As we all know, the earliest calligraphy works handed down so far,
This is Cao Zhang's Ping Fu Tie, a writer of the Western Jin Dynasty in the Palace Museum.
As the first orderly calligraphy ink in China,
Enjoy the reputation of "the originator of legal posts".
The creation time of Reply Post was at least 1700 years ago.
But it hasn't rotted yet. How did the ancients do it?
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Let's enlarge the reply.
See that mark?
This is the fiber bundle on the surface of the paper, which is very dense. If you look closely, you can even see some strands of hemp rope that are not mashed. In the words of modern people, it is "the curtain pattern is not obvious, as if it has not been effectively polished, and the paper has poor ink absorption."
If we put it into the era of Lu Ji's life, these characteristics are called "making primitive people", similar to the unearthed Chinese paper.
These evidences show that the paper material used in the reply post is hemp paper.
It was previously identified as "cocoon paper", but after many tests by experts, it was confirmed that the post was early hemp paper.
Is it directly related to the material of the paper used to smooth the paste for thousands of years?
Even in modern times, everything called "hemp" has a rough and quaint meaning, and hemp paper is no exception.
The hemp paper used by Luji in those days was still produced in small-scale folk workshops in modern times. It's just a modern material for making hemp paper, pure Chinese holly. For example, "Xihe hemp paper" produced at the northern end of Longnan City in the southeast of Gansu Province has a history of thousands of years.
Handmade Xihe hemp paper
This kind of hemp paper is also called home-made paper by local people. It is made of pure Ilex cornuta through several processes, such as splitting bamboo, floating pond, boiling, mortar, throwing materials into curtains and so on.
Broussonetia papyrifera bark
It is famous for its simple paper color, flexible paper (tear resistance), wear resistance, smooth hand feeling, great elasticity, wrinkle-free and immortal for thousands of years. It is suitable for writing elegant calligraphy and painting works such as letters, long scrolls and picture albums.
Making hemp paper with Lycium barbarum bark.
But when exactly Xihe hemp paper started, no one knows. According to the local inheritors, this village has been making paper for generations as long as I can remember.
In recent forty or fifty years, ancient papers have been unearthed in Xinjiang, Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia. 1986 ancient paper unearthed from No.5 Han Tomb in Fangmatan, Tianshui is made of hemp paper, and the largest one is 2 1× 19 cm, which is white, thin and uniform in color, with hemp fiber ↓
It seems that hemp paper can really resist the thousand-year wind and frost and spread firmly to modern times, even if it is placed in an unattended grave.
The hemp paper of the letter written by Lu Ji, because it was properly kept by the admirers of later generations, has not been difficult to spread so far.
Xihe hemp paper paintings and calligraphy works
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China's ancient paintings are enduring for thousands of years. Besides paper, there is another trick.
There are so many paintings and calligraphy handed down from ancient times to the present, not all of them are made of hemp paper. What anti-corrosion tricks do those paintings and calligraphy that don't use hemp paper have?
Let's start with the jubilant Spring Festival.
The Spring Festival is held every year, which is new to couples.
During the New Year in China, every household posts festive and auspicious couplets, which are full of reunion and prayers for the coming year.
Behind these Spring Festival couplets is the silent support of an obscure "little thing".
It is paste.
As the saying goes, "Three-point painting, seven-point mounting." The quality of painting mounting often affects the quality of a painting. Brush paste is very important in mounting.
Amin Zhou emphasized in the section "Using Paste" that the relationship between mounting and paste is just like the relationship between ink and glue. Ink is shaped by glue and mounted by paste.
"Mounting is pasting, ink is sticky, ink is sticky, and mounting is pasting."
"If the paste is used well, it will be very comfortable and warm to roll up."
Only when the paste is used well can the calligraphy and painting be rolled comfortably, and the mounting temperature is just right.
Back in those days, the Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival returned to the Forbidden City at 1953 and was mounted for the second time at 1973. Mounting technology is an ancient technology that has been circulated in China for thousands of years. At this time, the most important prop-paste will come in handy!
The raw materials of the paste in this picture are rice and wheat, and "smoked deer powder" is added. Lu Xiang, also known as ponytail, Tianzexiang, Mole Xiang and Duojialuo Xiang, can repel insects and make the paste more viscous.
In addition, some mounters sometimes add alum when making paste, not to prevent corrosion, but to prevent fading and fix the ink color of calligraphy and painting; You can also avoid seams.
Small paste, seemingly simple to make, can be completed only by the ratio of several raw materials. The encounter of a natural material makes the paste as a reversible material to protect ancient paintings for thousands of years.
The road to simplicity is this simple paste, and behind it is China's profound wisdom of using natural experience flexibly after penetrating the laws of nature.