Before talking about the earliest architectural model in China, let's start with this picture.
The crowd in the picture leans forward, as if they are paying homage to the memorial, and the atmosphere is solemn and solemn. However, what attracts attention is a small house in the lower right corner of the picture, what do they do with this small house?
Yinan Han Tomb Front Room East Wall Horizontal Sacrifice Diagram (Partial) Source/Study of Architectural Ming Artifacts of the Han Dynasty
In fact, this is our theme today, the ancient architectural model, which has a more academic name, called architectural mingqi.
01
What is a building tool?
Before we start talking about architectural tools, let's first talk about what kind of things the bright tools are.
According to records, the word Mingqi appeared as early as the summer time. Ming Tong meditation, meditation means what the ancients called hades, the earth, so the meditation vessel represents those funeral items prepared for the dead of the dead, which is related to the ancient people's concept of "death is like life".
Source: China National Geographic flagship store
This concept still continues in modern times, and whenever it comes to ancestor worship, a large number of paper money and paper houses are still used to worship the ancestors.
It is mentioned in the Book of Rites and Tan Bows,
"Fu Ming ware, ghost ware also; sacrificial vessels, human artifacts also."
This clearly points out that the ming vessel is a vessel dedicated to the undead and is strictly separate from the real-life utensils.
There are two groups of carriages and horses in the tombs of mancheng, which vividly illustrate the difference between the two - one is a real carriage and horse placed in front of the altar, and the other is a miniature mingge carriage and horse placed behind the shrine seat.
Wu Hong believes that the Ming Dynasty chariots and horses may have been used to carry the soul of the tomb owner from the coffin to the altar to receive offerings from relatives in this world.
Terracotta Warriors Image Source/Photo Network
The figurines we are familiar with also belong to a more special type of ming artifact, which is a substitute for the abandoned burial of real people.
The term "initiator" was used by Confucius to express a critique of the customs of human burial. However, in a country with such a profound influence from Confucianism, the tradition of making figurines has not stopped because of Confucius's next alarmism that "it has no consequences", which is also a doubt.
Architectural Ming Ware Exhibition Source/Jiaozuo City Museum
Speaking of architectural mingqi, it refers to those architectural models in the mingqi that are almost real in appearance, covering all kinds of places needed in life, including warehouses for storage, courtyards for living, theater buildings and terraces for entertainment, and watchtowers for defense. Most of these buildings are made of pottery, so they are often called "pottery buildings", but they also include a small amount of copper, stone, and wood.
Architectural ming ware is widely distributed in the mainland, so there are architectural patterns that reflect the characteristics of different regions in the north and south, including dry-column buildings in the Lingnan region, pottery boats, and pavilions in the north.
The earliest architectural model excavated from archaeological excavations on the mainland should be a pottery house in the Neolithic site in Gansu.
Pottery house excavated from Gansu Neolithic site Photo source/Nanjing Museum
In PiXian County, Jiangsu Province, Shaanxi Yangshao Cultural Sites, there are also pottery house models, which reflect the image and style characteristics of the buildings of their respective eras to a certain extent, although the specific function is not clear, but at least it can be regarded as the predecessor of the architectural Ming ware.
It is worth mentioning that the hairpins of the miniature pavilion model have been excavated in the tomb of the Ming Yiwang family, which is exquisitely made and gorgeous.
The tomb of the Ming Yi family was excavated from the pavilion and is currently on display in the "Chinese Costume Culture Exhibition" Photo source/National Museum of China
Most of the existing architectural tools in the mainland were excavated in the Han Dynasty, but the components with different functions in the building, such as warehouses, stoves, wells, toilets and other monomers, appeared earlier, and did not appear at the same time, but only in the Han Dynasty, they were combined.
Yanshi square two-storey gray pottery warehouse building Eastern Han Dynasty Source/Henan Museum
There will also be human figurines and animal figurines in large architectural artifacts to form a vivid and complete ideal home.
The Han Dynasty made extensive use of architectural tools, which was related to the prevalence of thick burial in Han Dynasty society. The socio-economic situation of the Han Dynasty could no longer meet the demand for extravagant tombs, which in turn dragged down the economy at that time. The feudal emperor also issued many edicts prohibiting the burial system. At this point, architectural artifacts that can meet the needs of worship and consume less naturally came into being.
A large number of architectural ming artifacts is the most three-dimensional and intuitive way to understand the wooden architecture of the Han Dynasty.
Liang Sicheng surveyed and mapped han que in Sichuan
Except for a few stone ques and stone chambers, the Han Dynasty buildings on the surface of the earth have all disappeared. The architectural apparatus that imitates the appearance of the real building is the best object of observation.
02
Types and construction of architectural artifacts
The barn where grain is stored
In various functional uses of the building utensils, the largest number of warehouses guarding grain has been unearthed, and it can best reflect the basic needs of people, but it is only to fill the stomach.
The barn can be roughly divided into two categories, one is a container-like barn, with a cone top type and a cylindrical type, and a foot at the bottom to prevent the grain from getting wet;
Left: Round gray pottery barn Right: Round green glazed pottery barn Source/Henan Museum
The first type is a warehouse with a relatively rich shape, most of which has no doors on the ground floor and has ventilation holes. Some are set with doors, and many with door locks can be used for anti-theft.
Grain found in the warehouse building of the Jiaozuo Museum Image source/network core photography circle
Some warehouses were excavated and found to contain food crops.
Green glazed pottery mill Source/Henan Museum
In addition, there are grain workshops for scooping rice.
A house where you live and relax
The houses used for living can be roughly divided into three categories.
Some have warehouses at the bottom to store grain; some are purely residential, with random layouts and no fixed forms; and there are large combined courtyards, which are in the form of multiple courtyards and do not have a strict symmetrical axis.
The large courtyard includes a variety of different types of pavilions: doorways and even watchtowers.
Red pottery toilet pigsty Source/Henan Museum
There are kitchens, pigsty, and toilets in the courtyard, so there are often piglets or nursing sows and piglets to reflect the desire for abundance.
Play in the theater floor
Used for the pursuit of pleasure are the Hundred Opera Building and the Terrace Pavilion.
Three-story green glazed pottery hundred opera building Photo source/Henan Museum
The Hundred Opera Building is a place to perform "Hundred Plays", usually only two or three floors, in which there are many character figurines and animal figurines carved.
Lingbao No. 3 Tomb Three-story Green Glazed Pottery Water Pavilion Eastern Han Dynasty Source/Henan Museum
Tai Xie is a high-rise platform that is high and far away, transparent on all sides, and there are often water plates at the bottom, and there are also aquatic animal figurines such as fish, turtles, turtles and ducks in the plates, to simulate the elegant posture in the garden.
Most of these two types of architectural tools are light in style, richly decorated, and have more floors, showing the dynamic beauty of vertical upwards.
Reconnaissance of the watchtower
The watchtower is the product of the intensification of social contradictions in a special period.
Four-storey green glazed pottery watchtower Source/Henan Museum
At the end of the Han Dynasty, it was a turbulent year of local division and princely competition, and the watchtower had the watchtower function to effectively observe the enemy situation, carry out advance defense, and guard the family.
Therefore, the watchtower is generally more enclosed and has little decoration, showing a majestic and solemn posture.
03
Architecture as an "idea"
Before appreciating the details of the construction of architectural tools, we need to ask ourselves a question, are the details depicted in architectural tools real enough? Can we unrecognizably and without thinking trust the image of architectural ming ware and extract information about the wooden architecture of the Han Dynasty?
The answer may be no.
As early as Liang Sicheng's first study in the United States, he made an article "A Three-story Pottery Ming Ware of the Han Dynasty", which detailed a pottery building hidden by Harvard University. In it, he argues that he found that the gladiatorial arches on the pavilion did not work and did not solve the problem, and that the pavilion did not represent the pillars.
Although the architectural artifacts contain a lot of design ingenuity of craftsmen and are depicted very delicately, the phenomenon mentioned by Liang Sicheng is very common. That is to say, the architectural tools may not be the equal proportion of the building object, and the various components in it are only imitations of the shape and lack practical functions.
This is the case with the bucket arch, which is an important shape and feature in ancient Chinese architecture. From the architectural tools, it is difficult to determine that the connection between the bucket arch and the girder can really be forced and play a role.
In 1973, a close-up of the details of the five-story painted pottery warehouse building unearthed in the western suburbs of Jiaozuo Image source/Henan Museum
The craftsman, out of the need to shape the complex pattern of the bucket arch, sacrificed the volume that matched the actual situation, and it was not proportional to the height of the house, and a single bucket arch occupied half the height of the house.
Xuzhou Ten Mile Shop Portrait Stone Hall, Characters
This situation, which does not conform to the mechanics of the building and the proportions of the structure, also appears in the portrait stone, which is probably the distance between art and reality.
There are also two very special phenomena of bucket arches in architectural tools:
One is to place the columns and bucket arches on the midline of the building.
Leshan Dawanzui pottery house line map
This situation only appeared in the architectural tools and portrait stones of the Han Dynasty, which is not in line with reality, and there are no examples in later generations, and some scholars believe that this is the expression of the meaning of the dou arch as an indoor guardian.
The other is a bucket arch under the window, which often appears at the same time as a kind of hole in the upper and lower triangle called "peeping", which is located on the left and right sides of the arch. This image of the arch and the peep coexisting under the window has been excavated in Guangzhou, and may have appeared instead of the dry rail.
The focus of the shaping of the architectural ware provides us with ideas for exploring its structure, in addition to the bucket arch, the façade of the architectural ware is also worth noting.
A pottery courtyard excavated from the tomb of the Fufeng official Han in Shaanxi Province was used to peep at the leopard.
The façade of this architectural artifact has white outlines, black padding, and is painted with white diamond-shaped patterns. The back has only white hooked edges and no base color. Obviously, the front costs more than the back. The interior walls of the courtyard, which are difficult to see from the outside, are painted with a white background, as if they are also for anyone to appreciate.
To summarize briefly, it is not difficult to understand that this artifact is viewed by two eyes, the front of the object that is viewed by the eyes of the real world, and the inside of the artifact that is viewed by the eyes of the people in the tomb. Therefore, we conclude that the viewing angle of the observer should be directly in front of the view, or look down.
The structure of the architectural artifacts is mostly the same, and what is more, the back is only a plan, attached to the burial chamber.
04
Those architectural artifacts that are worth seeing
01/ Spring and Autumn Trick Music Copper House
The earliest architectural tools
The Spring and Autumn Period Qile Copper House is a particularly fine casting and special material of a piece of architectural artifact, excavated from the tomb of an aristocrat in Shaoxing, and now in the Zhejiang Provincial Museum.
This bronze house is topped with a large dove, with an open front, only two columns, surrounded by three sides, and a wall on the back, and six people in the house are drumming and singing. The Spring and Autumn Trick Music Copper House is very characteristic of Yuedi, reflecting the bird beliefs of the ancient Yue people.
02/ Seven-storey pavilion painted pottery warehouse building
The building can be disassembled and assembled, with up to 31 pieces of components. It is composed of four parts: the courtyard, the main building, the annex building and the pavilion road.
The main building is tall and majestic, the annex building is tall and beautiful, the main building is 192 cm high, which is a seven-storey four-eaves pavilion, and the annex is 128 cm high, which is a high-rise single-eaves four-storey building. The pavilion is framed between the third floor of the main building and the annex, connecting the two into a whole. The arches used in each floor are all made of one bucket and five liters. Floor painting is to fill in red, white, yellow and other colors on the engraving to make it more vivid and eye-catching.
This pavilion is a true portrayal of the superb architectural techniques of the Han Dynasty's "fu dao xingkong" and "cross-city pool to make a flying pavilion", and should occupy an important position in the study of Chinese architectural history.
03/ Huaiyang in zhuang han tomb three into the pottery courtyard
The building is a three-entry courtyard with a forecourt, atrium and a backyard. The main building is a two-storey hall with heavy eaves, and the backyard has a kitchen, toilets and pigsty. To the west of the courtyard is a three-walled ridge, which occupies about a quarter of the courtyard. Inside, there are three standing figures, with the master in the middle and the waiter on both sides. The craftsmen were patient with the design and construction, and the cirrus patterns on the tiles were recognized by zooming in so far, and the irrigation ditches and mounds of the fields were clearly visible.
The excavated tomb of this artifact is only a small rectangular earthen pit vertical tomb, and this courtyard occupies one-third of the space of the tomb. The complex structure of the courtyard contrasts with the simple shape of the tomb, as if the limited space of the tomb is extended through this miniature building.
This gray pottery courtyard is a large and rich architectural model of the early Western Han Dynasty excavated in Henan Province, with both courtyard high-rise buildings and farmland, and painted with murals, and the whole group of buildings is rigorous in structure, which is a true portrayal of the economic development of the landlord's manor at that time.
04/ Eastern Han Dynasty green glazed pottery water pavilion
Excavated in 1972 in Zhangwan, Lingbao County, Henan Province, it is now in the Henan Museum.
The waterhouse is 53 cm high, 45 cm long, 45 cm long and 40 cm in diameter. The water pavilion is divided into two layers and can be disassembled and assembled. Among them, the bottom is a square disc type pool, flat bottom folded lip, the pool has 10 small fish, 4 frogs, 3 turtles, and a square pointed small pavilion in each corner of the pond wall, with a top glossy surface and no tile ridges; The wall is also decorated with 5 water ducks and 4 small fish. In the center of the pan stands a two-storey pavilion-style water pavilion with a height of 0.54 meters. The four corners of the flat seat on the first floor have a naked belly covering the ears and sitting guards, and the four corner columns of the pavilion in the flat seat are three sides of the door, and one side is a large lattice window.
The lower level of the pavilion directly supports the flat seat of the upper floor, which has the same shape as the flat seat of the lower floor. There are two armed figurines in each of the four corners of the flat seat and two figurines wearing flat heads and long robes. The top is a four-cornered spire, glossy, no tile ridges, probably the original ornaments, which have been lost, leaving only traces.
The water pavilion is a relic of the middle and late Eastern Han Dynasty, with a green glaze throughout the body and exquisite shape, which is a precious material for studying the leisurely life and architectural art of the rich merchants and merchants in the Eastern Han Dynasty, and the firing process of lead-glazed pottery.
05/ Three Kingdoms yellow-brown glazed pottery building
Phase chakra that embodies the influence of Buddhism
Source/Xiangyang Museum
In October 2008, the tomb of Cai Yue in Fancheng was excavated and is now in the Xiangyang Museum. The pottery tower consists of a gate tower, a courtyard wall and a two-story pavilion with a height of 104, a depth of 31 and a width of 33 cm. The plan of the courtyard wall is rectangular, and the left, right and rear walls are covered with double-sloped eaves. The front wall is higher, with a double-sided slope roof on the upper side, and two octagonal columns under the front slope, the columns and the front wall are connected by two beams, and the back slope eaves are placed on the left and right walls to form a gatehouse. There are bear-shaped pillars under the columns of the two galleries and two horse stakes on the inside.
There are two floors of pavilions in the courtyard, the front wall of the lower floor pavilion opens a gate, two doors, the door is decorated with vertical stripes, the wall above the door is decorated with grid patterns and vertical stripes, there is a rectangular window above the left and right walls, five ridges and four-note waist eaves, the front ridge and the vertical ridge end have a bodhi leaf-shaped tail, on which four bears support the flat seat, the flat seat is surrounded by a hook fence, the flat seat is equipped with a second floor pavilion, the four walls are equipped with shutters, the five-ridge four-note roof, the ridge end has a bodhi leaf-shaped owl tail, the top is neutral with a treasure brake (phase wheel), and the base is hollowed out. Nearly hemispherical shape, carved with a mother-child bear fighting tiger pattern, on the top is a seven-fold bean plate-like phase wheel, topped with a crescent-shaped beast. The roof has tile ridges, and the ends of the tile ridges are molded with circular moiré tiles.
06/ Pavilion style pottery house
This pavilion-style pottery house is now in the Guangzhou Municipal Museum, a creation of the early Eastern Han Dynasty, and was excavated in 1957 in Xianglangang, Dongshan.
The pavilion-style pottery house excavated from the Han tomb is diverse in form, complex in structure and rich in variation. The pottery building is the largest in scale and has a strict structure. The architectural layout is handled in accordance with the principle of balanced symmetry, with an obvious central axis, and the combination of high and low in the entire building is staggered, and the primary and secondary are clear, indicating that the Chinese architecture uses the wooden frame as the structural skeleton and the symmetrical layout form based on the central axis, which has fully matured by the Han Dynasty.
bibliography:
1. Feng Yuan, "The Object Definition of Architectural Ming Ware"
2. Li Sisi, "Research on Architectural Ming Ware in the Han Dynasty"
3. Zhou Xueying, "Exploring the Source of Architectural Ming Instruments in the Han Dynasty"
5. Li Yingying, "Research on the Architecture of Pottery Buildings Unearthed in The Two Capitals of the Han Dynasty"
6. Henan Museum, ed. , v. "Han Dynasty Architectural Ming Artifacts Unearthed in Henan"
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