The counterfeiting of calligraphy and painting antiques has existed in ancient times, and it has been more endless in the Qing Dynasty. This is closely related to the increasing preciousness of antiques and calligraphy and painting works, as well as the social status quo of their commodification. Its main methods are, completely fake, the use of ancient calligraphy and painting to do fake, true and false doping, etc.
Antique calligraphy and paintings in the Qing Dynasty were forged, and regional characteristics were also formed. Since the Ming and Qing dynasties, a number of centers for fraud have been formed throughout the country. There is a popular proverb in the antique shop, which is: "Suzhou piece, Jingshi Xiang; Jiangxi mounting, Yangzhou gang; Kaifeng goods, Changsha clothing; back door (referring to Beijing Di'anmen) made, a pillar of incense." This proverb basically summarizes the main areas of counterfeiting at that time.
The reproduction, imitation, falsification and falsification of antiques have a long history in China. Originally, copying and copying was originally for the needs of learning, but in fact, many copied and imitated antiques were faked in circulation, and they became de facto fakes and forgeries. Take jiangnan antique counterfeiting as an example, mainly in Suzhou and Yangzhou. The fake antiques produced in the two places are known as "Made in Suzhou" and "Made in Yangzhou", also known as "Suzhou Piece" and "Yangzhou Knife". The cleverness of their means, the ingenuity of their methods, the compulsion of falsehoods, and the confusion of their falsifications are said to be so clever that even experts are often overwhelmed. Pieces and knives are extremely thin objects, which are used to describe their sharpness and invincibility.
Let's start with Suzhou films. Suzhou's manufacture of fake antiques, the history is a long time. Shen Defu's Wan Li Ye Zhi Volume 26 says: "Bone children come from many circles, and Wu Zhong is especially so, and the scribes all make ends meet. This shows that Suzhou was famous for counterfeiting antiques in the Ming Dynasty, and many of the people involved in counterfeiting were literati. According to records, the famous literati Zhang Fengyi and Wang Xiaodeng in Suzhou at that time were collectors, but they also profited from antique counterfeiting, so ordinary people also knew each other. Since the Beginning of the Ming Dynasty, there have been a group of people in the Suzhou area who have mastered the ability of general painting, specializing in making fake paintings for a living, until the Qing Dynasty. Most of the "Suzhou films" have manuscripts, mostly colored paintings with silk brushes, and the famous models are famous painters who are good at green landscapes in ancient times, such as Li Xianxun, Li Zhaodao, Zhao Bo, Zhao Bo (Ma Su), Qiu Ying, etc., especially imitating Qiu Ying's "Qingming Upper River Map", which has been circulated all over the country, and hundreds of "Qingming Upper River Maps" that have survived so far belong to this kind of "Suzhou Films", the layout is generally the same, but the technical level has high and low scores, and in general, the pen strength is relatively weak. Volume IX of Qian Yong's "Luyuan Cong dialect" also said: "Wuzhong has both fake calligraphy and paintings, and also creates wounds and fa stickers, which is called "head-filling goods." "Those who make fake inscriptions in Suzhou are said to have first carved stones according to the words on the rubbings, then made the carved stones old, and then sold such fake rubbings. When the time came, the rough stones were suddenly found in the street market legend, and then the fake stone tablets were sold at a high price.
Let's talk about "Yangzhou Knife". Yangzhou's antiques are not inferior to counterfeits. The style of calligraphy and painting in Yangzhou has always been very hot, and there are many folk masters, so the level of counterfeiting is quite high, and famous artists are sometimes blinded. There is a famous joke that Ruan Yuan one day got a rubbing of the Zhong Ding inscription, in order to verify and understand the inscription, checked a lot of information, and finally concluded that it was a certain Ding. But in the end, it was broken, and it turned out that it was not an inscription of Zhong Ding at all, but was extended from the back of a large cake. This is really the so-called "true when pretending to be true, and there is nowhere to do anything". This joke can probably show that Yangzhou's falsification has reached the realm of turning hands into clouds and overturning hands into rain. Therefore, later Li Hanqiu wrote this plot into "Guangling Tide".
Regarding the stories of Su and Yang using fake antiques to deceive people in history, there are many records in wild history. Counterfeiters in Suzhou and Yangzhou are not only good at forging cultural relics, but also good at defrauding buyers. In Qianjiajian, there is Chen Yunting living in Suzhou, and the collection of antiques and old posts is the richest. But although Chen Yunting is good at this, he is not good at identification, and Suzhou antique dealers gather at his door every day, bent on defrauding him of money. There is a man named Hu Muting, who is a Suzhou eunuch, who is also proficient in jinshi and has become a close friend with Chen Yunting. One day, Hu Muting showed Chen Yunting a stele and said, "This stele has been buried underground for more than a thousand years, because it was excavated because of the order to open the mountain." When it was unearthed, it was washed and brushed, but there was no magic spot, and it was ready to be re-buried. Fortunately, some learned people passed by, and saw that the inscription was quaint, so they copied a piece of paper. The paper later underwent a fire and nearly burned, but fortunately survived. Today, I have come to open my husband's eyes, and it is not a period of ancient and modern Han Tuyuan. Chen watched it again and again, loved it, and desperately wanted to buy it, but Hu Pretended not to allow it. Someone advised Chen: "Mr. Hu regards the golden stone as his life, and if he loses this monument, then the things he spent tens of millions of dollars to buy in the past will be reduced, and you will not want to take the love of people." This time, Chen wanted to get the treasure more and more, and Hu also refused more resolutely. At this time, someone said to Chen: "Mr. Hu's refusal to transfer his beloved things to others is also a common human feeling, and he cannot force it." If you really want to get this thing, I can find some friends with identity to talk to Mr. Hu, and then I will talk to Mr. Hu personally. Chen naturally couldn't ask for it. A few days later, Chen finally got his wish and bought the monument with a huge amount of seven hundred gold. Moreover, after Hu Shi obtained the gold, he was unevenly divided with his accomplices, which led to the opposite. The truth was thus revealed, and it turned out that the precious "stele" was a forgery of forgery! Previously, Hu's interaction with Chen was all premeditated.
Yangzhou also has such a scam. At the end of Guangxu, a salt merchant in Yangzhou was fond of antiques. One day, someone asked for sale the jade fence worn by the Taoist priest, saying: "This is a relic of Wang Youjun, which my family has been passed down from generation to generation, and now it has to be sold as a last resort, and it must be sold for four thousand gold." "The salt merchant has played with it again and again, desperately wanting it, but the price is too expensive." The man temporarily stored the jade basket at the salt merchant's office for further discussion. The next day, there were visitors, and the salt merchant took out the jade basket and admired it with the guests. Unexpectedly, the guest laughed and said, "What is this thing, fake antique." In a certain month of a certain year, I saw him make it with my own eyes in a certain place, how could my husband be fooled by him? When the salt merchant heard this, he slammed his hand on the table, and the jade was shattered with a false sound. A few days later, the man came with a letter from a certain noble prince, in which he said: "There is a wang right army in Jinyang, which is a treasure of the Han Dynasty, and it has been promised a price of five thousand, and the smell is in the king's house, please give it to his people to take it." When the salt merchant saw this, he was both frightened and angry, and said, "That is a forgery, I have broken it." The man deliberately pretended to be honest and said, "My family is poor, and only this treasure remains, which should not have been sold.
If you only want to sell it because you want paste, please give it back to me! The salt merchant said, "Someone has seen you cheating with their own eyes, and you still want to deceive me?" The man took something from his arms without hesitation and said, "I did imitate it, this one." What was shown to you a few days ago is indeed the original. The salt merchant could not speak at this time. The man added, "Even if it is not a rare treasure, it is still my family heirloom." Why didn't we make a deal, and how could you suddenly destroy it? Now that a prince has allowed him to buy it with five thousand gold, what should he do about this? The salt merchant had no choice but to give the man three thousand gold.
In the old days, Suzhou not only had fake characters, fake paintings, and fake posts, but also fake books, fake stones, and fake jade. Bibliophiles regard Song carvings as the most precious, but Song carvings have been extremely rare to this day. The large number of seekers and the lack of sellers provide a perfect opportunity for counterfeiters of antiques. Counterfeiters in Suzhou usually makeovers of Ming Dynasty books and pretend to be Song carvings for huge profits. This is what is said in the "Qing Barnyard Banknotes": "The Su people also dyed the Ming Fan Ben, the Ming Shu Ben, the Ming Translation Song Engraving, and the False Engraving Of this article on paper, and forged the Song carving, and the true and chaotic, and could not be distinguished." "Collectors often like to use Qin brick Han tiles to grind to make brick platforms, but Qin brick Han tiles are not easy to get. The ancient stones sold in the old antique shops in Suzhou are said to be mostly fakes. Some of the level of counterfeiting is very inferior, and people with a little appreciation can also see it. Compared with the production of fake stones, the production process of fake jade is much more complicated. It is said that the Song Dynasty people have mastered the old method of making jade. They made the new jade into a vessel, collected a kind of grass juice to dye it, and then roasted it with fresh bamboo branches, and the new jade became rosy and deep, like ancient jade. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, jade workers invented more ingenious methods, and it is said that even inferior jade can undergo special processing to make it red, black, and become beautiful jade. The method of counterfeiting was first invented by Suzhou people, and the so-called "Qing Barnyard Banknotes" was "only suzhou in the beginning, but it is everywhere in the near future." The situation in Yangzhou is roughly similar to that in Suzhou. There are many businessmen here who specialize in counterfeiting, and in the early Qing Dynasty, there was already the name of "pseudo-Jia". The so-called "pseudo-Jia", to use the words of Shi Tianji, a Yangzhou native in the early Qing Dynasty, in the "Heirloom", is "using wisdom, selling salt and ash, selling rice with water, selling lacquer with oil, and so on."
Suzhou tablets and Yangzhou knives are consistent in counterfeiting, but there are also differences. Counterfeiters in Suzhou always want to leave no trace of artificiality, which is actually difficult to completely do. The forgers in Yangzhou, on the other hand, must deliberately leave a flaw in a certain place (such as the year and month) when making counterfeits, so that he can identify them every day. In Yangzhou, even the font used when counterfeiting is different, and its last stroke is quite similar to the knife used by the cobbler in the old days, so the Yangzhou knife also has the saying of "cobbler's knife".
(Part of the information is from "Yangzhou Palm History")