Riding the wind of rebirth

This kind of associative ability is very valuable, and it also allows Zhou Zhi to have a lot of fun that others don't have.

For example, later on Zhou Zhi liked to sit in an old teahouse in Shudu, watching people coming and going on the street outside, guessing the cause and effect of their interactions, and imagining their conversations.

Later, this ability became the intuition of appreciation of beauty and the ability of writing.

This kind of ability, whether it is the fourth cousin or the godfather and mother, all call it "spirituality".

After the car passed Zaoling Bridge, Zhou Zhi jumped out of the car and said goodbye to everyone. He still had something to do and he had to go to the fourth cousin's place.

Entering the small courtyard where Lan Xiangxi lived, she quietly pushed open the door of the fourth cousin's study room, very gently.

There is a reason for doing this. Most restoration workers of calligraphy and painting ancient books have irregular heart rate. here.

The door opened little by little, and the fourth cousin and the fourth aunt were carefully putting together a scroll in front of the huge desk. Behind them was a huge board, on which was pasted a still incomplete painting heart. It was Shi Yannian. "Cuibi Post Poetry".

To put it bluntly, the restoration of calligraphy and painting is just the five major processes of washing, exposing, repairing, entrusting and all.

The first step is washing, which includes removing old mountings and washing away stains.

The core of calligraphy and painting works is called "painting heart", which is generally a piece of raw calligraphy, cooked calligraphy, or raw silk and cooked silk, on which calligraphy and painting works are directly created.

Subsequent works will be added with supporting paper and backing paper, and then mounted, and made into scrolls for hanging.

The work of removing the old mounting is to remove the scrolls, silk mountings and other peripheral objects of the original ancient paintings, leaving only the core part of the calligraphy and painting that integrates the painting center, supporting paper, and backing paper.

These parts are pasted together. If there are "diseases" such as damage, breakage, corrosion, and insects, they usually occur together.

Therefore, in addition to removing the outer decoration, the action of removing the old mounting needs to soak the core part with water to make it soft and soft. After it can be stretched, lay a repair base on the table top, and then place the painting center on the repair frame. Here, the works soaked in water are put together bit by bit, and the buoyancy and tension of the water are used to restore the fragmented ancient paintings to their original appearance.

Mistakes often occur in this step, such as the famous "Along the River During the Qingming Festival". During the restoration process, a donkey was repaired with the wrong head orientation, which later became a famous public case.

After reassembling the pictures or calligraphy, cover it with a layer of paper, and then enter the next step, the process of washing away the stains.

The reason why we can do this is the uniqueness of Chinese painting and calligraphy.

In Chinese painting and calligraphy, ink is added to ink for calligraphy, and then repeatedly tempered. The ink that is finally obtained from the ink ingot can not disperse when it meets water after it is written on paper.

The same is true for painting pigments. Alum is often used to fix the color on paper, sometimes as many as a dozen times.

After the work is completed, no matter how many hundred years and thousands of years it will pass, it will not fade away when exposed to water. This is the basic premise that ancient Chinese paintings and calligraphy can be restored repeatedly.

Generally, works handed down from generation to generation will be re-framed and repaired every 50 to 100 years.

After removing the old frame and putting together the heart of the painting, it is time to enter the second step - removing stains.

There are many kinds of stains on calligraphy and painting - water stains, mildew, insect stains, oil spots... all of them are listed.

According to different stains, the methods of stain removal are also different, which are generally divided into physical decontamination method and chemical decontamination method.

Physical decontamination is to soak the paper surface with a lot of water, and then use a wet towel roll to roll and squeeze from the center of the work, so as to squeeze the stains on the surface of the work out of the work in this way to achieve the purpose of cleaning.

This work is very effective. The centuries-old paintings, the sewage washed down is often as thick and black as Pu-erh tea soup.

As for water stains, mildew, and insect stains, half of the stains left are acidic traces, and such stains require chemical methods.

For example, the commonly used potassium permanganate decontamination plus vitamin C solvent reduction method is one of them.

After the initial cleaning and repair of the stained works, it enters the next major step - the work of exposing the paper.

Uncovering paper is the most critical step in remounting calligraphy and painting. It is necessary to reverse the work that has just been processed, remove the newly added backing paper for fixing, and then put the soaked and soaked old mounting paper and Remove the backing paper little by little, leaving the core "painting heart".

The supporting paper is directly adhered to the painting heart, which is equivalent to half of the life of the painting heart. It is customary in the industry to call it "life paper".

Therefore, it is obvious that if there is a little carelessness in the process of removing the supporting paper, it will definitely hurt the heart of the painting. If the craftsmanship is not fine enough, it will cause the most direct damage to the calligraphy and painting, and even cause irreversible losses.

If Shi Yannian's "Cuibi Post Poetry" suffered such a loss during the restoration process, then Zhou Zhi and Sibiao could basically be classified as "national sinners".

This work is very difficult and meticulous, and often takes a long time. It usually takes two or three days, and the most troublesome one may last for more than half a month.

During the restoration process, people need to rest. At this time, it is necessary to cover the work with a wet towel to keep it moist.

There are sometimes easter eggs in the process of uncovering the supporting paper. If the ancient painting is created with composite multi-layer paper, after the supporting paper is removed, you can continue to "reveal the heart of the painting" and get two identical ancient paintings.

In the early years, many antique businesses used this method to turn one ancient painting or calligraphy into two, and doubled their money.

However, after such treatment, the color of the painting heart will undoubtedly become lighter, so it is necessary to cooperate with a series of counterfeiting methods to make it more "perfect".

This cannot be called pure forgery, because the two works obtained in this way are indeed genuine.

After this step, the works need to enter the next step of repair action - deacidification protection.

Because calligraphy and painting use a large amount of organic matter whether it is carrier, pigment or mounting method, all old calligraphy and painting may have serious acidification.

With a little force, the painting heart may be fragmented, so it is necessary to neutralize the acid content in the painting and calligraphy to achieve the purpose of prolonging its life.

This step is called "deacidification". After deacidification, the service life of the works will be four or five times longer than before, and there is no need for major movement within 100 years.

For ancient paintings, this step is accompanied by a "removal of lead" treatment.

Ancient pigments often contain lead white, which is an important toner, and almost all pigments must be adjusted to suitability before use.

But after a long time, there will be a problem, the lead will oxidize and deteriorate, causing the color of the picture to become dull.

The repair method is to use a wet towel to surround the area that needs to be recolored, pour white wine, and ignite it to turn the deteriorated lead material into lead white again, making the picture bright again.

It is common sense that paper burns when it encounters fire. This step of repair depends on eyesight and experience. What protects the paper is the large amount of water contained in the paper after such a long treatment.

A clever restorer has the ability to keep the picture moist when the wine fire is extinguished, and the restoration of the lead white is just right.