Riding the wind of rebirth

"The more precious type of style is the one with a reign mark other than 'Made in the Xuande Period of the Ming Dynasty'. This type of copper furnace is generally made by the government at that time. The quality is of course much higher than the folk imitations, and even higher than the official imitation Xuande six-character mark."

"In other words, this style of 'made under the supervision of Qinglai in the winter of the Renwu year of Chongzhen' is actually more precious than the style of 'made in the Xuande period of the Ming Dynasty'?" asked host Wang.

"In fact, it should be understood this way." Mr. Wang smiled and said, "The real copper furnace made in the Xuande Period of the Ming Dynasty is no longer seen now. Basically, all copper furnaces with the "Made in the Xuande Period of the Ming Dynasty" mark can be regarded as later imitations. Let's not talk about the folk imitations. The official imitations of the consignment and the reign marks are of similar quality. The preciousness of the two depends mainly on the quality of the later maintenance and polishing."

"However, the quality of official-made year-mark furnaces is guaranteed, and the authenticity is easy to determine, while the entrusted-in-trust-in-trust-in-trust-style furnaces are easily confused with folk imitations, which increases the difficulty of identification and the relatively high threshold for collection. Therefore, in the industry, official-made year-mark furnaces are more popular and sought after than official-made entrusted-in-trust-in-trust-style furnaces."

"This is not caused by the quality of the product, but by the market."

"It turns out that no matter which collection you choose, it's not easy to study." Host Wang carefully put the copper stove back on the table and picked up the small lacquer box on the table. "Study of Ming-style Furniture and Explanation of Lacquerware Records are Mr. Wang's famous works. Both books are widely praised. These two subjects are Mr. Wang's favorites, right?"

"Not really." Mr. Wang said, "I like bamboo carvings, paintings, bronze Buddhas, gourds, and even hawking, walking dogs, raising fish and pigeons. But the two books that are worthy of being published are "A Study of Ming-style Furniture" and "Explanation of the Lacquer Records", mainly because of their detailed introductions and sources, which I personally think is very important."

"For example, the contents of Ming-style furniture research and lacquerware commentary are mediocre. The most important part is the index at the back of the book, which I have spent a lot of effort to build over the past few decades."

"There is a common problem in our academic community now, that is, 'books have no indexes'. I think this is a minor, painful and itchy problem that we should not tolerate."

"The index greatly facilitates retrieval and is particularly beneficial for research. In the 1980s, the Complete Works of Chinese Art was compiled and published. I was fortunate to serve as the editor-in-chief of the Lacquerware Volume and wrote an introduction to the more than 50,000-word Ancient Chinese Lacquer Craft for this purpose."

“I wouldn’t say that my understanding is genuine, my insights are profound, and my information is comprehensive, but at least my research is rigorous, original, and well-founded.”

"I think we are scholars and cannot speak without thinking like the vendors at the antique stalls in the ghost market. Everything we write in the book must clearly state its source and withstand discussion and verification by everyone."

"When studying ancient objects, the first two major problems we encounter are authenticity and age. Although handed-down objects often have higher artistic value, they often have lower scientific value due to unclear origins and unknown times." Mr. Wang said: "Unearthed objects are different. They often have the advantages of clear origins and clear times, and are the most reliable physical materials."

"Forty years ago, when studying the Ming and Qing dynasties, people were more focused on handed-down objects, and few paid attention to the Ming and Qing dynasties from an archaeological perspective. Most of my research was on the Ming and Qing dynasties, and then I discovered this problem: most works did not cite new archaeological findings in my country."

"But lacquerware is special. In addition to the Ming and Qing dynasties, there have been a large number of archaeological discoveries since the earliest Hemudu period. Therefore, the main physical evidence for my research on early lacquerware is the selected archaeological materials." "I have introduced these things as a brief history and overview of Chinese lacquerware, and listed 240 annotations for the introduction, explaining the sources of the ancient and modern documents cited."

Zhou Zhi nodded repeatedly as he listened. This is actually the difference between a collector and a scholar.

Mr. Shixiang was a man of broad knowledge and pragmatics, and he made significant contributions to the research of many ancient intangible cultural heritages. His greatest achievement was of course the research of Ming-style furniture and lacquerware, but Zhou Zhi believed that the most important thing was that he set an example of scientific spirit in these two research areas.

The emphasis on appendices, indexes, and reference to archaeological materials has become a very important means of writing papers in later generations. However, at this time, in literary and historical research, there is a lack of the drawback of neglecting citations. Previous writings often ignored annotations, and it was normal to plagiarize without stating the source of the argument in the main text.

The funniest thing is that those works are still being explored by the academic community under the pretext of "old academic norms."

The old man spent so much energy and effort on the appendix index. When he wrote the book, most experts still relied on handed-down cultural relics to make circular arguments, but he had already jumped out of the rut, which undoubtedly showed the profoundness of his insights and the scientific nature of his methods.

Many people attribute this to the fact that the old man graduated from Yenching University and received formal modern education in his early years. However, in the past hundred years, there have been too many scholars who have received modern education, and academic works have long been numerous, but there are still not many works with indexes, which is difficult to explain.

This is probably the reason why people like Grandpa Wang and Grandpa Qi like Zhou Zhi very much, because Zhou Zhi and the three generations of Zhou Zhi's teacher Grandpa Gu's family are the same type of people as them, who attach great importance to the combination of historical and archaeological materials, and the arguments cited in their theories are solid, and each one has a source.

Even when Zhou Zhi used his imagination in the lesson "Appreciation of Oracle Bones" he would be challenged by Mr. Gu, which shows how rigorous the school's tradition is.

Zhou Zhi took it to the extreme and created a digital library and search engine. The emergence of these things will undoubtedly relieve the huge burden for the vast number of cultural and historical workers, and will also allow the academic style and research methods to develop in the direction that the old men hoped for.

Sure enough, I heard Mr. Wang say, "Now that we have computers and other great tools, the time required to search for literature has been greatly reduced compared to our time. Now we don't have to keep books in our heads anymore. We can use computers to search for them conveniently. This has solved a major obstacle in literary and historical research. We can save more energy and use it for more comprehensive and in-depth research."

"It's just like studying lacquerware." Old Master Wang habitually played with the Yongle gilt-painted rectangular box with a double dragon playing with a pearl in his hand and said, "For example, the painted lacquer pottery from the Majiabang culture and the Liangzhu culture is not cited in the Commentary on the Lacquerware Record."

"It now appears that there was an important stage in the Neolithic period, when wood-based lacquerware and pottery-based lacquerware coexisted. Wood-based lacquerware is difficult to preserve, but pottery-based lacquerware has left many traces of lacquer decoration. These lacquer decoration patterns and methods have had a profound impact on many categories of later generations, such as pottery patterns, lacquer, inlay, bronze, silk painting, and even wood carving, statues, and porcelain glaze." (End of this chapter)