Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 1615 Antique Shop

Following the restoration principles of "restoring the old as it was" and "minimum intervention", the original patched paper is peeled off for secondary use. Unfold the album, spray water to moisten it, and apply the brush with clean water to the previously repaired area, letting the clean water moisten the patched paper and slowly soak it to reduce the stickiness of the paste. You can try to gently peel it up a little with tweezers to see the effect of the test peeling. If it cannot be peeled off, extend the soaking time appropriately until it can be completely peeled off.

While it is still wet, apply paste around the exposed holes, re-stick the peeled patch paper to its original place, cover with absorbent paper to absorb excess moisture, and use tweezers to tear off the excess patch paper around the holes.

Finally, use your fingers to gently rub off a layer of the seams around the holes, and adjust the contact area into an inclined surface, so as to reduce the thickness of the overlap. After pressing, drying in the shade, and refolding, the inside of the album is repaired.

After this restoration, not only was the original paper from the first restoration retained as much as possible, but new insect holes and brittle parts were repaired and reinforced with dyed bamboo paper and parchment, thus solving problems such as thickening, deformation, and unevenness of some pages caused by previous improper restoration.

The restored album pages are smooth and soft, the color of the repaired paper is coordinated with the original book, and the paste concentration is appropriate, which ensures the reversibility of the restoration process and provides conditions for future restoration.

The last step is to repair the cover.

The cover is made of camphorwood sandwiched between cardboard and decorated with brocade. The repair method is relatively simple. The broken corners of the wood board and cardboard are filled with lacquer and tile putty, and then the missing parts of the old brocade are cut out with new brocade customized from Master Yang. Then, the silk version can be repaired by gluing and pasting.

However, the glue used here is no longer paste, but animal glue made from a formula of bones, horns and tendons.

After such restoration, both "The Epitaph of the Buried Crane" and "Thousand Character Classic" underwent a miraculous change, that is, their "ancient flavor" remained, but the "scroll surface" suddenly became much cleaner, and all the previous holes and cracks were repaired seamlessly, and they could be opened and closed freely, and it was completely impossible to tell where they had been damaged before, which amazed An Siyuan and a group of collaborators who participated in this project.

Because he was so happy, An Siyuan specially arranged the two restored collections in a room, hung high-definition comparison photos of the injuries before and after the restoration on the surrounding walls, and held a small cocktail party to celebrate the event.

At this small-scale cocktail party, Zhou Zhi also got to know several famous Oriental art dealers and bigwigs from Sobey's, China Guardian, David, and Phillips auction houses.

This was Zhou Zhi's first time communicating with world-class antique dealers and auction house bosses, of course with the exception of Ataka, Sakamoto and Lin Wanqiu.

Zhou Zhi is fearless of authority. Except for those who can crush him in knowledge, all others are "equal" in his eyes. Therefore, it is easy and natural for him to communicate with these people.

In addition to the calligraphy and painting restoration techniques that were mainly demonstrated this time, Zhou Zhi's attainments in porcelain, calligraphy and painting, and Ming and Qing furniture have reached a very high level. In addition, he is fluent in English, so the communication with the big guys often gives them a refreshing feeling.

Zhou Zhi's calligraphy and painting restoration skills are indeed superb. In particular, Zhou Zhi dared to interfere with the restoration of his predecessors. He used the method of rubbing his fingers to thin the edges of the old patching paper to make the large album pages smooth. It can be said that he surpassed his predecessors and the new generation surpassed the old generation.

But everyone can still understand it. After all, if a person starts practicing a professional skill from a young age, it is not impossible to become an expert in twenty years.

But when An Siyuan introduced to everyone that Zhou Zhi was also the chief appraisal consultant of Hanhai Auction House, the largest auction house in Hong Kong and the Mainland, almost everyone found it a bit ridiculous.

But after the real communication, everyone felt that the name was worthy of the name, especially the behind-the-scenes boss of Guardian, Sir Belin, who indirectly told Zhou Zhi that Guardian's business was expanding rapidly. After establishing "East Guardian" in New York, the office in Hong Kong Island would soon be expanded to "Taikoo Guardian", and wanted to recruit Zhou Zhi to join. Of course, Zhou Zhi could only decline. The relationship between him and Lin Wanqiu was built by the right time, place and people. Lin Wanqiu had the power of Hong Kong Island behind her, not only the old Lin in China - her biological mother was the owner of the largest convenience store in Hong Kong Island, her stepfather was the owner of the largest silver shop, and her husband's family was even more powerful.

If I had agreed to Old Beilin, I might not even wait for Lin Wanqiu to come find me, and my cousin An Xin would have beaten me to death first.

She hated the traitors the most.

However, Berlin still left two business cards for Zhou Zhi, one of which was his own and the other belonged to Yuan Shuhua, the current head of Hong Kong Island. He also told Zhou Zhi that Yuan Shuhua greatly appreciated the four-season creativity of his An Siyuan Collection Auction.

This person was also a lady, and had a large collection of works and was well versed in oriental art. Zhou Zhi took the business card and thought, Sister Wanqiu, your rival has arrived.

However, this somewhat boring cocktail party was not entirely fruitless for Zhou Zhi. With the guidance of the big guys, Zhou Zhi also got a "treasure map" and began his "wandering journey" in New York the next day.

The most important art museums, galleries and auction houses in New York are basically concentrated in the four districts of the Isle of Man, from south to north: Lower East, Chelsea, Midtown and Upper East.

Each district has its own characteristics. Some are contemporary art, some are old shops, and ancient oriental art shops are concentrated in the Upper East Side.

After strolling all the way, Zhou Zhi was truly an eye-opener. No wonder Lin Wanqiu had always insisted on asking him to "travel around the world" with her every year. Compared with the antique markets overseas and in China, which are now full of fakes, this is truly a paradise for finding bargains.

Today was Zhou Zhi's third time passing by an antique shop called Seidenberg Antiques, and also his third time stopping there.

This is a very large porcelain shop. When I say it is large, I don’t mean the area of ​​the store or the number of employees, but the things inside.

The plates Zhouzhi saw here could not be counted by "individuals" but by "stacks".

Piles of plates and bowls were placed on the ground, piled up as high as the calves. There were shelves nailed to several walls of the store, on which were placed three layers of pots, bottles, jars and other porcelain, stacked from the corners to nearly the ceiling. There was only a small iron fence at the edge of the partition to protect it. Zhou Zhi was really worried that if there was an earthquake, this antique porcelain shop would suffer heavy losses.

The variety of things here is also dazzling, mixed from all over the world, there are bone china from England, royal blue and white disks from the Middle East, pink shadow blue from North Korea and South Korea, and various kinds of porcelain from island countries.

Of course, the most numerous ones are various kinds of porcelain from China.

It can be seen that this shop is a resale of porcelain from old houses everywhere. The items are very cheap, and most of them are from the last few decades. As for the oriental porcelain that Zhou Zhi is interested in, most of them are from the Republic of China and Jingdezhen porcelain produced after the founding of the People's Republic of China.

After all, these two periods were the peak period for the outflow of Chinese porcelain.