Liu Dong has visited the Clock and Clock Hall of the Palace Museum more than once. The various clocks and watches in it are rich, diverse, full of whimsical ideas, expensive materials and of astonishing value. They have always been one of his most desired collections!
However, because exquisite ancient clocks are hard to find, until now, through auctions and searching on his own Taobao, Liu Dong now has only more than 200 wall clocks and table clocks in his hands. This number is thanks to
The harvest of the trip to the Netherlands!
However, among all the clocks collected by Liu Dong, although there are many exquisite and handed down pieces from the Qing Dynasty royal family and European famous masters, they have always lacked the kind of shocking 'king of clocks', commonly known as the treasure of the museum.
!
Now seeing this giant golden clock, Liu Dong finally has no regrets in his heart!
Of course, there is more than one clock here. In addition to this amazing giant gold clock, Liu Dong also discovered about a hundred more clocks. More than half of them are made of gold, and some are made of silver. They are already huanghuali.
Wood such as red sandalwood, as well as a small amount of jade, are all top-quality Hetian jade, Lantian jade and Dushan jade!
There are also various forms of clocks, including Chinese clocks with Buddha statues, Taoist gods, legendary beasts, Chinese mythology and historical stories, and Western clocks decorated with elephants, lions, angels, and Western characters. No matter where they are,
A type that could be buried with Emperor Qianlong must be the best among them, and it was also his favorite thing during his lifetime!
Pieces of intricate and gorgeous clocks passed in front of Liu Dong one by one. He was amazed by the whimsical ideas and superb craftsmanship of the previous craftsmen, especially the extravagance of Emperor Qianlong. If these craftsmen had not considered
My talents were wasted on clocks and watches that could only be used as playthings. If I had gone to study machinery, I am afraid China would not have suffered the century-old humiliation it would have suffered!
Of course, all this is just what-if, history is still irreversible!
Throwing away the occasional sentimentality, the remaining contents of the wooden box still attract Liu Dong's attention!
There are more than 300 pieces of various furniture made of huanghuali, red sandalwood and golden nan. Except for about a quarter of the large furniture such as canopy beds and eight immortal tables, almost all the remaining small pieces of furniture such as boxes and trays are left.
There is no ordinary piece, and on every piece you can see the presence of techniques such as red carving, rhinoceros carving, mother-of-pearl, gold and silver stripping, lacquer filling, gold polishing, and gold tracing.
In addition to furniture, there are also a large number of top-quality silks from the 'Jiangnan Sanwei' with fine workmanship and exquisite patterns, as well as dragon robes and phoenix robes made of silk, as well as a large number of concubine costumes with different styles!
Liu Dong did a simple inventory. There were 999 pieces of uncut silk of various colors! Mainly the bright yellow commonly used by the royal family, but also some red, blue, and other colors!
In addition to silk, there are a total of seventy-seven imperial court robes, thirteen imperial crowns, seven imperial beads, eight sable cloaks, three ferret cloaks, three black fox cloaks, and two white wolf cloaks.
There are nearly a hundred items of clothing including boots, purses and other items.
In addition, there are forty-nine phoenix robes and six phoenix crowns. Perhaps it is because the queen uses three court beads every day. The queen has thirteen court beads, eight sable cloaks, and five firefox cloaks.
There are five ferret cloaks and nearly 300 other items of clothing.
In addition to clothing, there are thousands of silk fabrics with different shapes and functions, such as tents and bed curtains used by the royal family!
Although these furniture and silk clothing are not particularly top-notch national treasure-level works of art, each of them is valuable!
These things are enough for Liu Dong to open a museum specializing in Qing Dynasty royal costumes and silk fabrics!
In addition, it is impossible for a tomb to be without gold and silver!
Of course, gold and silver here does not simply refer to gold nuggets and silver coins, but also includes various gold and silver utensils.
Liu Dong did some inventory and found a total of thirty-five sets of gold wine vessels with various patterns and forty-four sets of gold tableware in hundreds of large and small wooden boxes. Gold hand stoves, gold trays, gold candlesticks,
There are 1,109 pieces of gold incense burners, gold Buddhist niches, gold Buddha statues, gold Ruyi and other exquisitely crafted imperial gold objects. There are more than 1,900 imperial silver objects of various kinds, and 2,500 imperial objects inlaid with gold and silver.
Fifty pieces, and 910 pieces of royal gold jewelry.
In addition, Emperor Qianlong did not believe in Buddhism. Therefore, there were more than 1,500 gold and jade Buddha statues, pagodas and Buddhist scriptures in his tomb, and in Liu Dong's opinion, there were three main ones with the highest value!
One is a two-meter-tall statue of Sakyamuni Buddha made of pure gold and inlaid with a small amount of pearls, agates and red sapphires! The other one is also inlaid with gold and jade and is half a meter higher than the statue of Sakyamuni Buddha.
The Golden-haired Pagoda! And the last one is only one and a half meters high and only 60 centimeters in diameter, but the whole body is carved from the highest quality mutton-fat white jade, the Ten Thousand Buddhas Pagoda!
The reason why it is called "Ten Thousand Buddhas" is because on this nine-story pagoda, 9999 Buddha statues with completely different shapes are carved using semicircular carvings and micro carvings!
Nine is the ultimate number, so although there is only one Buddha statue to reach perfection here, it is also called Ten Thousand Buddhas!
Through this exquisite Ten Thousand Buddhas Pagoda, Liu Dong also had a glimpse of the superb skills of the jade carving craftsmen of the Royal Ruyi Workshop of the Qing Dynasty! If you want to complete such an exquisite pagoda, I am afraid it will not take more than three years!
And compared with the superb carving skills on the pagoda, its material is even more extraordinary. Unlike the so-called Hotan mutton-fat jade today, which is just a first-grade white jade that is fake, the jade material of this Ten Thousand Buddhas Pagoda is the real Hotan mutton-fat jade.
Jade can compete with the top-grade glass-type imperial green jade. It is rare to find, and the real top-grade Hetian jade material is priceless but not marketable.
So far, Liu Dong has collected it by himself, plus the harvest from Han's jewelry treasury, and the largest piece of Hetian jade in his hand is only 40 kilograms, not much bigger than a laptop!
But the weight of the jade material in front of him is at least five times that of him, or even more!
"I think it would be difficult for anyone to obtain such amazing Hetian-cultured jade material unless they were from the royal family who said, 'Everything in the world is nothing but royal soil'!" Liu Dong secretly thought.
In addition to an astonishing amount of gold and silver utensils and underworld objects, there was also a lot of gold and silver that were simply used for burials. However, there was more gold than silver here, and Liu Dong was not surprised by this situation.
The reason why Sun Dianying excavated the Dongling Tomb in the first place was to raise military expenses for military expansion. The silver he got had naturally been spent long ago, and the gold was precious, so he kept it until the end!
Therefore, there is a situation like what Liu Dong is seeing now, where there is more gold than silver!
Of course, there are differences between the gold used in tombs and the gold used in daily life. For example, right now, there are only six boxes of gold ingots worth about ten taels each in the wooden boxes Liu Dong saw. The rest are filled with gold melons, gold cakes and
Gold leaves!
The shape of the pumpkin resembles that of a winter melon, with simple patterns on the surface. Liu Dong picked up a piece from it and bumped it. It weighed about 500 taels. The gold cakes were all solid, with no decorations, and were about the size of an adult's palm. Each piece was
About ten taels! And the gold leaf is two fingers wide and one finger long, so each piece is about 2 taels!
There was not much time, and Liu Dong did not count the number of gold ingots, pumpkins, gold cakes and gold leaves. He just weighed each box briefly when he picked it up. Finally, he estimated that the weight of the gold should be 180~
Between 200 tons! As for the remaining silver, Liu Dong didn't bother to look at it. It was not even one-tenth of gold, and the value was too low!
In addition to gold and silver, there are also some bronzes, which Qianlong built for himself according to the ritual system of the emperor's "Nine Cauldrons and Eight Gui" in the Xia and Shang Dynasties. In addition to the 9 ascending cauldrons, there are 6 more that are about two meters high.
The wok tripod weighs more than 3 tons; 9 feeding tripods, 9 square gui pedestals; a bronze forbidden vessel decorated with dragon patterns, 9 gui pods, 2 pairs of large pots, 2 pairs of jointed pots, and 2 ice swords
Yes, a set of 2 pieces of Zunpan, a set of 4 pieces of fou, a set of 36 pieces of chimes, and a set of chimes!
Although these bronze wares are ritual vessels made strictly in accordance with the Zhou system, they are not cast in bronze like in the pre-Qin period. Instead, the materials used for each of them are the same as those used to make Xuande furnaces in the Ming Dynasty.
Red copper is mixed with dozens of precious raw materials such as gold and silver, and is refined and cast twelve times. Therefore, although these Zhou-made ritual vessels were made in the late Qing Dynasty, each piece has been devoted to the efforts of the craftsmen of the Royal Ruyi Workshop of the Qing Dynasty.
Moreover, the craftsmanship is exquisite, using openwork and semi-circular carvings to leave exquisite cloud and thunder patterns, rolling leaf patterns, gluttonous patterns, dragon patterns, etc. on each piece of bronze. It is simple and generous, but also has the richness and magnificence of the Qianlong period.
Although it only has a history of more than 200 years, it is equally valuable!
After putting away the wooden boxes containing a total of 289 pieces of various vintage copper ritual utensils, Liu Dong looked at the last thirty large wooden boxes in the center.
These wooden boxes placed in the center like stars holding the moon must be the most valuable, and the light rising from them also proves Liu Dong's conjecture!
Ten of these wooden boxes are particularly huge. Each one is more than 3 meters long, about 2 meters high, and even more than 2 meters wide. It is really eye-catching!
Liu Dong first walked to an approximately square wooden box and opened the top cover!
Before he could see clearly what was inside, he was choked by a strong musty smell and sneezed several times!
"You're so stupid, how could you forget this!"
Looking at the mostly rotten straw inside the wooden box, Liu Dong felt a little annoyed.
Decades have passed, and the straw originally used as a bedding layer has long since rotted and become moldy. Naturally, it smells bad. However, Liu Dong was only thinking about the treasure inside and actually forgot about it. No wonder he suffered a loss!