As we all know, Wang Shixiang is China's top collector and "the first player in Beijing", and his "playthings" are extremely wide, such as raising pigeons, releasing eagles, guqin, calligraphy and painting, sculpture, bamboo carving, incense burner... In the end, he "played" and "learned", and made great contributions in many academic research fields, and published many works, such as "Ming-style Furniture Appreciation" and "Self-Cherished Collection".
And there is a book, Wang Shixiang recorded his hobbies of "trivial and miscellaneous", the book is named "Jin Ash Pile", what is Jin Ash Heap?
Wang Shixiang explains in the preface to the book: "Yuan Qian Shun held up a small horizontal scroll, painted under the title of "Golden Ash Pile", and the picture is a clump, a shrimp tail, a chicken feather, a mussel shell, a bamboo shoot, a lotus house, etc., all of which are leftovers and are useless as discarders. Memories of the past years are clumsy, trivial and miscellaneous, similar to it, because of the name of "Jin Ash Pile". In Wang Shixiang's view, he talked about old furniture, calligraphy and painting, diet, pigeon raising, and eagle herding in this collection of essays, which is somewhat similar to the way Qian Shunju painted crab feet, mussel shells and other wine and vegetable miscellaneous pieces in the painting "Jin Ash Pile" in the Yuan Dynasty, so he directly used it as the title of the book.
But the word "ash pile" is not only the name of the painting, it is also a special pattern on porcelain, and it is very wonderful.
"Golden Ash Pile: AnThology of Wang Shixiang"
The "golden ash pile" on porcelain first appeared on the snuff bottles of the Ming Dynasty, and by the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, a large number of porcelain with brocade ash decoration were also found in the export porcelain exported to Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and Southeast Asia.
Generally speaking, the most important feature of jin ash pile porcelain is that it combines the patterns of old objects such as ancient calligraphy and paintings, bronzes, coin rubbings, ancient book fragments, manuscripts and other old objects together, which is also known as "eight broken figures" or "collection of treasures", which seems to be random and carelessly pieced together, but often achieves intriguing effects.
1902 Ding Erzhong made a glass painting eight broken picture snuff bottle Sotheby's Hong Kong in 2014 auction RMB 295,875 sold
So, how did the golden ash pile composed of shrimp tails and chicken feathers on the calligraphy and painting become painting styles such as gold stone rubbing on ceramics? How did this evolve? Let's talk about two key people, one of whom is qian and the other is Liuzhou.
Yuan Qianxuan Lone Mountain Picture Volume Partial Collection of the Palace Museum
Qian Xuan, that is, Qian Shunju mentioned by Wang Shixiang earlier, he was a Southern Song Dynasty jinshi, and zhao Mengfu and Feng Yingke were called "Wuxing Three Absolutes", but unlike Zhao Mengfu, who was born of Shi Mengyuan, Qian Xuan refused Shi Yuan, "regardless of the six dynasties' revival and ruin, a bottle and open to the painting", and pinned his lofty ambitions on poetry and painting. Fortunately, Qian Xuan himself is a generalist in painting, and the subjects he paints involve figures, livestock and poultry, and landscapes, all of which are exquisite, and can be said to be the pioneers of the painting world in the early Yuan Dynasty.
On that occasion, after a full meal, he painted the remnants of the dinner table on the painting, which was recorded by Lu Shihua of the Qing Dynasty in the "Records of Calligraphy and Paintings Seen by Wu Yue": "Yuan Qian Shun raised the Jinfu Tu Scroll Song Paper, seven inches and two minutes high, three feet and five minutes long, and the picture was the vulgar cloud ash pile, discarding the remnants of shrimp, crabs, chicken feathers and other things that the colonies of ants competed for into the cave. The world does not abandon what is left behind, and the pen is used to eliminate the sun and the moon..."
Yuan Qianxuan Jin Ash Pile Part of the National Palace Museum collection in Taipei
The above painting hidden in the National Palace in Taipei should be the one that Lu Shihua saw at that time, in addition to painting bad vegetables, shrimp and crab shells, dead butterflies and ants, the inscription on it is also the same as lu Shihua's note, and there are inscriptions of Zhang Shi, Tang Yin, Wen Zhengming and others at the end, which is the earliest "jin ash pile" style that has been mastered.
Although Qian Xuan was in the period of the late Song Dynasty and the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty, this time should not be the earliest period of the appearance of the Golden Ash Pile, because the "Painting Succession" written by Deng Chun of the Southern Song Dynasty contains: "The painting academy is the most worked, and it is dedicated to the new meaning." Taste a shaft very cute to play. Paint a hall of golden and green, and the Zhu Gate is half open. Ichigo's daughter was half exposed outdoors, using the peel of the stored fruit as a discarded throw. For example, the genera of duck feet, lychees, walnuts, hazelnuts, chestnuts, and hazelnuts can be identified one by one, and each is not related. The pen and ink are subtle, there are such. It can be seen that painting "garbage and miscellaneous things" with subtle brushstrokes was a custom in the Southern Song Dynasty, and by the time of Qian Xuan in the Yuan Dynasty, it was already a popular style, and this brocade ash pile selected by Qian was just an important representative of this popular style at that time.
Qing Ge Porcelain Eight Broken Flower Mouth Bowl (two pieces) Beijing Hanhai 2014 auction RMB 17,250 sold
From Qian Xuan, we can see the origin of the ash pile, the "ash pile", the brocade into ash, which was originally just an art that was collected and painted when good things became discarded and ruined things. In the 19th century, in the Qing People Liuzhou, we can see the turning point of the creation of the Golden Ash Pile.
A small portrait of a monk in Liuzhou in "The LightIng Diagram"
Liu Zhou was a monk of the Qing Dynasty, but he was also a seal engraver, calligrapher and painter, poet and scholar of gold and stone. During the Qianlong and Jiaqing periods of the Qing Dynasty, people loved to collect, and Liuzhou was no exception, he often traveled around the world, visited the stele stones, encountered favorite utensils, and naturally wanted to collect and take them away. But for a monk, the golden stone is inconvenient to carry, and there is pressure on the funds, what to do? So he practiced a skill, the full-shaped rubbing, and printed the original rubbings of those golden stones for his own appreciation.
Holographic topography is also called three-dimensional topography, which uses some perspective, ink color change painting techniques, the form of the utensils is fully expressed, just like the 3D stereoscopic imaging as wonderful, such as the following hand extension, different from the traditional Chinese Indian topography, it is in the front and back sides of the Ding, cover to cover the Ding body, Ding's ears, mouth edge, abdomen and other places, have done obvious perspective processing, three-dimensional and real.
Qing Liuzhou Hand Tuoxi Han Ding Tao Ding Hand Scroll Zhejiang Provincial Museum Collection
Transferring the original appearance of the artifacts to flat rubbing paper, relying on painting or partial combination stacking, this laid the foundation for collage and combination of other objects later. Therefore, in the back, there is a direct appearance of the "eight broken paintings" formed by the vertebrae, which is the following kind.
Qing Da is subject to the collection of zhejiang provincial museum
This custom of stacking and collating various damages such as seals, coins, contracts, and letters began with the "Hundred Years Of Tu" (harmonic "Hundred Broken" sounds) composed by the Monk Liuzhou in Daoguang Xinjiao (1831). The layer is a layer of 86 gold and stone sketches, including coins, seals, tiles, ancient bricks, bricks, stone carvings, and bronze inscriptions, which took five years to complete.
This kind of rubbing technique has presented all the elements of three-dimensional visual effects, and the pursuit of reality is different from the Way Qian Xuan sketched Fu Cai in the style of Sketching Zhao Chang in the Song and Yuan Dynasties, but the purpose is the same. Later, the brocade ash pile (eight broken paintings) evolved into a form of free collage of contemporary objects.
Cheng Kasa pastel eight broken figure porcelain plate hanging screen China Guardian 2020 auction 48300 transactions
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Jin ash pile was extremely popular, and the full shape of the Jin Ash Pile of the Liuzhou Monk was collected and sought, and such decorations also appeared in the export porcelain, and the Jin Ash Pile decorative porcelain in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, was distributed to Jianshui in Yunnan, and also formed the "remnants" of Jianshui pottery - the decorative style of Jin Ash Pile.
The special way of conveying the beauty of the past can set off a popular trend at that time and explore the reasons behind it, and some scholars who study the golden ash pile believe that it is inseparable from the historical background of the invasion of China's great powers in the mid-19th century. At that time, civil unrest was rife, wars were frequent, and the pieces of paper and books left in the ashes after the disaster were already things that people were accustomed to, and people cherished the remaining handwriting and cultural relics for the rest of their lives, so the ash pile was popular.
Qing Ma Shaoxuan painting brocade ash pile picture snuff bottle Xiling Printing Agency in 2013 auction RMB 138,000 transaction
"Lying upside down and obliquely, half a page still has half a page without." Mo Tong has a few mutilations, which are not easy to match. "The production of the ash pile is difficult, the painter needs to be good at photographing, grass, li, seal, can imitate the fonts, familiar with a variety of stele, bronze shapes, can seal all kinds of seals, etc., there are very few competent, so it is shrinking day by day, and it will eventually become a masterpiece."
The beauty of "brocade", the destruction of "ash", the splendid embroidery into gray, the miscellaneous panhua. This kind of technique that reveals the style of modern art, if it is not clearly understood its origin and development, probably no one will think that the place where it takes root is China hundreds of years ago...