Animal Sculpture in the Western Zhou Dynasty
As early as the Paleolithic Age, our ancestors had a love of beauty, so they had the habit of wearing ornaments. At first, our ancestors only consciously wore some beautiful stones with holes and ropes, and there were no traces of carved patterns on the ornaments. Ancestors used the teeth of animals killed at that time or sharp stones as drill bits to drill holes in practical devices and decorations.
Jade Carver in Han Dynasty
Later, after numerous productions, ancestors found that adding some high-hardness fine sand during drilling can not only speed up drilling, but also prolong the service life of the drill bit, and these high-hardness fine sand mainly refers to a kind of fine sand called "jade-removing sand" by later generations. Due to the limitation of technology, people at that time could only turn a wooden stick with an animal dental drill or a stone drill by hand to drill holes. As for the surface of the vessel, they can only use the most primitive, primary and simple polishing method to make the simple shape of the surface of the vessel. Therefore, most of the original jade articles were plain and plain, and their shapes were generally ground into circles or squares.
Qijia stone culture
About 8,000 years ago, Hongshan Culture made great progress in making jade articles. Jade articles in Hongshan Culture period have no thin yinxian, and the "bull nose piercing" and yinxian on them are all made by the most primitive method. "Cattle nose piercing" is made of stone drill and jade sand (holes in Hongshan Culture are generally made of hammer drill, pipe drill and jade sand), while the yinxian is polished with rope. So in the era of Hongshan Culture, there should be no rotary engraving machine that can make fine intaglio lines.
Hongshan Culture yuxiao cattle nose perforation
Many people think that Tuoba appeared in Liangzhu culture period, but the author thinks that Tuoba's appearance may have a great relationship with the development of pottery tools (because pottery tools are also driven by pedals, so is Tuoba's principle, for two reasons.
The first is to provide greater strength for making and solving jade, and the second is to liberate hands with pedals so that they can better understand the details of jade. Of course, there is no conclusion about the time when the jade hammer appeared. However, most scholars believe that the thin yinxian line on the jade articles of Liangzhu culture is not like and can not be made of rope and jade sand. This kind of thin yinxian is more like grinding with a knife and jade sand. Now it can be concluded that the jade-making process in Shang Dynasty can be confirmed as double hammering, and the original stone or bone drilling tools have been replaced by bronze tuo tools in Shang Dynasty.
From the above, we can know that the earliest carving tools used by ancestors were animal teeth or sharp tools made of stones. It may take thousands of times to form the lines and shapes of these cultural relics in the collection by repeatedly depicting jade articles with this tool with weak hardness.
Local display of beautifully carved jade articles
The fine patterns and many lines on the jade surface of Liangzhu culture are all carved with the legendary "Kunwu Knife", but what is the "Kunwu Knife"? It is still under discussion. Is this kind of knife made of bronze? But if it is made of bronze, why is there no bronze unearthed in Liangzhu culture? On the contrary, there are many bronzes unearthed in Qijia culture, and there are almost no carved patterns on the surface of jade. Is this phenomenon contrary to common sense?
Qijia culture bronze knife
There are also bronze mirrors, bronze knives and bronze axes in Qijia culture, but there are no bronze jade tools. Bronze costume didn't appear until Shang Dynasty. The appearance of bronze utensils greatly improved the tools for making jade, so the jade decoration after Shang Dynasty became more and more exquisite because of the continuous progress of bronze smelting technology.
Of course, there is a famous poem in The Book of Songs Xiaoya heming, "Stones from other mountains can attack jade", but in fact, this poem has been changed. In fact, the original text is "stones from other mountains can attack jade." The "stone from other mountains" here refers to the fine sand used to grind jade, such as fader, yellow sand, red sand, precious sand, etc. Its hardness is higher than jade, so it is collectively called "Xieyusha" because it is usually used to solve jade, and the word "wrong" in this poem means grinding jade.
In the Han Dynasty, due to the development and maturity of iron and steel smelting technology, bronze camel furniture began to be replaced by iron camel furniture. Because iron utensils are harder and more durable than bronze utensils, and China's steel technology has been ahead of the world since the Western Han Dynasty invented the "steel explosion method" (the steel explosion method was 800 years earlier than that in Europe), steel utensils have continued until now, but the difference is that the iron pins are getting thinner and thinner, the styles and functions are getting more and more perfect, and the hardness of the utensils is also enhanced.
Jade carving engraved with Arabic
The production of ancient jade articles generally includes the processes of selecting materials, cutting large materials, tying pots, washing pots, grinding pots, eviscerating, hollowing out, decorating, drilling and polishing.
The first step in processing jade is cutting. That is what we call "jade removal". When removing jade, two people usually pull a big wire saw to cut off the jade sand, and then the jade remover cuts out the details with a big tuo wheel. Then a jade article can be regarded as a finished product after shaping, polishing, drilling, bowing and polishing. Therefore, the ancients did not have advanced tools such as chainsaws. How did they carve such a complicated process into a square-sized jade material?
I don't think you can think of it. The original jade solution was to use a hemp rope saw. When sawing, the hemp rope is stained with jade-removing sand, because the hemp rope will be burned when it is rubbed and heated, and the friction between the hemp rope and the jade material will increase after being heated, and the jade-removing sand will also fall off a lot in the friction, so the ancients will continue to add some hard fine sand and water to the hemp rope, so that the jade can be sawed off. But it takes a lot of time to keep sawing, and it also tests people's endurance, and of course it is very hard. Moreover, the incision carved in this way will leave obvious wavy lines.
Western Han imperial pen
After cutting, the jade should be cut and polished before the next step of processing. Because the next processing requires more elaborate carving and requires both hands to adjust the strength, angle and length, the ancients invented the hammer machine. The invention of hammer machine liberated the hands of jade workers, and the grinding operation was more convenient. Jade makers in prehistoric society sat on the floor, put jade on a big stone, dipped it in water and sand, and polished it into a smooth and regular shape.
Cultural utensils making notch
The second is drilling. In the production of ancient jade, drilling holes is very important, because most ancient jade is used for wearing, or tied to clothes and hats with ropes. Because the passage is very common in ancient jade, it is an important way to identify ancient jade. First of all, for the ancients, drilling was a time job. The earliest known drill bit was made of black response time. The hardness of black is 7 degrees, while that of ordinary jade is 6 degrees. Through experiments, the drill bit of the same material can be mounted on the wooden handle, and holes can be punched in the jade material through repeated rotation of manpower or primitive machinery, but this manufacturing method is a great test of the endurance of the producer. If you carefully observe the ancient jade, you will find that there will be a spiral line left by the jade sand rotary drill at the jade cave. If you look at the spiral under a magnifying glass, you will find that the spiral will be irregularly arranged with granular protrusions.
Old Pearl Channel
After talking about the ancient methods of making jade, let's elaborate on it in detail and see how the ancients used "stones from other mountains" to process jade.
First of all, let's look at a jade machine that has been circulating for thousands of years. This jade-making machine is a hammer, also called "water stool", which describes the word "sitting on a water stool" that we often hear. When making jade, the workers who make jade are all sitting and making jade!
Martyrs on the Imperial Seal of the Warring States Period
Jade removal sand and jade removal sand are usually minerals with higher hardness than jade. Fine jade-removing sand usually comes directly from rivers, while those coarse jade-removing sand will be used to make holes or as cutting tools, while those sharp jade-removing sand will be used to make some complicated patterns and sculptures. The use of large jade-removing sand is similar to the diamond on the glass tip that we now use to cut glass.
All kinds of fine sand
Fixture is the most common tool, which can be used for cutting, hollowing, drilling and polishing. Equivalent to our current cutting machine.
Wire tools, also used for cutting, are usually made into bow saws and used for hollowing out jade articles. Wire drawing workers usually use wire tools to cut, but this kind of cutting is very troublesome, and it takes several hours to cut a piece of jade.
The engraving head of the thread tool for cutting the Hosta.
Pipeline tools and tubular props are mainly used for punching holes. Generally, it is full drilling, just like drilling wood to make a fire. Drill a hole, which is usually very large.
Furniture is also used for punching holes, but it is very strong. This kind of hole ratio is small, and one side is used for threading, such as the hole of the jade piece of the gold thread jade clothes.
A hole in the furniture
In short, the ancients made jade because of jade, and made it with the shape. Channels and traces are the only way to identify ancient jade. In my opinion, a lot of jade identification knowledge comes from the principle of micro-science!