My system is not decent

Chapter 1791 The hand falls into one hammer, and four hammers form a pattern

This gold beast of the Western Han Dynasty is a representative work of gold crafts in the Han Dynasty. It was unearthed in 1982 in the cellar of Nanyaozhuang, Xuyi County, Jiangsu Province.

The golden beast of the Western Han Dynasty is in the shape of a leopard, curled up, with its head resting on its front legs and wearing a three-wheeled collar around its neck.

It has a ring of buttons on the top of its head, and its whole body is hammered with circular markings.

It is 10.2 cm high, 16 cm long, 17.8 cm wide, and weighs 9100 grams.

The gold content of this golden animal is 99%, and it is fastened, thick-walled, and cast into shape.

According to the appearance characteristics, it is inferred that the casting age of the golden beast is from the late Warring States period to the early Western Han Dynasty.

As a highly decorative texture, hammered copper plate is deeply loved by high-end designers. "Hand falls into one hammer, and four hammers form a pattern."

Each hammer pattern is a record of tens of thousands of hammering processes by craftsmen.

With one hammer and one blow, it presents an ever-changing style, such as the fields with criss-crossing paths, like the ripples of the lotus pond blown by the wind, it is casual and natural.

The whole body of this golden beast is curled up and crawling.Although the appearance is fierce, with staring eyes and bowed ears, and open mouth and teeth.

But because the head is resting on the forefoot, and it is a bit deified, looking at it feels kind;
In addition, a collar is cast on the neck, giving the impression of taming animals.

The bottom of the animal body is hollow and concave, and the word "Huang Liu" is engraved on it.

Although it is official script, it does not lose the legacy of Xiaozhuan, and it is engraved after it is cast.

The handwriting is small but legible.

After the golden beast was unearthed, experts' guesses on the purpose of the golden beast were mainly divided into several schools.

The first one is town, such as Xizhen, which is used to press the four corners of the emperor's mat;

The second view is that the golden beast is used to guard the treasury and is also a symbol of national wealth;

The third theory holds that the Golden Beast is a weighing instrument similar to a weight, used to measure weight.

Judging from the current archaeological results, the golden beast is more likely to be used as a town storehouse.

The greatest value of the Golden Beast lies in its uniqueness.

On the one hand, the gold purity of Golden Beast reaches 99%;

The second is that it has a long history and can be traced back to the Western Han Dynasty;
The third is that it is huge in size and weighs 18.2 catties. At least in our country, no goldware earlier and heavier than it has been found so far.

In addition, the gold wares of the same period are mostly presented in the form of a single craft.

The golden beast combined the ancient metal casting process with the gold hammering process, which was very rare at that time.

In February 1982, in Nanyao Village, Mudian Township, Xuyi County, Jiangsu Province, local villager Wan Yiquan discovered a batch of precious cultural relics from the Chu and Han Dynasties while cleaning up the silt in the drainage ditch.

Among the unearthed cultural relics is a copper pot, and most of the rest are gold wares.

Most of them were gold coins, with a total weight of more than 20 kilograms, which was a major archaeological discovery at that time.

The on-site investigation proved that there was originally an ancient cellar, and the utensils were well preserved, the most striking of which was the golden beast placed on the mouth of the copper pot.

The 26 gold coins in the copper pot are in the shape of a horseshoe, and the horseshoe gold was the weighing currency in the Western Han Dynasty. Therefore, it is presumed that most of the cultural relics unearthed this time come from the Western Han Dynasty.

At present, the academic circles speculate on what kind of animal the golden beast is, but it is still not very clear.

The Golden Beast is characterized by a large head, short and stout body.

The head of the animal is lying on the top, with its ears bowed and its eyes staring. There are three collars on the neck, a ring of buttons on the top of the head, and circular markings on the whole body.

These markings were specially hammered with tools after casting. Each marking was of the same size and was irregularly circular.

At present, the mainstream view in the academic circles is that it is more accurate to classify the golden beast as a "leopard" in view of the fact that it is covered with stripes all over its body.

However, some scholars believe that the image of the utensil may be a tiger or a lion.

There are also some sayings that this object is Pixiu, which is commonly known as "gold-swallowing beast".

As for what kind of animal the golden beast is, there is still no consensus in the academic circles, which is also an unsolved mystery of the "divine beast".

The gold ornaments of the same period mostly used a single craft, and the forms were mostly tigers and dragons.

The golden beast is not only unique in craftsmanship, but also unique in shape. What makes it so unique?
During the Western Han Dynasty, there were two main processes of gold making, one was casting, which used molds to form gold products of specific shapes;

The other is forging, which uses beating, forging, and hammering to shape the patterns on the surface of gold objects.

On this golden beast, it is rare to find that these two crafts exist at the same time.

In the process of making this golden beast, the craftsman hammered the surface first. In other gold crafts at the same time, this technique was not commonly used until later generations.

This kind of forging technology, as well as the shape of the gold cheetah (which once inhabited the West Asia region and was not distributed in the wild in my country), shows that China and foreign countries had mutual influence on gold casting and forging techniques at that time.

Through the study of cultural relics, it can be found that the technical exchanges between China and foreign countries in the field of gold casting and forging have never been interrupted.

In the Tang Dynasty, my country's manufacturing technology was influenced by Europe, and some patterns similar to court totems appeared on gold wares.

In the Ming Dynasty, my country formed a gold pattern with local characteristics, and the decoration and shape were completely different from those of the previous era.

In the Qing Dynasty, all kinds of totem patterns showed the process of Eastern and Western craftsmanship, from mutual learning to internal integration.

How should cultural relics that combine the strengths of East and West become "diplomatic envoys" at the moment, allowing Chinese and foreign cultures to better communicate, collide, and integrate.

This kind of collision and integration, in fact, is also expressed in filigree craftsmanship.

Before filigree, Chen Wenzhe also studied it, which is to bend gold, silver or other metal filaments according to the ink patterns, knead them into patterns, and stick them on utensils, which is called filigree.

This is the most critical decoration process in the production of cloisonné.

Closer to this is lace, an earlier jewelry-making technique.

It is to pull gold and silver into wires, then weave them into braids or various mesh structures, and then weld them on utensils, which is called tired wires.

Chen Wenzhe was familiar with these techniques when he made cloisonné porcelain before, so he is no stranger to them.

On the contrary, he has never touched the bead frying technique.

The bead frying process is to heat the gold chips on a charcoal fire. When they melt, the gold chips are in the form of droplets and cool down into small gold beads.

Fried beads are often used with filigree braided inlays, mainly for jewelry.

To put it simply, fried beads is to drop gold solution into warm water, and gold beads of different sizes will be formed, which is called fried beads.

The golden beads formed by fried beads are usually welded on gold and silver utensils for decoration, such as bead pattern and caviar pattern.

But to use this kind of craftsmanship, there must be a certain craftsmanship, because this kind of craftsmanship is too cumbersome to do.

The craftsman spirit refers to the spiritual philosophy of craftsmen to carve their own products and strive for perfection.

my country's "artisan spirit" has existed since ancient times. For example, Zhuangzi said that "technology advances beyond Tao".

"Technology" is today's "artisan spirit", which is almost obsessive focus on what you do.

If there is no craftsman spirit in the use of the bead frying process, it will definitely not be possible.

And if you want to make a high-quality product, it is not only supported by the spirit of craftsman, but you must have a level of skill close to the Tao to make it.

(End of this chapter)