Information Times News (Reporter Mai Jinting Correspondent Li Guanghui) On January 26, 2022, the micro-exhibition "Tiger Pillow in the Year of the Tiger" opened in the exhibition area of the King Tomb of the South VietnamEse King Museum, and the exhibition period is until March 27, 2022. The exhibition exhibits a total of 19 pieces (sets) of pillows from the South Vietnam King Museum, including 3 first-class cultural relics, 3 second-class cultural relics, 3 third-class cultural relics, and exquisite cultural relics such as three-colored tiger-shaped carved poetry pillows and cloth pillows newly collected and exhibited for the first time in recent years.
Pillows are extremely common bedding in people's lives, containing rich and unique cultural connotations. Archaeological discoveries and documentary records of the pillow contain porcelain, jade, stone, copper, wood, leather, cloth and other different materials, with the development of ceramic art in the Song and Yuan Dynasties, porcelain pillows are also becoming more and more prosperous.
Since 1992, the Museum of the King of Nanyue has been acquiring more than 200 porcelain pillows donated by the famous Hong Kong collector Yang Yongde and his wife, and has continuously acquired them on a large scale and through multiple channels, supplemented by gifts, allocations, auctions and other ways to continuously enrich the pillow collection. By 2021, the museum will have a total collection of nearly 800 pillows, of which the largest number of ceramic pillows is 584, in addition to pillows and pillow top embroidery of wood, bamboo rattan, leather, bronze and other textures. The number of pillow collections, the complete categories, and the large number of kilns are rare for museums at home and abroad.
Ceramic tiger pillows can be divided into tiger shaped pillows and tiger pattern pillows. Tiger-shaped pillow is a bedding made of imitation of the shape of a tiger, because its image is mostly lying down, also known as a tiger-shaped pillow or crouching tiger-shaped pillow. In the Northern Song Dynasty Hu Su wrote in the "Wen Gong Collection", "Last night in the West Building, the reunion was like last year. The phoenix screen is not old, and the tiger pillow is not sleeping. Breaking the hatred with Xiang Shuo, flowing mourning to send Shu strings. Ge Hua and Betelgeuse, this view is probably not related. It recorded the surprise feelings brought by the tiger-shaped pillow to people.
The production area of tiger-shaped pillows is mainly concentrated in the Yellow River Basin, such as Hebei Cizhou kiln, Henan Yuzhou pickpocket kiln and Juntai kiln, Shanxi Changzhi kiln, etc., of which the tiger pillow produced by Shanxi Changzhi kiln is the highest artistic level and the largest amount of inheritance in the Song and Jin Dynasties. The tiger-shaped pillow in the courtyard porcelain pillow is also the largest number of products in the Jin Dynasty Changzhi kiln, all of which are crouching tiger-shaped, the tiger's back is flat and concave as the pillow surface, and the pillow surface decoration is rich in themes, mostly with white painted flowers and birds, and there are also poems and other decorations.
The tiger-patterned pillow is a pillow with a tiger motif as its main decoration on the pillow surface. Porcelain painting tiger ornamentation was pioneered in the Song Dynasty and flourished in the Jin Dynasty. At present, tiger pattern pillows with exact excavation sites are found in Ci County, Hebei Province, that is, the central area of the Cizhou kiln, when they are locally produced.
As the bearer of traditional culture, tiger pillow art continues to this day, and some areas still have the custom of giving tiger-shaped pillows or ear pillows to newborn babies or infants who are "100 years old", which are mostly sewn by grandmothers or grandmothers themselves, and give the elderly care and love for their young children. Folk craftsmen also integrate the symbols of the tiger's heroic, righteous, majestic character and its vitality into the decoration and shape of the pillow, and combine it with the traditional five poisonous ornaments of disaster relief and evil - toad frog, gecko, centipede, snake, scorpion, etc., as decoration, so as to strengthen the protection of children.
The small tiger pillow carries rich national spirit and historical and cultural information, pins on people's yearning and pursuit of a better life, and also opens a window for us to understand Chinese history and traditional culture.