More than a hundred years ago, the Qing Palace placed orders from Factories in Europe to customize luxury and top-notch clocks. Today, on the "Zhong Ming Shengshi: The Forbidden City and Chengde Summer Resort Tibetan Clocks and Watches Joint Exhibition", 60 Qing Palace clocks and watches "re-ring". Guo Fuxiang, deputy director of the Palace Museum's Court History Department, said that most of these precious clocks and watches can still operate normally to tell the time, but in order to extend their life, most of them are statically exhibited.
In the exhibition hall, the cultural relics explanatory plaques are divided into two types, red and blue, representing their current residences - the Forbidden City and Chengde. Guo Fuxiang said that the Qing Palace was ordered in pairs, the West did not understand the reason, and there were unreliable speculations such as "may be afraid of bad, buy one more spare" and "work during the day, use it at night". "This is a misunderstanding that I don't understand, and I didn't guess correctly." He said that after the clock entered the palace, some would follow the emperor to visit the summer resort and then stay. As the center of politics and court life in the Qing Dynasty, the Forbidden City and the Summer Resort have historically collected a large number of self-chiming clocks, which are of the same origin and inseparable from each other.
Copper gilded three-person playing music turning clock (pair)
England 18th century
Collection of the Palace Museum Mountain Resort Museum
The exhibition specially assembled 10 pairs of long-separated "brother" clocks and watches, and for the first time, they were exhibited together. One pair of copper-plated three-man bells was made in England in the 18th century. The base of the bell is a music box, the front is a shiny colored material stone, and the bell plate is embedded in the center. In the four corners there is a man's head with horns on his head and a beard on his face, and under the head is a bronze gilded carved skeleton flower. Three children kneeling on the music box ring the bell bowl, and the three groups of bell bowls are covered by hollow flowers. There is a group of screens on the back of the children, which are copper gilded vine flowers, a set of colored material stone patterns in the center, and eight colored material stone flowers on the top of the screen. "If the machine is turned on, the seven small flowers at the top rotate around the central flower and rotate at the same time, resembling a leather ball. The golden hollow flowers in front of the bell bowl rotate, and children beat the bell bowl to accompany the music. Guo Fuxiang said that from the decorative style, it can be seen that this is tailor-made for China, which is very in line with the oriental aesthetics of the time.
Every exhibit has ingenuity. The bronze gilded magic clock is Swiss-made, and after the windspring is wound, the music sounds, the door opens, and the magician sits at the table with two cups in his hand, nodding and blinking, opening his mouth to speak, as if to remind the audience that the performance is about to begin. Then the magician picked up the cup, and there was nothing under it. When the button is put on and then picked up, a red bead appears under the cup on the left and right sides. Repeat the same action, and the cup will become three small red beads. Then, white beads appear. At the same time as the magician performs the beads, the flower basket on the table cracks, and a small bird jumps out of it, sometimes standing still, sometimes turning. Suddenly, the magician pulled down the cup, and the bouncing bird retreated into the flower basket. When the magician picked up the cup again, something magical happened, and the bird in the flower basket actually appeared under the cup. In sync with the magician show, the orb on the roof opens and birds jump out of it while turning and spreading their wings while chirping. After the performance, the bell rings, the door closes, and the action stops. The lacquer-encrusted bronze-decorated clock is made in France, and the front dial is engraved with the words "Henry Padeval" (Henry Padval) and "PARIS", which was made by the famous French watchmaker Henri Padval in the 18th century.
In addition to the masterpieces of Britain, France, Switzerland and other Western countries, the exhibition also exhibits a number of domestic products including the Qing Palace Bell Office, Guangzhou, Suzhou and other places. They were made from the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century. Wooden building style time clock has "Qianlong year system" model. Experts say that because there are many Western watchmakers working in the clock office, the mechanical part of the imperial clock is quite accurate. The copper gilded enamel turning gourd type is produced in Guangzhou, and the bottom of the bell is a music box. The front of the ground floor is a landscape, with a neutral person holding a word link, surrounded by a circle of treasure offerings. The landscape is also arranged with auspicious scenery, lined with couplets, written on rotatable triangular copper pillars, which change different contents for each turn. Among them, there are two couplets, namely "Auspicious View, Boundless Sound" and "The Resort is Good, Spring Terrace is Festive"; there is another painting couplet, the left and right pictures are the same, both of which are kneeling on the ground and holding up the pagoda with both hands. Inside the oval two-storey frontal set box is an oil painting of the cityscape, with moving figures in between. The remaining surfaces are surrounded by water law. The two-storey platform is tiled with water methods, and the middle is a flat gourd bottle. The lower abdomen of the bottle is embedded with a clock, the upper abdomen has a stone flower, and a large bouquet of flowers is inserted in the bottle. After the bottom layer is wound up, the music is started, and the holder shows the four words "FuShou Qi Tian", and the treasure offering team around it comes out of the entrance, and the bats on the Ganoderma lucidum flutter their wings and the word is converted. The characters walk in front of the second-floor set, the water method on the side rotates like a waterfall flowing straight down, and the water method on the platform rotates like a wave. After the strings are loosened, the music stops, and the moving thing stops performing.
Wooden building style time is more clock
The Qing Palace did bells during the Qianlong period
Collection of the Palace Museum
According to statistics, this exhibition selects representative clock collections of the Palace Museum and chengde mountain resort museum, and exhibits them together, of which 40 clocks and watches are exhibited in the Forbidden City and 20 clocks and watches are exhibited in the Chengde Mountain Resort Museum. The clocks and watches of the Chengde Mountain Resort Museum exhibited this time are the most important parts of the museum's collection, which moved south with cultural relics in the 1930s and 1940s, and walked out of the summer resort for the first time in an overall appearance after being transported back to Chengde from Nanjing in 1956. The exhibition venue, the East Temple of the Qianqing Palace, was once the self-chiming bell of the Qing Palace in history.
The exhibition is jointly sponsored by the Palace Museum and the Chengde Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics, and supported by FAW Hongqi. The exhibition will be open from January 26 to May 8. According to the needs of epidemic prevention and control, the exhibition implements reservation admission, with a daily limit of 1,000 people, until the quota is full. After the exhibition, some of the exhibits will continue to be exhibited at the Chengde Mountain Resort Museum.
Other treasures in this exhibition are:
Copper gilded enamel turn flower gourd clock
Copper gilded magic clock
Switzerland 19th century
Coloured lacquer inlaid with bronze atrium clock
France 18th century
Collection of the Summer Resort Museum