Most of the earliest paintings and characters in China were carved on objects, such as stones, metals, animal bones and bamboo. Whether it is stone or metal bamboo, these things are hard, often irregular in shape and take up a lot of space, which brings great difficulties to collection and dissemination.
Therefore, in order to solve this problem, silk (later paper) was first put into use, painting techniques were displayed and improved, and characters also developed from a single practicality to a calligraphy art.
The invention of silk is undoubtedly an important material condition to promote the development of calligraphy and painting art and the birth of mounting technology.
The interaction of silk weaving, papermaking, calligraphy and painting leads to the sublimation of mounting technology.
Calligraphy and painting mounting, like anything else, has a development process from scratch and from shallow to deep.
A silk painting of a character Yulong unearthed from Chu Tomb in Hunan during the Warring States Period and later unearthed from No.1 Han Tomb in Mawangdui, Changsha, provided valuable information for later generations to study early calligraphy and painting.
After the Warring States Period, the painting arts in Qin and Han Dynasties mainly included murals, lacquer paintings, portrait bricks, wood carvings, woodwinds and silk paintings.
The painting art in this period is better than that in the Warring States period. In artistic expression, we strive to grasp the overall situation, and we can also deal with larger scenes and create different images in general.
However, the painting in this period was limited by the lack of tools and experience, and it was still in a relatively simple exploration stage, and it also lacked in-depth and delicate performance.
During the Qin and Han dynasties, Jane Eyre and silk books were used at the same time. Although bamboo slips are still the mainstream tool for painting and calligraphy because of their cheapness, silk books have also been used in many occasions. In contrast, among the most commonly used materials, those made of bamboo are called "sword side" and those made of wood are called "half belt".
Replacing Jane with silk has many advantages, but it is expensive and rare, so it is not easy to be widely used.
This requires a cheap and easily available writing and painting material, which can not only keep the advantages of simple silk, but also avoid their disadvantages.
So the long-awaited papers came into being under various conditions.
In the early days, the form of writing books with paper was to imitate the style of silk, stick the paper into a long roll, take the paper as the axis, stick it on the last piece of paper, and roll it into a bundle around it, which is called a scroll, so this system is called the scroll system.
Every piece of paper should be drawn with borders and lines to facilitate writing, so it is also called Wu Si wood block and bamboo silk wood block.
Each roll of paper ranges from two to dozens, and each piece of paper is also called finding a way or a piece of paper.
In order to protect the paper roll, about every five or ten rolls are wrapped in paper, and some are packed in bags.
At that time, books were written with a brush dipped in ink. This kind of long scroll glued together is used as a shaft and a brush for painting and calligraphy, which is almost exactly the same as today's horizontal scroll and hand scroll. This should be the beginning of painting and calligraphy mounting art in China.
Q&A: What kind of painting and calligraphy mounting style do you like?