Jointly sponsored by the Chengde Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics and the Palace Museum, the "Zhong Ming Shengshi: The Forbidden City and the Chengde Summer Resort Tibetan Clocks and Watches Joint Exhibition" was recently exhibited at the Palace Museum.
Clocks and watches are a special and precious category in the qing dynasty court collection. The Forbidden City and the Summer Resort, as the centers of political and court life in the Qing Dynasty, have historically collected a large number of self-chiming clocks. The exhibition selects representative clocks and watches from the Palace Museum and the Chengde Summer Resort Museum, of which 40 clocks and watches are exhibited by the Palace Museum and 20 clocks and watches are exhibited by the Chengde Summer Resort Museum.
Chengde Mountain Resort Museum collection of copper gilded goat driving music box table
The production age of these clocks continued from the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century, covering not only the works of famous artists in Western countries such as Britain, France, switzerland, etc., but also the fine works of the Qing Palace and Guangzhou, Suzhou and other places.
The exhibition also specially exhibits 10 pairs of clocks and watches collected by the two museums on the same stage, so that the audience can appreciate the colorful clocks and watches of different periods, different cultures and different regions, and also understand the status of the Qing Dynasty court clock collection and the trajectory of the development and change of the Qing Dynasty court time concept.
"A mountain villa, half of the History of the Qing Dynasty", the clocks and watches of the Chengde Summer Resort Museum exhibited this time are the most important parts of the collection, which moved south in the 1930s and 1940s, and after being transported back to Chengde from Nanjing in 1956, it was the first time to walk out of the summer resort with an overall appearance.
The exhibition is another cooperation between the Palace Museum and the Chengde Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics following the signing of a strategic agreement in 2020 and the successful holding of the exhibition "Sumire Fushou: When Tashilhunpo Monastery Meets the Summer Resort" exhibition at the Chengde Museum, and is an attempt by Chengde to implement the "going out" strategy with the support of the Palace Museum.
In 2020, the Palace Museum cooperated with the Summer Resort Museum to establish the "Ancient Clock Joint Restoration Laboratory" to restore the clocks and watches stored in the Summer Resort. It is reported that the "Zhong Ming Shengshi: The Forbidden City and Chengde Summer Resort Tibetan Clocks and Watches Joint Exhibition" will last until May 8. After the exhibition, some of the exhibits will continue to be exhibited at the Chengde Mountain Resort Museum.