The materials used in calligraphy and painting, silk and paper, play a certain role in the dating of calligraphy and painting. The identification of silk and paper is another way to identify calligraphy and painting. According to current research by Hanguo scholars, late Zhou silk paintings, Chu tomb silk paintings during the Warring States Period, and later Han tomb silk paintings at Mawangjiao were all woven with relatively fine single silk. So far, no double-silk silk paintings have been seen. (That is, the warp is made of double filaments, and the weft is made of single filaments woven into silk). Silk from the Five Dynasties to the Southern Song Dynasty has developed and changed compared with the previous generations. On the surface, in addition to single-filament silk, there are also forms of double-filament silk. The warp threads of this kind of double silk silk are composed of two threads in a group, with a gap of one thread between each two sets, and the weft thread is a single thread. Generally speaking, the silk of the Yuan Dynasty is thicker than the silk of the Song Dynasty. It is not as fine and white as the silk of the Song Dynasty, and it is also loose. Silk from the Ming Dynasty generally seems to be relatively rough. In the early and mid-Ming Dynasty, there was a kind of lower quality and thinner silk. Because this kind of silk was too thin and difficult for ink to fall off, calligraphers and painters often put it on paper before creating calligraphy and painting. The quality of paper is another criterion for judging the age of calligraphy and painting. Paper from the Han and Jin Dynasties is mostly made of linen, mostly recycled from waste materials such as linen cloth, sacks, hemp shoes, and fishing nets. Raw hemp is also used - hemp is used in the north and ramie is used in the south. It is characterized by thick fibers, so it is difficult to make finely. It is matte, hairless, and the fibers are bundled into a round shape, sometimes with lignin. Most calligraphy and paintings of the Sui, Tang, and Five Dynasties used hemp paper. The Tang copy of "Lanting Preface" we see today, Du Mu's "Zhang Hao Hao Shi", and a large number of Tang Dynasty scriptures excavated from Dunhuang are all like this. After the Northern Song Dynasty, the number decreased sharply, but in the northern Liao and Jin Dynasties, linen was still used for scripture paper. In the future, there were almost no people who used hemp paper for calligraphy and painting. During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, paper made from bark began to be seen, mostly made of mulberry or sandalwood bark. They were characterized by fine fibers, and at the same time, they were fine masterpieces produced with the development and progress of the handicraft industry. This kind of material is also dark and dull, only slightly brighter than hemp paper. The fibers are bundled into flat sheets and have a slight paper fluff. There is also paper made from mulberry bark, which is characterized by finer and shiny fibers, easy lint on the paper surface, and flat fiber bundles. From the beginning of the Northern Song Dynasty, a large number of bark paper appeared in calligraphy and ink. Later, bark paper was produced throughout the country. The use of bamboo for calligraphy and painting began in the Northern Song Dynasty. Bamboo is hard and difficult to pulp. Previous people could not process it, so they did not use it. Bamboo paper has the finest fibers, which are bright and hairless, with fiber bundles or hard thorns, and edges and corners can also be seen outside the corners. After the middle of the Northern Song Dynasty, all the raw materials for making calligraphy and painting paper were available, so it was not easy to distinguish the earlier and later eras by paper.
Decoration Identification
The decoration of calligraphy and painting in each era has its own characteristics, which can be used as an auxiliary basis for identification and dating. For example, the paintings and calligraphy collected by the court of the Southern Song Dynasty have a prescribed mounting format - Shaoxing Imperial Mansion Decoration Style. There are strict regulations on what materials should be used for mounting calligraphy and paintings of different grades, such as what kind of wrapping, what kind of silk and what kind of axis should be used for hand scrolls; The color, size, shaft head, etc. of the materials used for the vertical shaft have certain formats. Paintings from the Yuan Dynasty palace collection were framed by specially appointed people. In the fourth year of Dade's reign, "I ordered the framer Wuzhi to use ancient jade and ivory as the axis, Luan magpie wood and brocade green silk as the frame, and make a refined lacquer box and hide it in the secretary's library. There are planned to be 646 paintings." Ming Dynasty The decorative forms of calligraphy and painting have further developed. Calligraphy and painting scrolls have added headers, and some have written words. Some imitate propaganda and have narrow borders, and some use damask or silk to dig out the wide borders; vertical scrolls have wide borders and narrow borders. Some have a poetry hall as well. The mounting of paintings collected by the court of the Qing Dynasty had its own special style. During the Tang Xi and Qianlong periods, the materials, techniques, and forms of mounting were better in all aspects. The tiantou damask on the rolls and scrolls was mostly light cyan, the secondary water barriers were mostly tooth-colored damask, and the part near the center of the painting was mostly beige damask. (or silk), some vertical scrolls have poetry halls, some do not, but generally there are two ribbons. The rounded curves on the vertical shaft poles are custom-made and are significantly different from non-palace ones. After the Jiaqing period, the quality of palace decoration gradually declined, and the poles of the vertical shafts gradually became thicker (in the later period, they became square). Some shaft heads were no longer made of red sandalwood or mahogany, and they looked clumsy. The hand scrolls are also thicker than those during the Kangxi and Qian dynasties.