"Family Collection" Continue to pay attention to the special program "Follow the Cultural Relics to See the Past and the Present", and the "Quanzhou Maritime Archaeological Harvest Achievement Exhibition" is being held at the Fuzhou Museum, with 122 sets of cultural relics and more than 200 pictures provided by the Quanzhou Museum. Through this exhibition, everyone can better understand the cultural relics of underwater archaeology. Today, let's take a look at a group of Qing Dynasty Dehua kiln kueh seals.
Kueh seal is a kind of utensils for making cakes, in ancient times, every family in the Chaoshan area had to make rice cakes, commonly known as "kueh", and the mold of making "kueh" is called kueh seal.
This group of kueh seals has a variety of shapes, including sunflower patterns, leaf patterns, peony patterns and peach patterns.
Most of the kueh seals are wooden, in addition, ceramics are also popular in southern Fujian to make kueh seals, but this kind of kueh molds are easy to break, not easy to preserve, so the number is small. Minnan Dehua kiln kueh seal, is the representative of ceramic kueh seal, the age can be traced back to the Ming and Qing dynasties, can be described as a long history.
The kueh seal contains a wealth of symbols, each of which has both an aesthetic function and an extremely profound cultural symbolic meaning. From the appearance point of view, there are round, semi-circular, turtle-shaped, square, etc., and from the ornamental point of view, there are fish dragon, Fu Lu Shou, as well as chrysanthemum, plum blossom, pomegranate flower, longevity peach, Ruyi pattern and 10,000 character pattern and other traditional ornaments.
The peach is a symbol of marriage, immortality and spring, the peony pattern means auspiciousness and wealth, the "pomegranate" cracks to reveal countless seeds, which means many sons and many blessings, the circle mainly expresses the reunion and reunion, and the bat has the meaning of "blessing" and "longevity".
Han Jing, a docent of Fuzhou Museum, introduced that in the maritime silk trade, these merchants who went to sea carried these kueh seals with them, not only bringing their hometown nostalgia with them, but also spreading this beautiful craft and food overseas.