Remember again in the pillow
——Talk about porcelain pillows
Cao Hao
Cao Hao, born in 1978, also known as the owner of Longyin Mountain Museum, university teacher, member of the Architectural Society of China, writer, collector of ancient porcelain, and study room. He is the author of "Game with God - History of Fighting Beasts", "Urban Social Art History Collection" and other works.
Tang Changsha kiln Green glazed bird pattern pillow Long Yin Shan Collection Photo / Cao Hao
Among the many porcelain pillows in the longyinshan museum's collection, this is the most favored one of the owners, and it is precisely because it arouses the interest in studying porcelain pillows. For this artifact, you just have to keep a childlike heart: in the green spring, a small walks in the grass with a spirit, and it walks back to admire its beautiful tail feathers. The form of the bird can be said to be very vivid and lovely, and when you look at it, your mind will unconsciously think of Jesus' words: "You look at the birds in the heavens, they do not cultivate or weave, and the Father of Heaven has starved them to death." "Yes, spring is so beautiful, all things working together, full of life, that you have no reason to be depressed about your poverty and poverty. Presumably, the same is true of this artist holding a bamboo knife, whose love for spring makes him have no time to take care of himself, and his brush strokes flourish out, and it is so simple and natural to become eternal in an instant. When Huang Quan was not yet born, he interpreted the true meaning of flower and bird painting, the true meaning of art- art history, and thus became the art history of anonymous artists.
A yellow sorghum a dream
In ancient times, there was a scholar surnamed Lu, who was staying in an inn when passing through Handan, and met an old Taoist monk, who chatted with the Taoist priest and frequently lamented his poverty. The Taoist priest was quite moved, took a pillow from his bag, and said to Lu Sheng, "If you sleep on this pillow, you will be able to gain glory and wealth." At that time, the owner of the inn was cooking yellow millet, and seeing that it was still early to leave the meal, Lu Sheng slept on the pillow. In the dream he got everything he wanted, nothing more than a promotion to a rich, a wife and a concubine, and when he finished enjoying the beauty of life, when he suddenly woke up, he found that the day was still the same: the noonday sun outside the tattered inn was shining, and the Taoist priest still chatted with others, but the yellow rice cooked by the owner of the shop began to flutter, steaming, and he could eat lunch.
This is the story of Huang Liang's dream, originally from the legendary novel "Pillow In the Pillow" by the Tang Dynasty Shen Jieji. The ancients used this story to describe the floating dream, as a joyous geometry. For example, the morning dew, going to the day is more bitter. Although it is said that glory is easy to pass, the painful and difficult days are still so clear and solid, and they have to survive day by day. In fact, we are all like Lu Sheng, relying on sound dreams to resist the harm of life and us. If you count 24 hours a day, 8 hours are spent on your pillow. In this long dream of life, ordinary pillows accompany people for almost a third of the time - it is really unexpected that pillows are such an important thing. No wonder the Taoist priest carried it with him. I think that most of the stories have a realistic basis, and in ancient times, there should be more than a few travelers who ate and slept in the open, and carried pillows with them like Taoists.
Just like there are walking stoves, walking stones, and even "walking Buddhas" (dry lacquer sandwiched ramie buddhas, which can be carried in the street parade), there should be such things as walking pillows! Unfortunately, it is not found in the historical data. People love to chase fragile dreams, but they often ignore the simple pillow. The pillows of the ancients, for us, are a subject that is both familiar and unfamiliar. The Longyin Mountain Museum has some ancient pillow collections, and I would like to talk to you about the author's exploration of them here.
Tang Mandarin duck pattern three-color pillow Long Yin Shan collection Cao Hao / photography
Porcelain pillows in the Tang Dynasty are not rare, mostly from Gongxian kilns. Among these surviving Gongxian kiln pillows, most of them are small size specifications, and the collection community vaguely refers to these small pillows as "pulse pillows". This substance is used by doctors to build a pulse. At first, I thought it was very reasonable, but when I studied it in depth, I was suspicious. The pillow in the picture, only 10 centimeters long, is the smallest pillow in the longyin mountain museum, and it is not inappropriate to use it for the pulse. But on the pillow is a beautiful pair of Mandarin ducks, standing on a lotus flower, they look at each other affectionately, and they share a flower. It embodies the harmony of husband and wife, and the happy and harmonious family life.
In ancient times, there were still few literate people among the people, and information and culture mostly relied on images and paintings to spread, so images often had accurate and strict sociological significance, and could not be used indiscriminately. Is the doctor putting such an object in the clinic a hint that he wants to tie the knot with the patient? Obviously not, it should be a pillow for sleeping in family life. Or rather, it is a boudoir object, specially prepared for women, in the daily exertion, with the help of which they take a moment's sleep.
2 Pillow stone gargling
We often see the figure of ancient pillows in museums or books, but their form and texture are incompatible with the modern life experience, making people feel strange and even uncomfortable. Most of them are made of porcelain, angular and angular, cold and hard – you don't have to try it at all, you know that it is certainly uncomfortable to put your head on it. Since most of these pillows come from the ground, modern people have a bad association: these pillows, should not be prepared for living in another world?
A popular explanation for this problem is that it can be used when it is alive, and it can be buried when it is dead. This answer is so compromised and so slippery that it is simply invulnerable. But one of the most essential questions seems to remain unanswered: Why are these pillows so hard? Why didn't the ancients use more comfortable pillows?
Let's take a look at two famous paintings first! In the famous "Han Xizai Night Feast", we can see that the appearance of the pillow is almost the same as the pillow used by modern people, it is a short and fat cylinder, and the dark blue bottom is embroidered with gold patterns. With the delicate bedlines painted with landscape paintings and the vermilion embroidered bedbeds, a clear perception can be generated: this is a gentle and rich town created by rich people, and the thick sky blue quilt piled on the side reminds us that the time is about late autumn or winter.
Rich people, probably can't sleep on hard porcelain pillows, and it is reasonable to use cloth pillows in winter, so porcelain pillows are more likely to be used in summer. The "Acacia Shade Summer" pictured on the right shows the scene of summer: the grandfather in the picture sleeps on a bed with exquisite lines, pillowed by a delicate small pillow, which is obviously also a textile, or cotton or linen, rather than porcelain. Although there is no embroidery, the craftsmanship is meticulous and suitable for the style of the hermit.
Five generations of Han Xizai night feast map part
Northern Song Dynasty Locust Shade Summer Map Partial
The conclusion seems to be clear after viewing the painting: the ancients did not use porcelain pillows. Isn't it? It turns out that the rich and the middle class (we temporarily position the hermit as the middle class, without a little savings, it is impossible to lie flat) do not use porcelain pillows, winter and summer. But you can't jump to conclusions in such a hurry, there is still a painting that I haven't seen, this one is earlier than the previous two paintings, it is the Tang Dynasty painter Lu Yao's work "Yiren Tu".
The Yiren Tu depicts six Gaoshi in turn in the Han and Jin Dynasties, the first of which was the Han Dynasty Grand Ru Ma Rong, a gentleman with a mighty body and was lying on his back on an animal skin blowing a whistle. Crossed Erlang's legs, open chest and bare legs, super relaxed. Under his head was a white porcelain pillow. The porcelain pillow is the same as the Tang Dynasty porcelain pillow we see, it is not too big, it can not put down the huge head of this strong man, and the pillow surface has a natural curvature from the back to the front, which is quite close to the back of the head of the big Han. The porcelain pillow is white, and it should be a work of Xing Kiln, who is good at making white porcelain. The characters' exposed bodies should be in late spring and early summer.
Compared with the literary and polite nature of the Northern Song Dynasty's Huaiyin Summer Elimination Chart, the Yiren Diagram appears more real and natural. It tells us that the real Confucian can also lie on the ground like a farmer, with a simple porcelain pillow on his head, and that the high quality of life lies in the mind without any obstacles, not in those external material pursuits.
Tang Yiren (partial) Lu Yao, collection of the Palace Museum
Lu Yao's yiren figure is a common tradition in Chinese painting, if it is said that the idealized life of artistic expression, then the ultimate ideal of Chinese is "lying flat". It's just that this kind of thinking is too decadent, everyone dares not say it directly, it can only be expressed implicitly in art, and it is not pure sleep, often doing things while sleeping, such as blowing pipes and the like.
The ancients who have always insisted on ourselves lived a Spartan life of purity and purity, that their lives were simple and poetic, that they slept on hard and non-ergonomic pillows, and that when they woke up to begin the day's labor, the pearl floors and doll-playing lotus motifs on the pillows would briefly remain on their faces like tattoos.
Song Dengfeng Kiln Boy Play Lotus Pattern Pillow Long Yin Shan Collection Photo / Cao Hao
There are many indications that the real use of porcelain pillows is for everyday life rather than for meditators. On this porcelain pillow, there is a picture of a doll playing with a lotus, and this theme full of yearning and love for new life is the most important motif of Song Dynasty utensils. For example, on jade, the so-called "Mo Shu Le" can be seen, and its image is also the Buddha holding a lotus flower, "Mo Shu Le" (also translated as "Luo Ju Luo"). The mutual confirmation of the porcelain pillow and the jade pattern once again proves that the porcelain pillow exists as a real bedding. The porcelain pillow in the Longyinshan Pavilion collection is fan-shaped, similar in thickness to the current pillow. Its narrow side is 6 cm thick and the wide side is 8 cm thick, and the head and face are slightly raised compared to the lower jaw after sleeping, which is very ergonomic. In addition, although the porcelain pillow is decorated with a variety of ornaments, most of them use a very shallow engraving line to carve the pattern, rather than a strong three-dimensional sense of engraving, and the undulations of the pillow pattern after glazing are almost negligible, which also proves that it is designed for the comfort of the user.
The vitality of the ancients is far more exuberant than we think. Corresponding to the Song Dynasty, where we mass-produced porcelain pillows, it was medieval Europe, where the pillows of ordinary farmers were anything they found casually, usually a load of firewood. Only pregnant women are eligible to pillow soft pillows. The ancient Greeks did not drink water, they drank wine when they were thirsty. Similarly, only sick people drink water.
In fact, the Chinese who understood the beauty of life were no different from these Germanic men who lived in the Middle Ages. Oh, and we need to know that the interesting soul can be completely trapped in the shell of a rough and reckless man. Cao Cao's poems: Traveling to the Eight Poles, Pillow Stone Gargling. Heroes can go east to jieshi, sing generously and sadly, and can also sleep in flowers and willows, and gargle on pillow stones. In the wilderness of the four wilds and eight wilderness willful leisurely, tired to find a big rock to sleep, thirsty to drink spring water, why not? Compared with the life that Cao Cao longed for, and compared with the Germanic mangy men who slept in the firewood pile, our hard but beautiful porcelain pillows were already too delicate!
Another important but easy to overlook fact is that ancient porcelain pillows actually did not sleep as badly as we think. The porcelain pillows collected by the Longyinshan Museum have been tried by the author one by one, and in addition to the cold touch, most of them are very comfortable. Sometimes looking "uncomfortable" doesn't mean it's really uncomfortable, and even its design will play some collateral role, such as standardizing sleeping positions. It is undeniable that compared with the current pillow, the life of the ancients is indeed a little bitter, but the rough and simple life is sometimes a good medicine to purify the soul and purify the body! In the Spartan life, on the contrary, it can arouse the poetry of spiritual detachment!
Song Dengfeng kiln Benniu pattern pillow Long Yin Shan Collection Cao Hao / Photography
The state of life expressed on the porcelain pillow is often peaceful and serene, after all, this is a bedding to help people enter a state of sleep. But there are obviously exceptions. This porcelain pillow pillow is wide, the texture is particularly white and smooth, and the picture is also very exquisite. The shape of the running bull is particularly realistic, it jumps, the back of the cow is as high as a mountain, the eyes are round, the horn of the bull pierces a bouquet of flowers, this is a picture of violence and beauty coexisting, at the same time it also breaks the conventional cognition, pillows not only help people to sleep, but also inspire people before going to bed: like this cow, jump recklessly, maybe this hurdle will pass. As a collector, you will never be able to collect the Five Bulls, but having a Song Dynasty running bull is enough to soothe your life.
There is a difference between north and south
The Tang Dynasty poet Tortoise Meng also wrote a poem about the beauty of a friend giving pine stone pillow materials. The prologue to his "Two Testament Poems" reads: "Who are the two relics? Stone pillow material, piano recommended also. What about the Stone One? Echino Toyo also. This poem illustrates the fact that in the Tang Dynasty, in the Yongkang Mountain Forest in Dongyang, Zhejiang, there are many fossils of ancient pine trees scattered, and the texture folds of ancient pine trees on these fossils are visible and wonderful, and the people collect them and grind them into stone pillows, which have become local characteristics. This information once again confirms that during the Tang and Song dynasties, it was a routine way of life for people to use hard materials such as porcelain and stone as pillows.
From this information, we can also indirectly see that although we do not rule out that there may be rich people among the users of porcelain pillows, the mainstream should be the common people at that time, and include scholars, monks and other classes - this is almost certain, because there are many porcelain pillows in kiln sites and urban life formations in northern China. In addition, gongxian kilns, Jun kilns, Xiangzhou kilns, Yaozhou kilns and Ding kilns all produce porcelain pillows of different styles and colors, and even Goryeo celadons influenced by the central plains porcelain culture also produce porcelain pillows.
In the south, it seems that the most representative is the porcelain pillow produced by the Hutian kiln in Jingdezhen, which is rare in the southern kiln system, and the Yue kiln, guan kiln, Ge kiln, Longquan kiln, Jizhou kiln and Jian kiln, which are representative in the south, do not seem to produce porcelain pillows. Some people think that the products of the Hutian kiln in Jingdezhen have some characteristics of the kiln, and it should be that the northern kiln workers who escaped the war brought the grasp of the kiln to Jingdezhen for vivid shapes - then it is also possible that the habit of using porcelain pillows also came to the south.
Song Dengfeng kiln Parrot pattern pillow Long Yin Shan Collection Photo / Cao Hao
Parrots are one of Chinese's favorite birds, although it and Chinese favorite lions are imported. Unlike the symbolism of the Lion Town house to ward off evil spirits, the parrot is a symbol of the culture of grievances. Tang Shiyun: Talking about palace affairs with lust, the parrot does not dare to speak in front of him. The parrot, like the woman in the palace, is beautiful, lonely and rapping. They are imprisoned in cages and have a similar fate to the palace women. In folk, pairs of parrots are just as emblematic of love and the good life as Mandarin ducks. This kind of bird probably entered the vision of Chinese from the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, and Chinese enthusiastically liked this well-behaved and beautiful bird from the beginning, and in Tang poetry and Tang Dynasty utensils, parrot figures are often seen. The Song Dynasty still continued the love of parrots, in the courtyard paintings and porcelain there are many performances, it is worth saying that the Ding kiln and other northern kilns, like to produce parrot-shaped wine pots, here it is no longer a symbol of women, but a symbol of the drunk, because the drunken man's rap and parrot habits are quite similar.
The Hutian kilns of the Song and Yuan dynasties and the Jingdezhen kilns brought the habit of producing porcelain pillows all the way to the Ming and Qing dynasties, and some officially ordered porcelain pillows were found in both the Ming and Qing dynasties. Therefore, the production of porcelain pillows almost runs through our porcelain production history. Although Jingdezhen was a southern kiln, when it continued to serve the imperial rulers in the north, it inevitably contaminated the living habits of northerners. Among the porcelain pillows produced by the Imperial Kiln of Jingdezhen in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the more common is the Xuande style of the official kiln blue and white porcelain pillow, which is slightly surprising that the Xuande Emperor, who likes to fight and is immersed in extravagance, wants the porcelain pillow of the hard state to do with what purpose - the more appropriate explanation is that the official kiln porcelain is not dedicated to the emperor, but can also be used to reward international friends, eunuchs and courtiers.
But in general, the southerners for the porcelain pillow is far from reaching the height of the northerners' deep affection, in the culture carried by the porcelain pillow, more reflects the fierce, straightforward and straightforward temperament of the people in the north of our country.
Song Ding kiln White glazed lion pattern pillow Long Yin Shan Collection Photo / Cao Hao
People living in different places have different understandings of sleep comfort, henan and Hebei provinces may not be too large in geographical span, but the porcelain pillows produced by Dengfeng kilns in Henan and Dingyao kilns in Hebei are very different in form. I don't know if it was influenced by the nomadic people in the north, many porcelain pillows in ding kilns are designed like a saddle. This reclining lion porcelain pillow collected by the Longyin Mountain Museum is topped with a saddle-shaped pillow surface, which is very soft in the contact surface between the saddle and the lotus leaf, and it must be very comfortable to sleep on, and there is no need to worry about the head slipping off the pillow. But its center height reached a staggering 13cm, and the two wings of the saddle reached 15cm, which raised great doubts about whether it was a bedding or a harness. Because it resembled a male lion with a saddle, I once suspected that it might be a toy on a kang for a doll of one or two years old to ride and play with.
IV Aesthetics of poverty
Song Cizhou kiln system rabbit pillow Long Yin Shan collection Cao Hao / photography
An alert hare crouched in a thick patch of grass. The person who bought the pillow home will call the child to the front and say: You see this is a rabbit, a three-flapped mouth, long ears, didn't we see a hare in the field the other day? The child happily took over the pillow, something that could be both sleeping and playing. Pillows became a children's version of the natural encyclopedia.
About 2,000 years ago, Jesus picked a spring lily on the mountain and exclaimed: What a beautiful flower! In my eyes it trumps all of Solomon's treasures. This is probably the beginning of the aesthetics of poverty! A wild mountain flower, emitting fragrance and full of dew, which everyone can appreciate, but unfortunately, some people are busy pursuing wealth and fame all day long, physically and mentally exhausted, but they can not appreciate these most simple and accessible natural beauty.
Returning human beings to the embrace of nature is one of the most important functions of art, but the longer time passes, people forget their original intentions. But the kiln workers of the Cizhou kiln have not forgotten. What they see is a picture, and what their hearts are attached to can be expressed. As a painter, that's enough. The aesthetics of poverty is not to cry out for poverty, nor to express the lives of the poor, but to embrace nature with a simple heart, full of love and gratitude– something that only the poor seem to be able to do. The makers and users of the Cizhou kiln are poor, and they have a common heart, and communication has become very simple. Tired people look at this beautiful world on the pillow before going to sleep, and then go to sleep, in which there are white deer galloping through the flowers and plants, and the porcelain pillow here is the necessary carrier for the transition from reality to dream.
Song Dengfeng Kiln Lying Deer Pattern Pillow Long Yin Shan Collection Cao Hao / Photography
In the longyin mountain collection of pillows, the porcelain pillow of the Dengfeng kiln accounts for a large proportion, and the slender and elegant inscription line pattern is the signature technique of this kiln, and its poetry, simplicity and proficiency make the Dengfeng kiln the highest artistic achievement among the many kilns in the Cizhou kiln system. In this porcelain pillow, a fat female deer lies between flowers and plants, her eyes are large and docile, there are no antlers, it should be in a season of changing horns, the old horns have fallen off and the new horns have not yet grown. Her hind legs are spread on the ground, a rare pose that can only be found when the animal is completely relaxed and wary of its surroundings. Gazing at this beautiful and warm picture, the mind will slowly return to an afternoon nine hundred years ago, when the sun shone through the trees on the deer, sprinkling a body of light spots, flies flying in the early autumn time, and ripe fruits occasionally falling on the ground, poof.
And because some pillows are used by husband and wife, pillows that retain the breath of lovers have slowly become things that witness the love of a couple, which has some hidden meanings in the long history and has become a keepsake of love. This is why the motifs on many porcelain pillows are mandarin ducks, butterflies and parrots that fly double-legged. In ancient times, there should still be a custom of giving pillows between lovers, as evidenced by Li Shangyin's poem: "Jia Woman peeps at han rafters, and Concubine Mi leaves a pillow for Wei Wangcai." Spring hearts are not in contention, an inch of acacia and an inch of ash. Here, the pillow carries a famous love tragedy: Princess Mi is the daughter of the Fuxi clan, the god of Luoshui, alluding to Cao Pi's empress Dowager. This Lady Koshi was extremely beautiful and had fallen in love with Cao Zhi, but was taken as a wife by Cao Pi. After Cao Pi became emperor, Lady Yao fell out of favor and was finally killed by Cao Pi, and gave her relic jade with a golden pillow to Cao Zhi. A grieving Cao Zhi left Beijing via Luoshui, and in a trance dreamed that Lady Koshi had come to meet him, saying that she had left her jade pillow to him as a souvenir. This is also the origin of the famous "Roselle Endowment" throughout the ages.
Liao Sancai lotus pattern pillow Long Yin Shan Collection Cao Hao /Photography
Among the pillows in the Longyin Mountain Collection, this is the largest and highest porcelain pillow with extremely brilliant colors. Its glazing and coloring techniques are the same as those of Tang Dynasty utensils, but if you are familiar with Tang Dynasty pillows, you will know that the Tang people have no such giant pillows, so they should be Liaowu. I put this giant pillow at the end of the article, first of all, it is huge and friendless, the second is bright and brilliant, that is, Van Gogh should be impressed when he sees it, the third is that its pillow surface is very large and the pillow foot is very small, the side looks like the heel of a high heel, the proportion seems to be not very symmetrical, in order to verify whether it is ergonomic, I personally slept on it many times, it turns out that as long as your head does not move randomly, sleeping on it is still more comfortable, but the center instability is its big taboo, a little shaking will fall, Why the pillow foot is designed so small, I am puzzled, the only explanation is to make the whole pillow look more like a lotus leaf.
In this way, on the small pillow, not only carries a sweet dream, but also soaks many tears.
This article has been published by the author with the permission of the Music Club
Graphics and text provided by the author
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