Chapter 722: Make it soaring in value, monthly pass)
Chen Wenzhe naturally could not have imagined that such a bronze drum could appear anywhere in the country.
However, if the corrosion is so severe, it must be in a place with sufficient rain.
"It must be in the south, where there is plenty of rain, and it is even a place that is humid for a long time. There is only one such place in the country, which is the only province without winter. Could it be from the South China Sea?"
The South China Sea has a subtropical maritime climate, and the air contains a large amount of salt and moisture, which can easily cause bronze ware to oxidize.
The thick rust on the three bronze vessels in front of me not only covered up the patterns on the surface, but also caused the cultural relics themselves to be damaged. This is proof.
Wu Er looked at Chen Wenzhe with his mouth open. Can you guess this?
"Amazing, you can actually guess the South China Sea just by looking at the rust? Yes, I bought it from there. It is an ancestral possession of an ethnic minority. The local area is now mobilizing them to donate, so I sold it in a hurry, mainly because it was too damaged.
If you keep it for a few more years, it might all rot away."
Confirming his suspicion, Chen Wenzhe no longer cares about Wu Er. Who can't tell stories?
Now that it was confirmed that this thing came from the South China Sea, Chen Wenzhe had a good idea.
Because in the past few years, there were indeed many bronzes produced in the South China Sea, and they were all from the Han Dynasty.
There is nothing we can do about it. The South China Sea was a place of exile in ancient times.
Good things generally don't appear in that kind of place. If they do, it must be caused by a special period or special event.
The more famous historical event that occurred in the Han Dynasty in the South China Sea was definitely that in the first year of Yuanfeng (110 BC), Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty established Zhuya and Dan'er counties on Hainan Island, officially adding Hainan Island to the central territory.
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The establishment of the county system at that time inevitably required brutal military means to suppress the resistance of local residents.
This is how these large and small marching cooking utensils were brought into the South China Sea with the Han Dynasty army.
So until now, the bronze drums unearthed in the South China Sea can be roughly divided into two types.
One type is the Beiliu type. This type of bronze drum is named after it was first unearthed in Beiliu, Xiguang;
The other type is the Lingshan type, named after it was unearthed earlier in Lingshan, and serves as a standard artifact.
The bronze drums in Nanhai were also excavated when local farmers carried out farmland infrastructure construction or built houses and dug foundations.
All are distributed in coastal areas such as Ling, Chang, Dan and Lin.
The bronze drum evolved from the copper cauldron used for cooking. It originated from the ancient people’s entertainment needs of turning over pots, beating pots and dancing to music after meals. The two are in the same line, originating from life and witnessing history.
By this time, these three bronzes have been roughly seen, and the only thing left is to find problems.
If there are no problems, then these three items are correct.
In fact, Chen Wenzhe has now generally determined that these three bronzes should be genuine.
However, the imitations of bronzes nowadays are so great that even if you use various scientific methods to go through them all, sometimes you still can't identify them as imitations.
Therefore, the price of domestic bronzes has never been high, which is entirely due to high imitation.
Now that I have seen the merits of these three bronzes, I can prove that they were unearthed from the South China Sea during the Han Dynasty.
However, now we still have to look for faults and see if there is anything wrong at all, and as long as there is something wrong, then the whole thing is wrong.
The identification of bronzes is so stringent.
You know, Chen Wenzhe also has a unique skill - red spots and green embroidery, which is actually a distressing technique.
Since it can be worn, it must be appraised!
Reverse reasoning is enough, so now let’s look at the casting method first.
If you didn't look carefully enough before, you should know that if the casting method is wrong, then all previous assumptions can be overturned at once.
Most of the ancient bronzes were cast using the Tao Fan method.
The pottery model method is a model of the object to be cast. Several mold blocks are made of clay, and they are divided into inner molds and outer molds.
During casting, the mold blocks are brought together to form, and the copper liquid is poured in from the gap between the inner and outer molds. After cooling and removing the mold, a piece of bronze is created.
This is the same as the traces left when making clay models.
Therefore, on the cast vessel surface, as long as it is the intersection of the closed mold blocks, there will definitely be line marks.
Although some obvious parts will be polished after casting.
However, marks on the inner side of ears, feet, soles, or other hidden places cannot be removed by sharpening.
Moreover, the casters back then had no habit of clearing these lines.
Generally, counterfeit copperware is mainly cast by lost wax casting, because it is easier and saves labor, effort and money.
Lost-wax casting uses a whole mold, regardless of blocks, and the surface of the instrument is clean and smooth.
Therefore, fake artifacts often have no mold lines, but some tiny blisters will appear, which is characteristic of lost-wax casting.
Then look at the gasket, which is another easy way to identify genuine and fake copperware.
The gasket is an effective tool used to control the thickness of the caster wall. The casters at that time would often take some small copper sheets of the same thickness but uneven sizes and place them in the gap between the inner and outer molds in advance.
After casting, the copper gaskets will remain on the wall of the vessel. Some are easy to see, some are difficult to find, and some are very symmetrical, corresponding to the left and right.
The early bronzes of the Shang Dynasty did not use gaskets, which was related to the underdeveloped casting technology at that time.
But fake bronzes will not have any traces of gaskets.
There are also some counterfeiters who engraved inscriptions or patterns on genuine vessels, but they happened to be engraved on the gasket. There are many examples of such self-defeating situations.
In the identification of bronze ware, in addition to the casting technology and the shape of the object, there is another important link that cannot be ignored, and that is the identification of decorative patterns.
Decorative patterns are a major feature of bronze wares.
It is more complex and changeable than the shape of the utensils, rich in content and beautifully made.
There are many kinds of fake bronze patterns, and there are roughly several situations.
First, the fake vessels are decorated with fake patterns, with the ones produced by Zhou's workshop in Suzhou Province being the most exquisite.
Of course, there are also masterpieces from masters in the divine capital.
The decorative skills of these craftsmen are very deep, and even if they are fakes, they can still be regarded as exquisite handicrafts.
But for identifying authenticity, as long as you look carefully, you can still see flaws.
Because no matter how exquisitely decorated a bronze vessel is, it is impossible for it to be perfect in terms of shape, leather shell, rust color, etc.
The second is to add patterns and patterns on the plain utensils.
This technique is very common, such as adding patterns to a plain vessel without patterns.
Add patterns to real vessels with a small amount of patterns.
If the pattern is rusty and unclear, add a pattern.
On the pattern where the inlay has fallen off, add inlays again, etc.
On the one hand, this will repair the previous damage, and on the other hand, it will definitely increase its value.
You can definitely do this with the sun-patterned bronze drum in front of you, because these bronze drums are usually damaged, and as long as they are slightly repaired and covered, their value can increase dramatically.