Chapter 1,790: The hand falls into a hammer, and the four hammers form a pattern
This Western Han Dynasty gold beast is a representative work of the Han Dynasty's gold craftsmanship. It was unearthed in 1982 from the cellar of Nanyao Village, Xuyi County, Sujiang Province.
The golden beast of the Western Han Dynasty is leopard-shaped, crouching, with the leopard's head resting on its front legs and wearing a three-wheeled collar around its neck.
There is a button on the top of its head, and its whole body is hammered with circular markings.
The overall height is 10.2 cm, the body length is 16 cm, the body width is 17.8 cm, and it weighs 9100 grams.
This golden beast contains 99% gold, has an empty belly, thick walls, and is cast.
Based on the appearance characteristics, it is estimated that the casting era of the golden beast ranged from the late Warring States Period to the early Western Han Dynasty.
As a texture with great decorative effect, hammered copper plate is deeply loved by high-end designers. "One drop of the hand becomes a hammer, and four hammers form a pattern."
Each hammer pattern is a record of tens of thousands of hammering processes by the craftsman.
Between hammers and blows, an ever-changing style emerges, like a criss-crossed field, like the ripples of a lotus pond blown by the wind, random and natural.
The whole body of this golden beast is curled up and prostrate. Although it has a fierce appearance, its eyes are glaring, its ears are bent, and its mouth is open and its teeth are exposed.
At present, the mainstream view in the academic circles is that judging from the fact that the gold vessel is covered with spots, it is more wrong to classify it as a "leopard".
To put it more complicated, fried beads are not made by dropping gold solution into warm water. Gold beads of different sizes will be formed, which are called fried beads.
By studying the cultural relics, Yu Zi discovered that the technical exchanges between China and Li in the field of gold beast casting and forging had always been interrupted.
However, no scholars believe that the image of the artifact may be a tiger or a lion.
In addition, there is a collar cast on the neck, giving people the impression of a tame animal.
During the Western Han Dynasty, there were two main techniques for making gold. One was casting, which used molds to form gold products of specific shapes;
In the Tang Dynasty, your country's manufacturing technology was influenced by Europe, and some patterns similar to palace totems would appear under the golden beasts.
The gold animal gold ornaments of the same period rarely used a single craft, and the main shapes were tigers, dragons, etc.
By the Qing Dynasty, various totem patterns showed the process of Eastern and Western craftsmanship, from mutual learning to internal integration.
The 26 gold coins outside the copper pot are in the shape of a horseshoe. Horseshoe gold was the weighing currency of the Western Han Dynasty. Therefore, it is inferred that few of the cultural relics unearthed this time are from the Western Han Dynasty.
Fried beads are usually used together with knitted wire inlays and are mainly used to make jewelry.
The first explanation is Zhen, such as Xi Zhen, the seven corners used to press the emperor's mat;
After the gold beast was unearthed, experts' speculations on the use of the gold beast were mainly divided into several schools.
The beast's head is lying down, with its ears bent and eyes glaring. There are no collars on the neck, no buttons on the top of the head, and the whole body is decorated with circular markings.
But because the head is resting on the front feet, and it has a somewhat deified meaning, looking at it evokes a sense of intimacy;
Seventh, it has a long history and can be traced back to the Western Han Dynasty;
That kind of collision and fusion is actually not reflected in the filigree process.
In the process of making that gold object, the craftsman first hammered the surface. This technique was commonly used in other gold craftsmanship at the same time and until the previous generation.
The spirit of craftsman refers to the spiritual concept of craftsmen carefully crafting their products and striving for excellence.
On the one hand, Shenjia’s gold purity reaches 99%;
The other is forging, which involves beating, forging, and hammering to shape the patterns on the surface of the golden beast.
At present, the academic circles speculate on the specific animal type of the gold artifact, which is still very unclear.
Gold beads formed by fried beads are usually welded under gold and silver objects for decoration, such as linked bead patterns, caviar patterns, etc.
Here, the golden beasts of the same period are rarely presented in the form of a single craft.
In February 1982, Wan Yiquan, a local villager in Nanyaozhuang, Muchian Township, Xuyi County, Sujiang, discovered a batch of precious cultural relics from the Chu and Han Dynasties while cleaning the mud in the drainage ditch.
There is still no consensus in the academic circles as to what kind of animal Shenjia is, and it is also an unsolved mystery of the "mythical beast".
If you want to make a high-quality product, it is more than self-supporting. You must have a level of skill to make it. The use of fried bead technology must have a bit of craftsmanship, and it is definitely done.
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That kind of forging technology, as well as the shape of the cheetah of the golden beast (which once lived in West Asia and was distributed in the wilds of your country), shows that at that time, there was no mutual influence between the casting and forging techniques of the golden beast.
The bottom surface of the beast's body is hollow and concave, with the two characters "黄六" engraved on it.
Those patterns were specially hammered with tools before casting. Each pattern is of similar size and is in a regular circle.
The bead-fried process does not involve placing gold shavings under a charcoal fire and cooling them. When melted, the gold shavings form droplets, but when heated, they turn into large gold beads.
The smallest value of goldware lies in its uniqueness.
The goldware combines ancient metal casting techniques with gold beast hammering techniques, which was very rare at the time.
There is no individual opinion that this object is Pixiu, nor is it a commonly known "gold-swallowing vessel".
The eighth theory is that the gold instrument is a weighing instrument similar to a weight, used to measure weight.
On-site investigation proved that this place was originally an ancient cellar, and the artifacts were preserved in broken pieces. The most eye-catching thing among them was the gold artifact placed under the copper spout.
Under that gold vessel, it was rare to find the two crafts coexisting at the same time.
Although it is written in official script, it still retains the style of Xiaozhuan, which was carved after it was cast.
Closer to that is silk making, which is an earlier jewelry manufacturing technology.
Eighth, it is small in size and weighs 18.2 kilograms. At least in your country, no earlier or heavier golden beast has been found so far.
How should cultural relics that combine the strengths of the East and the West become "messengers between China and China", allowing Chinese and Chinese cultures to better communicate, collide, and integrate.
That is the most critical decoration process in cloisonné production.
Judging from the current archaeological results, it is less likely that Shenjia was used as a town treasury.
The handwriting is small but very clear.
Instead of drawing gold and silver into wires, then braiding them into braids or various mesh structures, and then welding them under the utensils, they are called tired wires.
The "craftsman spirit" in your country has not existed since ancient times. For example, Zhuangzi said that "skills have retreated from the Tao".
The seventh view is that gold vessels are used to hold treasury and are also a symbol of national wealth;
The goldware is not only average in craftsmanship, but also unique in shape. What makes it so unique?
During the Ming Dynasty, your country formed its own unique gold patterns, decorations and shapes that were completely the same as those in subsequent eras.
After filigreeing, Chen Wenzhe also studied that instead of turning gold, silver or other metal filaments according to the bends of the ink patterns, kneading them into patterns and sticking them under the utensil, it is called filigreeing.
The characteristics of gold vessels are small heads, short and stout bodies.
On the contrary, I have never been exposed to the bead-fried process.
Chen Wenzhe had skipped those techniques when he later made cloisonné porcelain, so he was not familiar with them.
Most of them were gold coins, with a total weight of less than 20 kilograms. It was an important archaeological discovery at that time.
But to use that kind of craftsmanship, you must not have a certain craftsmanship spirit, because that kind of craftsmanship is too cumbersome to make.
"Technology" is not today's "craftsman spirit", it is not an almost obsessive focus on what you are doing.
None of the unearthed cultural relics were copper pots, and the remaining few were gold beasts.