, and picking to expand the expressive power of cloisonné point blue art.
In order to express the changing shapes of clouds, water, fog and water reflections, blue dot artists and filigree artists jointly created the silk-free dot halo method.
That is to say, cut out silk workers of different heights and smudge them with different glaze colors so that these glaze colors are naturally connected.
After sintering, the high wire is exposed and the short wire is contained under the glaze, which enhances the adhesion between the copper body and the glaze color and makes the pattern of the work more colorful.
Only when this step is completed can a cloisonné work be considered initially completed.
Then comes polishing, which is commonly known as "grinding".
This is the most painful and tiring step in the entire cloisonne production process, which is divided into processes such as thorn work, polishing, and polishing.
First, use an emery stone to smooth the glaze on the surface of the product that is higher than the filaments so that the filaments are exposed. Then use a yellow stone to grind away the shiny and black filaments on the glaze.
This is not the end, you still need to use linden charcoal dipped in water and grind it horizontally and vertically until the product emits a uniform light.
Nowadays, electric grinding machines are generally used, which saves a lot of manpower, but products with special shapes still require manual grinding.
The last step is gold plating.
This is the last major process in the cloisonné production process.
This is to prevent the oxidation of the product and make the product more durable and beautiful, by plating a layer of gold on the surface of the product.
The specific method is to hang the product into a gold liquid tank and turn on the electricity for gold plating. After completion, take it out and rinse it with clean water, and then etch it dry with sawdust.
At this time, the entire cloisonné production process was declared complete, and a cloisonné handicraft was born.
After sorting out the old craftsmanship, especially the early Ming Dynasty filigree enamel craftsmanship and the cloisonne craftsmanship, Chen Wenzhe really started to imitate them.
This time, he directly began to imitate Xuande's cloisonné enamel works.
The Xuande cloisonné enamel pomegranate pattern lid box is quite famous and its value is not low.
It seems that in 2021, it was auctioned for half a million pounds.
Many cloisonné enamel vessels from the Ming Dynasty remain in the world, such as jars, bottles, statues, and even slag buckets.
After finishing the lid box, Chen Wenzhe made another copper-embedded cloisonné enamel lotus pattern vase.
This is a piece of cloisonné, and the price is not high.
Of course, this is because it is not well preserved. If it were a perfect product, it would never be sold for hundreds of thousands.
Then there are the cloisonné enamel Capricorn-patterned slag bucket and the cloisonné-enameled Pagoda Zun with flowers, birds, and auspicious animal patterns. The auction prices of these two items are not high.
However, this is not because their artistic value is low, but because they are poorly preserved, which makes the market transaction price lower.
Now Chen Wenzhe is imitating craftsmanship, and does not need to deliberately destroy or make things look old, so the works he makes are obviously more beautiful.