What are the style characteristics of Guangdong furniture in Qing Dynasty?

First, the formation of Cantonese furniture

During the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, a large number of western missionaries came to China, spreading some advanced science and technology, and the development of foreign trade and cultural and artistic exchanges at that time, which promoted the prosperity of China's economy, culture and art. Because of its special geographical position, Guangzhou became an important gateway for China's foreign trade and cultural exchanges. Since the Portuguese came to China in the Ming Dynasty, Macao where they lived has been in a state of confrontation. By the beginning of Qing Dynasty, with the further development of foreign trade, Guangzhou Business Hall and thirteen foreign firms were established one after another. Most of the buildings of these commercial institutions imitate western forms. At one time, the government and residential houses followed suit in many ways, forming an unprecedented "western fever". Other techniques such as ivory carving, porcelain firing and cloisonne have also changed and developed accordingly, which will inevitably affect the traditional furniture manufacturing industry in Guangzhou. Furniture is closely related to architecture, so the construction of western-style palaces and halls inevitably requires the allocation of complete sets of interior decoration and furniture in harmony with the artistic style of western-style architecture. In addition, Guangdong is the main producing area of precious wood. Most of the high-quality wood from Nanyang countries is imported through Guangzhou, and the raw materials for making furniture are rich. These are favorable conditions for the formation and development of Cantonese furniture in Qianlong period.

Second, the style and characteristics of Cantonese furniture

(a) Thick and abundant materials

Take the carved rosewood long table in the Qing Palace as an example (Figure 1), which is 165.5 in length, 38.7 in width and 89.2 cm in height. Desktop border 10 cm wide and 3 cm thick. The lower part is the chin rest, which is 1.3 cm thick. It is made of the same wood as the desktop. In fact, the thickness of the wood used to make the four frames of the desktop is 4.3 cm. A whole board with a width of 18.7 cm is embedded in the center of the desktop board, supplemented by four threading lines. Below the surface is a corset, 4 cm high and 1. 1 cm thick, with a series of grass patterns carved in the middle. The lower chin of the belt is symmetrical with the upper chin. Then there is the dental plate, which is 2.2 cm thick and 9 cm wide, and is embossed with the pattern of western rolled grass. The lower edge of the toothed plate is bent into a pattern shape. Four legs standing in four corners. Because of the chin up and down support, the edge of the table sprays more water, so the arch shoulders of the four legs are also larger. The four legs are decorated with western patterns. At the corner where the four legs are combined with the tooth plate, wing teeth corresponding to the curve of the tooth plate are made. Winged teeth are also made of the same wood as legs. The legs are 5.5 cm square, and the lower end is soft and inverted horseshoe-shaped, 8 cm square. Not to mention the four borders of the desktop, the waist and teeth are made of generous materials. As far as legs and feet are concerned, it is made of rough material with a square of 8 cm. Except that the tenon is left at the inner side of the upper end, horseshoes are cut at the inner side of the lower end, and the leg column and wing teeth are left in the middle, all the wood inside the leg column and above the arch shoulder is cut off, which shows the cost of materials. This table looks awkward because of the thick materials and the big horseshoe turned inward, which is not as beautiful as Ming furniture. One of the characteristics of Cantonese furniture is that no matter how crooked the legs and feet are, they generally don't need to be spliced, but prefer to dig one by one. Take the carved rosewood armchair in Qing Palace (Figure 2) as an example. The chair is 64.3 cm in the horizontal direction, 5 1.4cm in the vertical direction, 1 14.8cm in the overall height and 53 cm in the surface height. Scrape the back of the chair into an arc-shaped plate with a length of 5 1, a width of 18, a thickness of 6 cm and a thickness of 3.5 cm, and then carve a hook moire with greater curvature on the plate. Handrails that bend slightly outward are also carved with thick plates. This practice must have a certain thickness of material. The back plate of the chair is scraped into an S-shaped arc plate with a thickness of 5cm, a length of 46cm and a width of 25cm. Carve moire patterns on the front and back of the board. The upper part of the front is inlaid with boxwood carvings and tassels, and the middle is raised with grooves, embedded with copper tires, cloisonne and western enamel pieces. Western-style beaded flowers embossed in the middle of the back. This chair is 3.2 cm thick, with a low waist and a waist height of 2 cm. Put your cheek on the dental plate and put a pin between your feet. The four horizontal pins have the same height and the same width as the legs, which are 3.5 cm and 2.5 cm thick respectively. The four legs are inlaid with front teeth, and the bottom of the pin is also decorated with front teeth. In addition, the hollow through hole of the chair back and the inner frame of the armrest are all embedded with western-style pattern racks. This chair component is very troublesome to decorate. Judging from the proportion of various parts of the body, the lateral degree of the sitting surface is greater than the height, and the longitudinal dimension of the sitting surface is almost equal to the height, giving people a sense of stability and generosity. As for the materials, compared with ordinary chairs, the materials are much more.

There is also a carved rosewood cabinet in the old collection of the Qing Palace (Figure 3), which is not bulky, but handsome. If you look closely, you will find that this is a clever corner decoration to alleviate and make up for the rigidity caused by too much material of the border. So as to obtain a beautiful and generous artistic effect. The method is to carve a rope pattern with a width of about 1 cm on the edge of the inner opening of the four frames, make a public line with a width of about 0.2 cm outside the rope pattern, and then make a plain mixed surface with a width of 3 cm outside. This creates a visual effect that seems to add a rope edge to the frame, thus avoiding the heavy and dull feeling caused by too many materials. In the same way, the middle beam is made of rope patterns on the upper and lower sides and mixed double-sided lines in the middle. The actual beam thickness is 3.4 cm, which is already a large proportion in the beams of similar cabinets. As for the door panel and the two gable panels, the patterns on the panels are carved on the front, and the carved patterns are 0.5 cm higher than the lining surface, and the actual thickness exceeds 1 cm.

In short, widely used furniture is relatively generous in materials. This aspect is completely different from Su Zuo's furniture style. Soviet-style furniture is famous for its beauty and elegance, and the materials used are less than those of Cantonese-style furniture. Because hardwood is not easy to obtain, Soviet craftsmen often regard wood as gold. Before making every piece of furniture, they repeatedly observe and measure every piece of wood, carefully plan and make the best use of the clean and beautiful part of the surface wood texture. Never do it easily without careful consideration. In order to save materials, other miscellaneous wood is often used to make dark components. Nine times out of ten, I have seen some Soviet furniture collected in the palace. This is the case with Su Zuo furniture in Ming and Qing Dynasties. The situation of saving wood is mostly manifested in the materials used for in-plane threading. Su Zuo's furniture is painted to prevent the wearing belt from getting wet, to keep the wood from deforming, and to cover up the ugliness.

The widely used furniture is different. In order to emphasize the consistency of wood, most of them are made of one kind of wood. Widely used furniture, either rosewood or mahogany, is the same kind of wood and never mixed with other kinds of wood. Moreover, the furniture is widely decorated without paint, and the wood is completely bare, which makes people see at a glance and feels real.

(2) The pattern is deeply carved and the knife method is skillful.

The carving style of the decorative patterns of fine Cantonese furniture is influenced by western architectural carving to some extent, and the relief uplift is higher. A group of lines often show different levels, and most of the carved patterns are convex, and some parts are almost round. For example, the red sandalwood carved Yunlong cabinet in the Qianlong period collected in the palace is full of carvers and embossed clouds are closely connected. The carved dragon is higher, and the dragon body is swaying and twisting in the clouds, revealing sharp teeth and claws. In addition, the fine polishing makes the surface of the pattern smooth as jade, and there is no trace of gouging.

Take carved rosewood cabinets as an example. The first two door panels of the cabinet are decorated with relief patterns, and the four corners and the center are carved with flowers. Flowers, branches and leaves sprout in all directions, which is rich in three-dimensional sense because of deep carving. Decorated with western baroque patterns, it turns around and has smooth lines. The pattern gap is reserved for the lining. When carving, except for pattern decoration, the space is flattened with a knife and then polished. Although there are veins separated, from the whole place, it is not uneven, just like a board planed with a plane. It can be seen that after the pattern is carved, polishing is also very laborious. So is the core of the two mountains. The center of each board is 3-4 cm away from the frame, and tapestry lines with a width of 0.3 cm are carved, and the middle is embossed and folded. Although the carving is deep, it feels smooth and soft when it is hand-molded. The lining surface is also smooth as a mirror. At that time, when the chessboard pattern was complicated and the shovel was blocked everywhere, it was not easy to deal with the sub-plane to this extent.

Third, the decorative theme of Guangdong furniture

The decorative patterns of Guangdong furniture are also influenced by western culture and art. During the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, western technologies such as architecture, sculpture and painting were gradually applied in China. From Yongzheng to Ganjia in Qing Dynasty, Western-style architecture prevailed. In addition to Guangzhou, the same is true in other regions. For example, Yuanmingyuan, built in Xiyuan, Beijing, has many western-style buildings from form to interior decoration. In order to decorate these halls, the Qing court ordered or bought a large number of furniture combining Chinese and Western styles from Guangzhou every year, that is, after making articles in the traditional way of China, it decorated them with western patterns by carving, inlaying and other techniques. This western pattern is usually similar to peony, and some people call it "Hundred Xiang Lian". This pattern is smooth and changeable, and can be extended at will according to different shapes. It is characterized by spreading branches and leaves around with one or several flowers as the center, most of which are symmetrical up and down. If decorated on a round stool, the branches and leaves are mostly round, and the patterns on all sides are skillfully connected, so it is difficult to distinguish the two ends.

In addition to western patterns, Guangdong furniture is decorated with a considerable number of traditional patterns. Such as various forms of sea dragons, sea cliffs, moire patterns, phoenix patterns, kuiwen, bats, chimes, flowers tied with branches or broken branches, and various lace decorations. Some Cantonese-style furniture has both Chinese and western decorative patterns; There are also some Cantonese-style furniture. At first glance, there are Chinese patterns, but on closer inspection, there are more or less traces of Western styles. Take the red sandalwood chair as an example: the back of the chair is made in the shape of China Ruyi Yuntou, and the through hole is inlaid with western-style grass-rolling patterns carved by thin plates. The back plate is curved, decorated with China hook pattern, and a piece of enamel with western pattern is embedded in the center. The edge of the enamel is inlaid with wooden boards and decorated with western rolled leaves. Boxwood carvings and tassels are embedded in the middle of the chair back, but next to the upper part of the carvings, a western-style petal bead flower is engraved. Take the rosewood cabinet as an example: the two mountains are carved with Chinese peony branches, both of which are traditional decorative patterns, but between the four corners and the central pattern, there is a group of western "Baroque" style patterns. The upper shelf part is decorated with four frames with rope patterns, and there are two layers of drawers in the middle, four for each layer. The panel is made of shadow wood, and the drawer surface is carved with rosewood plates. This decorative technique is very common in Cantonese furniture. Among the numerous Cantonese furniture, about 67% have traces of foreign patterns or western patterns.

Fourthly, the structure of Cantonese furniture.

Influenced by western culture and art, the decorative patterns and carving techniques of Cantonese-style furniture have formed a unique style, but the structure has basically maintained the traditional form of China Ming Dynasty furniture, but it has changed slightly with the changes of the times.

Let's talk about the table first The table is divided into two forms: one is that four legs are at four corners with an extra waist, and the other is that legs are installed at both ends of the table. The former is called "table structure" and the latter is called "case structure". In Ming dynasty, the long tables with case-shaped structure mostly used chuck tenon structure, and some used corner tenon structure, but the number was small. In Qing dynasty, tenons with supporting angles were often used, and occasionally tenons with chucks were used. The practice of phenotypic knot basically follows the Ming style, and there is no obvious change. Cantonese furniture is no exception, for example, the carved rosewood long table and desktop mentioned above all adopt traditional structures. The table top is edge-saving, the leg surface is combined with long and short tenons, and the leg and tooth plate are shoulder tenons. In the Qing dynasty, the chair and stool were usually combined with the chair legs, and there was a waist under the surface. If the stool surface is round, use an arc shoulder tenon.

The armchairs in Qing dynasty mostly used waist-binding method. First, make them into sitting surfaces with waist straps, and then install handrails and backrests on the surfaces. This is very different from the practice of beds in the Ming Dynasty and armchairs in the Ming Dynasty. Ming armchairs rarely have a waist, and the side columns and two hind legs on both sides of the backrest are made of a whole piece of wood. The armchairs in Qing dynasty, also known as "plush chairs", were mostly waist-tied, and the back of the chair was at a 90-degree right angle to the seat. Even if some people are backward, it is quite different from Ming style. For example, in the mahogany armchair mentioned above, the columns on both sides of the back of the chair are basically perpendicular to the sitting surface, but the headrest is slightly bent outward, thus forming a 95-degree backrest inclination angle. The backrest and armrest are both frame structures and connected by walking pins. The method is to chisel out tenons on both sides of the sitting surface, which are wide at the front, narrow at the back and small at the bottom, and install corresponding tenons on the lower frame of the handrail. After inserting the tenon into the tenon, push it back hard, and the tenon will slide back into the narrow groove, making it difficult to pull out the tenon. The back vertical edge of the handrail is also equipped with the same tenon, and a wide and narrow tenon nest is chiseled on the back vertical edge. Usually, there are a pair of direct pins on the lower horizontal edge of the back. Press the backrest on the tenon of the vertical edge of the armrest, so that the lower horizontal edge coincides with the seating surface, and the backrest, armrest and seating surface are closely connected into a whole. Below the sitting surface, as usual, the sitting surface is formed by saving edges; The long and short tenons support the surface of the valve seat; Connect legs and feet with shoulder tenons; A pin is arranged at the lower part of the leg, and the pin adopts a grid shoulder tenon structure. The palindromes decorated on the soles of the feet are also the characteristics of the Qing Dynasty. Armchairs in the Ming dynasty rarely used waist-binding style, and their feet were not decorated. Only square stools and round stools have two kinds of waist-binding and no waist-binding, but they are not decorated with fence feet.

The structure of Cantonese-style cabinets also largely retains the traditional form of the Ming Dynasty. The top of the cabinet and four frames adopt brown angle tenon structure; Door panel frame mounting structure, two panel cores; Grid shoulder tenon structure with horizontal belt and four frames. Due to the mutual reference and influence from different places, Guangdong furniture has many similarities with furniture from other places. For example, when tenons are used, they are generally not used on the front and upper plane, but on both sides. Ming-style furniture mostly uses tenons to make the appliances strong. The use of hidden tenons in Qing dynasty, though not reasonable in structure, improved the aesthetics of furniture. For example, the combination of the cross beam in the middle of the cabinet and the frame uses hidden tenons, while the two sides of the lower cross beam use open tenons (that is, through tenons). Because hardwood is not easy to deform, it can also receive a strong and solid effect. This usually refers to the front of the cabinet. As far as the overall structure of a cabinet is concerned, there are still some shortcomings. For example, because of the beauty in front, most people don't need tenors. This is also the case with other kinds of furniture, but due to the different size, its shortcomings are prominent and not prominent. Generally, cabinets are large, and it is difficult for more than a dozen people to move them. It takes more than two people to move them. Some cabinets are aging for a long time, which leads to the failure of tenon riveting glue. When moving, there is often a phenomenon of tenon opening in two mountains. Tables, chairs and stools rarely have tenons because of their small size and light weight.

Simply put, there are two main schools of hardwood furniture in Qing Dynasty, namely Jiangnan and Lingnan. Jiangnan includes Suzhou, Yangzhou and Jiangning in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. Lingnan refers to Guangzhou. Although the number of products in Lingnan is not as good as that in Jiangnan, its artistic level is higher than that in Jiangnan. The so-called qing dynasty furniture, rich in materials, stable and generous in modeling, complicated and gorgeous in decoration, mainly refers to Cantonese-style furniture. Although it is not as simple and elegant as Ming-style furniture, and its production is scientific and reasonable, Cantonese-style furniture in Qing Dynasty always reflects the special style and artistic characteristics of furniture production in a period, both from a historical perspective and an artistic perspective.