Ming Dynasty: Carpenters will also have spring
Four words, "scholars, farmers, industrialists and merchants", you can see what the social status of craftsmen in the past is, the so-called "Zi Smith Wheel Public Opinion", "Witch Doctor Musician Hundred Workers" and the like, even if the skills are superb, they are still lightly regarded by the people of the time, it is difficult to wait for the elegant hall, and the gentlemen who "come and go without white Ding" will rarely make friends with them.
For example, in the Song Dynasty, which has always been considered enlightened, there was a Sichuan ink worker named Pu Dashao, who was "very fine in making (ink)" and his fame and works spread to the palace.
As a result, when Song Gaozong saw that the ink ingot had the name of "Jinping Pu Shunmei" engraved by the ink worker, he was furious, threw the ink on the ground, and rebuked: "An ink worker dares to make a name in vain, but he is also guilty." The famous craftsman Pu Dashao died because of this.
But in the Ming Dynasty, especially in the middle and late period, the status of craftsmen was unprecedentedly loosened.
At that time, in order to promote the development of handicraft industry, Zhu Yuanzhang abolished the practice of the rulers of the Yuan Dynasty using handicraft slaves as "worker slaves", liberated them from the labor slave system as good people, and made them operate independently, and the opponent industrial craftsmen practiced residence (recruiting craftsmen from the people to come to Beijing for royal production, serving ten days a month) and shifts (craftsmen from all over the world served in Beijing for three months every three years) system, and the craftsmen had a little personal freedom of business, allowing them to "freely take advantage of the work".
When craftsmen have their own personal freedom, their social status as individuals, and their private values and rights, the enthusiasm and creativity that burst out are amazing.
Under the relaxed commercial atmosphere and personal restrictions, the handicraft industry in the Ming Dynasty was extremely developed, such as textiles, ceramics, smelting, construction, printing, papermaking, shipbuilding, etc. Compared with the previous generation, there was a great development, the division of labor in workshops became increasingly detailed, and technological innovation became popular.
Coupled with the increasingly extravagant style of the late Ming Dynasty, "Wang Gang Xie Niu", whether rich or poor, everyone likes exquisite things, loves to create gardens and furnishings of the Ming people, for good crafts, the pursuit is endless, skilled craftsmen not only increase in value, but also improve their status.
Compared with the salaries of officials at that time, even the income of ordinary carpenters was not low, and their salaries were even equivalent to today's high-level white-collar workers or the seven-pin officials of the time, and it was not surprising that the income of highly skilled and famous carpenters exceeded that of the prefect.
For example, in addition to the traditional four peoples of scholars, farmers, workers and merchants, two people, soldiers and monks, were added in the Song Dynasty, and the saying of "six people" was added.
In the Ming Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty Yao Brigade revived the theory of the "Twenty-Four Peoples": In addition to the scholars, farmers, workers, merchants, soldiers, and monks, the "Eighteen People" were added, namely Taoists, healers, bumists, xingming, xiangmians, xiangdi, Yishi, donkeys, drivers, servants, grates, pedicures, cultivation, advocates, small singers, excellent people, miscellaneous dramas, and horse thieves. The eighteen new people are all "ungranded" people.
This diversification of the approximate division of occupations is also enough to show that the economy is sufficiently prosperous, and the "idle people" have a life of pursuing "leisure", and everyone's view of "strange tricks and tricks" has changed from depreciation to praise:
Everyone in the world has the principle of reaching the pinnacle of perfection. --Zhang Dai The skills are all immortal, so why bother? - He Weiran
Literati and doctors also gave great affirmation to the works of famous craftsmen from the artistic point of view, and even attached equal importance to "poetry and painting", handicrafts and poetry and painting are completely similar in art and theory, and folk art and literati art are not high or low in the grade, the two are on a level line, and the craftsmanship can also be immortalized.
For example, there was a carpenter named Xu Zhengming in Suzhou who saw the rivers in his hometown and the traffic was inconvenient, so he wanted to create a "flying car" idea. After more than ten years of efforts, its finished product is shaped like a chestnut chair (that is, a circle chair), but "there is a mechanism under it, the teeth and teeth are staggered", and "people sit in the chair, with bipedal impact plates." The opportunity to get on and off, turn the wind and whirlwind", the "flying car" finally "a few feet off the ground, flying across the harbor". It's as magical as a human-powered helicopter, but unfortunately there is no physical existence.
The confluence of the scholar and the craftsman
After the Wanli Calendar, the identities of the literati and the craftsmen were strangely closer or even overlapped.
For the literati, the contact and exchange with the people of the city is far more frequent than in the past, and their lifestyle, life attitude, aesthetic taste, and creative tendency are gradually getting closer to the world, and the "scholars" have gradually joined the ranks of pursuing profits, and doing business with culture has also become a social trend, especially for many scholars whose families are not rich, "ruling life" has also become their life requirements.
To put it simply, literati also want to eat, but also want to live well, who wants to be only a poor acid showman? What's so bad about being a businessman and being a craftsman? Don't those rich businessmen who want to seek elegance need my eyes to guide them?
However, whether it is to maintain a livelihood or pursue exquisite crafts, literati and scholars are also indispensable to deal with hundreds of workers, and there is also a deep friendship between the soldiers and craftsmen, such as Zhang Dai and Haining carver Wang Ergong, Wei Xueqiu brothers and Changshu micro-carving artist Wang Shuyuan, many shifu celebrities and Huating gardener Zhang Lian, all have a good friendship story.
Some scholars even declared that "they did not have much contact with scholars, although in the same year, such as Song Dashan and Zhang Zhangke, they did not count each other, and Du Xi traveled with Gu Weiqian, Qi Longyuan, and Zhang Yigui." ”
For craftsmen, the loosening of the estrangement from the literati is beneficial in many ways.
Embodied in interpersonal relations, the same is the ink worker, the Ming Dynasty Fang Yulu because of the ink making reputation is extremely prosperous, there is the officer and soldier department attendant Wang Daokun rushed to the marriage, and did not think that the other party was a craftsman and had a different identity.
Ming Fang Yu Lu Qi Yun scenic octagonal ink
And unlike the craftsmen who think that the craftsmen cannot be scientifically examined, the craftsmen are naturalized in the local area because they are not fixed residences, and sometimes they live in other places for a long time, and they are also able to enter the military and become officials.
The distance between the craftsman and the taxi has been closer than ever.
When the craftsman understands the literati
The literati of the Ming Dynasty placed their affection on things, injected many literati ideas into the furniture design and production used in daily life, and skillfully combined the literati temperament with the secular furniture supplies, and the scribes tried their best to show their literati qualities and literary style through the design of furniture.
The craftsmen who are specifically implemented on the furniture have learned enough artistic edification and aesthetic discipline from the literati and scholars, which are of great benefit in the specific creation.
It is precisely for this reason that craftsmen become close to Confucian Taoist interpretation of art texts such as fine poetry, danqing, and law calligraphy; craftsmen are most precious in stationery, traveling tools, cursing, gardening, antiquities, etc.; craftsmanship is based on near elegance, wonderfulness, and high elegance.
This kind of communication and exchange is two-way, reflecting the mutual influence and blending of Ming Dynasty elegant literature and art, and also enabling the practical furniture art with a deep literati style to be realized.
Therefore, the Ming-style home has different furniture characteristics from the past, the pursuit of "literary craftsmanship", "advocating simplicity, abandoning the cumbersome" style, pay attention to the "unity of nature and man" cosmology, wood selection and production of "from the love, by nature" of the simple principle.
The most typical is still the late Ming Dynasty Jiangnan famous scholar Wen Zhenheng mentioned in the "Chronicle of Long Things" that the literati furniture decoration can only be "slightly carved cloud heads, ruyi and the like, and cannot be carved with dragons, phoenixes, flowers and grasses."
In the preface, the basic principles of furniture furnishing and design are proposed, "several beds have degrees, utensils have styles, positions are fixed, expensive is fine and convenient, simple and tailored, ingenious and natural".
It can be seen that Ming and Qing dynasty furniture is a medium, and the scribes express their full literary talents on furniture design, and produce daily necessities with a deep literati temperament through skillful craftsmen.
The craftsmen have integrated the beautiful linear shapes in the artistic fields such as ancient jade, bronze, ceramics, calligraphy, architecture, painting and so on into each component and component of The Ming-style furniture, so that the linear shape of the furniture is deeply rigid and soft in the design and processing, and the magic of flowing and stretching is perfect.
At the same time, the Craftsmen of the Ming Dynasty carved the shape of the furniture with a strict proportional relationship and a comfortable and pleasant scale to make it closely related to the function of the furniture, and strived to achieve the harmony of form and function.
The decoration of furniture needs to be simple enough to make people imperceptible but full of structural and aesthetic important decorative significance. This not only requires craftsmen to have superb skills, but also craftsmen to have both aesthetic and aesthetic artistic and humanistic connotations.
A common example is the corner tooth strip at the horizontal and longitudinal junction of Ming-style furniture, and the craftsmen apply different carvings according to their position, shape and size, giving beauty to practicality.
Although the views of the scholar and the craftsman, the Taoist view, and the values have not been eliminated by the interaction of the times, in this valuable cross-class exchange, the ming-style furniture, which is a strange thing in the history of furniture, is still bred.