My system is not decent

Chapter 1498 Stone Carvings, Wood Carvings, Gray Painted Mud Wall Carvings

Monuments, no matter what they are used for, are due to some practical purposes.

On the earliest three kinds of steles, there is no text or pattern.

Tie, the earliest refers to the original ink writing on silk or paper.

Later, the well-written ink marks were difficult to spread, so they were carved on wood and stone.

It can be rubbed many times, so these original ink works carved on wood and stone, and their rubbings are collectively called Tie.

To sum it up carefully, there are several differences between steles and posts.

First of all, the purpose of production is different. The original stele had no words, but later, words were added to the stele in order to support the stubborn gold and hope to last forever.

At this time, there was a change, and the handwriting changed from the initial random description to the solemn and meticulous.

Its main purpose is to trace the lineage, narrate the life, and sing the praises, not to spread calligraphy.

Therefore, the writer may or may not be a famous scholar.

Most of the monuments before the Tang Dynasty did not have the names of the authors. It can be seen that the content of the monuments is more important than writing.

The purpose of engraved posts is to spread calligraphy and provide calligraphy students with copies of calligraphy books by famous masters of the past dynasties.

Therefore, the quality of calligraphy is its selection criterion.

As long as it is a high-quality book by a famous author, even a memo with a few words can still be paid, with little regard for the content.

Secondly, the calligraphy styles are different. The monument has a long history, and the calligraphy styles used before the Sui Dynasty were all solemn and solemn seal script, official script, and regular script.

It was not until Tang Taizong's imperial pen sprinkled it in person that running script began to enter the stele.

There are very few cursive script steles, except for the stele of Prince Ascension to Heaven.

The engraving of posts began in the Zhao and Song Dynasties, and most of them were poems and bamboo slips, so most of them were scripts, cursive scripts, and small letters.

Then there is the difference in shape. Steles are stone carvings erected on the ground, most of which are rectangular, and there are also domes and pointed tops.

Although there are characters on one side, there are also characters on two sides or even four sides.

The huge stele is more than ten feet high at every turn, with a magnificent momentum.

Posts are mostly based on bamboo slips, letters, and hand scrolls.

Therefore, the height is generally about one foot, and the length is one to three or four feet.

It is generally horizontal, mostly in the shape of a slate, and only engraved on the front.

In addition, there are woodcuts on the posts, but very few steles.

Finally, the production methods are different. Before the Liang Dynasty in the Southern Dynasties, steles were generally made of Shudan Shangshi.

That is to say, the writer uses a vermilion pen to write the characters directly on the ground stone, and then engraves them.

Stele engravers can often change the strokes of characters by following the convenience of the knife technique.

That is to say, it is slightly different from the original book Dan.

There are also inscriptions that even play the knife directly without the book Dan.

Its characters are integrated with the artistic interest of engraving, and have a strong taste of gold and stone, which cannot be reflected in writing with a brush, but is actually a joint creation of the calligrapher and the engraver.

The engraved posts are all traced on the stone, that is, the characters on the ink are first copied with ink on transparent paper, and then outlined with vermilion from the back according to the characters;

Then rubbing on the stone, and finally engraving, there are two more processes than the stele.

Although the procedure is complicated, the engraved posts require to be loyal to the original work, try our best to be as good as possible, and each process must not be mixed with personal ideas, so the fine post books can reach the level of authenticity.

Only by understanding the difference between inscriptions and posts can it be easier to identify inscriptions and rubbings.

For example, in front of him, Chen Wenzhe can easily tell which engravings are fake.

Mainly there are too many steles here, and the quality is uneven.

Of course, maybe some counterfeiters have incomplete knowledge, so they make some low-level mistakes.

In fact, to identify an inscription or rubbing, one needs to first determine whether it is a fake inscription.

False engravings are fake engravings, which are fabricated by counterfeiters based on the information in books, and written and engraved.

False engravings are worthless because they are groundless fabrications, not as good as re-engraved ones.

In order to deceive people's trust, fake engravings often lie that they were unearthed in a certain place in a certain month.

Some deceive people with rubbings, and some simply sell stone carvings together.

For example, "Yingling Zhili Stele" in Han Dynasty, "Zhang Fei Lima Inscription", "Tao Hongjing Epitaph", etc., are such fake carvings.

These Han monuments are so famous that there must be many fake ones.

The three pieces in front of me are definitely not authentic, but I have to say that they have some artistic value.

If it is an ancient fake engraving, then it must be valuable for collection.

In the Ming Dynasty, there were many fake Han steles, and the calligraphy looks very similar. People without certain experience can easily believe the fakes are real.

It's a pity that Chen Wenzhe can recognize these, and these are definitely not fake engravings from the Ming Dynasty.

I just don’t know if it’s a fake engraving from before the Ming Dynasty, or even a fake engraving from the Republic of China period!

There are so many famous monuments here, and they all seem to be of a certain level.

Therefore, even if it is a fake engraving from the Republic of China period, he does not dislike it, as long as it is not a fake engraving made by modern people.

To identify inscriptions, you must read more.

As mentioned before, textual research has been very popular since the mid-Qing Dynasty.

Later Dinghai Fangruo wrote "School Stele Essays", which was dedicated to discussing the age of calligraphy and painting damage on famous steles.

If you have read this book, then it is easy to identify the Han "Lujiang Taishou Hengfang Stele" in front of you.

Because the word "Jiang" in the stele is not damaged, even if such a stele is genuine, it must have been rubbed in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties.

There is also this piece of "Ma Ming Temple Stele" in the Northern Wei Dynasty. The unbroken one is the rubbings before Daoguang.

For those who are fake, according to the theory, the damaged characters or breaks of the original stele are filled with wax embedded in the stele to fill the old extension.

Therefore, attention must be paid to any old rubbings found in the textual research, which appear to be weak and suspicious, or if the paper and ink are not old enough.

These are actually not bad, and some fake engravings are particularly easy to identify.

For example, there is a kind of stone tablet, although it is still in the world, but because of the distance, it is inconvenient to push it, or because the handwriting is blurred and damaged due to the age, the stele dealer still works on it, and re-engraving it to pretend to be the original stone is called a reprint.

Most of the reprinted editions were hastily engraved, most of the engravers were illiterate, there were many mistakes in the calligraphy and painting, and the original stele still exists, so they are of little value.

As mentioned before, there are many types of such engravings after Qianlong and Jiaqing, including stone carvings, wood carvings, gray paint, and mud wall carvings.

Among them, tile ash mixed with raw lacquer or clay plates are the most reprinted and engraved, because the cost is light and the profit is heavy, it is easy to re-engraved, and it is more crude than wood and stone carvings, and the most circulated and marketed.

What Chen Wenzhe was afraid of was encountering such ancient inscriptions, because such ancient inscriptions, even if they had a certain history, were of little value.

There are many ways to falsify, but there are also many ways to identify them.

For example, when encountering clay books on the wall, this method is to rub the original rubbings on the wall, then carve them out and then use rice paper to rub them.

The inscriptions produced in this way are not rubbed down from the original stele, but from the wall.

After the rubbings are completed, the counterfeiters make the paper old and sell it as old rubbings.

The identification method is also very simple. Due to the age of the real old stele, it has been weathered and corroded after experiencing wind and rain, and there will be pieces of peeling stone flowers on the stele.

These stone flowers are uneven and irregularly distributed.

After most of the wall mud is completed, lime is usually sprinkled on the wall to forge weathered spots in order to create the uneven effect of weathered stones.

(End of this chapter)