The previous articles are for today's series of topics to pave the way, today will be the content of the video course is not involved or the time limit can not be explained in detail the characteristics of jade, with text and pictures to make a supplement, if you subscribe to my video course "Jade Knowledge Lecture", then combined with my text will have a clear idea of the collection of gao ancient jade. Before the text began, it was also specially stated that I was doing cultural communication, all the pictures and data in the collection will be based on official archaeology and publicly released museum materials, and the commercial comparison picture part comes from the network, only for knowledge dissemination, does not involve commercial content, if there is infringement, please remind to delete.
First, the first chapter we introduce today is the Hongshan cultural jade
As we have already introduced in the video, the Hongshan culture belongs to a general term for the Neolithic Liaohe River Basin culture, dating from about 4500 to 6000 years ago, distributed in the Liaohe region of Inner Mongolia in the northeast of the mainland, named after the excavation of the Red Mountain Site in Inner Mongolia in 1935.
In the development process of prehistoric jade in China, in addition to the Xinglongwa culture, Hongshan culture jade occupies a very important position.
The use of Hongshan culture as a collective name is mainly representative of this stage of jade, although he is not the earliest cultural site, but its jade modeling characteristics, carving technology and the use of jade system are self-contained, with a distinct northern region and era style, Hongshan jade in addition to the external beauty of the shape, but also has the inherent classical beauty, is the northeast prehistoric jade carving and use into the main symbol of the heyday of the stage.
Hongshan cultural sites are mainly distributed in southeastern Inner Mongolia, western Liaoning, northern Hebei, northern Jilin and other places, among which a number of jade objects including dragons and various animal themes found in the upper basin of the Liaohe River confirm that many animal-themed works in the jade that have been handed down to the world should be manufactured during the Hongshan culture period.
In the Neolithic jade, the jade of the Hongshan culture is mostly made of local materials, using Xiuyan jade with fine texture, slightly lower hardness and uniform color. The shape of jade is characterized by abstraction, and the figurative shape is relatively small, which together with the Liangzhu culture in the south has formed the two main pillars of Neolithic Chinese jade, and its production style and production methods have a very significant impact on the development direction of Shang zhou jade.
In the characteristic performance of the system, the carving technique of large area is generally adopted, and the craft characteristics of the pondering are obvious, the shape is generalized, concise, simple, the decorative decoration is simple and loose, and it has a close internal style relationship with the jade figures unearthed from the tomb of the Shang Dynasty women.
Second, Hongshan cultural jade mostly presents two forms:
One is the animal-shaped instrument, mainly including jade dragon, jade beast-shaped dragon, jade bird, jade eagle, jade osprey, jade turtle, jade fish, jade cicada, etc., focusing on the simple shaping of animal images, and a few knives can carve animal images to life. Although the techniques used are extremely concise and general, the demeanor of the work has reached the state of conveying the gods, and the methods of this kind of pondering process are mostly reflected in the jade dragon jade objects that sacrifice idols;
The second is the geometric shaper, mainly horseshoe-shaped, square, hook-shaped, cloud-shaped and square flake-like jade. The main feature of this type of jade is that except for a few with significant portrait-shaped features such as jade bi, the general appearance image is not obvious.
However, it is not that the production is completely devoid of rules to follow, the jade production of the Hongshan culture period seems simple, in fact, the design of its symmetrical structure, the determination of the center of the circle, the formation of the groove surface, including the polishing of the large area of the jade surface, etc., have a very typical identification style, especially the grinding method of the use of grinding tools, so that the jade of the Hongshan culture is significantly different from the jade surface of other periods, and if the reader has the opportunity to experience it personally, get started to observe the authenticity of the Hongshan culture. And pay attention to the plane treatment of these photosynthetic elements, you can naturally feel that modern imitations have led to serious distortion due to the progress of processing technology.
At present, the market can refer to the Hongshan cultural jade that can be used for trading is actually not much, the common shapes are only so many, privately there are Tibetan friends in the purchase of transactions, there are two situations to pay attention to; one is the common shape is the focus of the eyes of the counterfeiters, such as the "C" shape of the dragon is too famous, and the physical excavation is too small, most of them are collected, so it has become the key disaster area for counterfeiters to imitate. There is also a jade beast shape, also known as jade pig dragon, jade owl, etc., because these two kinds of jade once achieved amazing results in the middle of the auction transaction, became a famous product, and now all kinds of imitations of various sizes are basically concentrated on these two shapes, which is what readers need to pay full attention to;
Second, the secluded, unbiblished form of the instrument is sometimes a threat to collectors.
Because of the prehistoric Hongshan culture, if the time of inheritance is counted from the beginning of the Xinglongwa culture, there are at least nearly five thousand years, these five thousand years of cultural precipitation, absolutely can not only have the remains of the museum, and from the shape and function of the artifacts, there are indeed some jade objects of unknown use, especially the change of the hydrological environment, the original dense forest is now a desert wasteland, the treasures left in the folk are certainly more than what we have publicly excavated, and there are too many unknowns and discoveries, such as " What yabi is, it is still unclear, and the counterfeiters are taking advantage of the psychology that some people have to buy back the research the more confused they are, and create some four different things to deceive these collectors who seem to understand non-understanding.
(To be continued)