Materials related to traditional handicrafts

The prosperity of agriculture has promoted the prosperity of handicrafts, commerce, transportation and urban economy. Traditional handicrafts such as silk weaving, ceramics and shipbuilding have made breakthroughs on the original basis. Like Tang Sancai, it became a typical representative of the prosperous times of the Tang Dynasty. The development of handicraft industry made great achievements in Kaiyuan period. According to experts' research, the gold and silver wares of the Tang Dynasty found in hejia village, An are relics of Prince Li Shouli's palace. Its exquisite craftsmanship and exquisite modeling are unprecedented, reflecting the level in this respect in the Kaiyuan period. > Handicrafts in the Tang Dynasty are still divided into official handicrafts and folk handicrafts. Compared with the Han Dynasty, the division of labor of government handicrafts has become more and more detailed, and the state's management of government handicrafts has also been strengthened. In the central government, the state has set up four inspectors to take charge of government handicrafts. The establishment of "Four Supervisors" and "Supervision Department" shows that the government handicraft industry has a huge management organization and a fine division of labor, which is one of the signs that the government handicraft industry has developed greatly compared with the Han Dynasty. & gt Folk handicrafts in the Tang Dynasty can be divided into family handicrafts and manual workshops. Among them, folk handicraft workshops developed greatly in the Tang Dynasty, and some handicraft workshops already had considerable business scale. He Mingyuan's handicraft workshop with 500 silk looms in Dingzhou is a prominent example. From the perspective of handicraft industry, the handicraft industry in the Tang Dynasty has made great progress compared with the previous generation, which can be divided into ten departments, including mining, casting, ceramics, textiles, printing and dyeing, papermaking, printing, shipbuilding, lacquerware and food. The mining industry in the Tang Dynasty was mainly controlled by * * * *, but private mining was allowed within certain limits, and taxes were paid to the state according to the output. In the Tang Dynasty, the mining industry was quite developed, with 0/68 metal mines, with an annual output of 2 million Jin of iron, 260,000 Jin of copper and 20,000 Jin of silver. Among them, there are more than 60 iron mines in southern provinces and more than 30 in northern provinces. In addition to metal mines, there are also records about coal mines and oil exploitation in Tang literature. In Lin Qiong, Sichuan (now Qionglai County), people have used "fire wells" (natural gas) to cook salt. & gt There were many metal casting departments in the Tang Dynasty, and there were many kinds of metal objects. Judging from the existing Tang dynasty gold substitute, the casting technology has been obviously improved compared with the previous generation, and the process technology has been improved. In addition to casting and exercise, there are also hand-made, processed and polished, as well as gold and silver plating. The solution to the problem of co-casting of gold and silver can be described as one of the achievements of gold and silver casting technology in Tang Dynasty. In the metal casting industry of the Tang Dynasty, the coinage industry and the weapon manufacturing industry occupied a particularly important position. & gt During the Kaiyuan period of Xuanzong, the problem of coinage was always in a dilemma: if the coinage was monopolized by * *, private coinage was prohibited, because the copper source was limited, the amount of coinage could not keep up, which would make money insufficient and hinder economic development and commodity circulation; If the restrictions on coinage are relaxed and private coinage is allowed, the national finance will be controlled by private coinage, and the market will be full of bad coins, which will benefit others and even endanger the unity of the country. In this regard, from the natural and economic point of view of agricultural society, the monarch and ministers in Kaiyuan period tended to ban private casting. The Vietnamese currency could not meet the needs of the society at that time, and the currency monopoly failed to achieve positive results. In the fifth year of Kaiyuan (7 17), when Xuanzong visited Luoyang, Song Qiong presided over the ban on the circulation of bad money. In the second year, the imperial edict forbade private casting again, investigated and dealt with the illicit money, and ordered him to remonstrate with Jianghuai to ban the illicit money. However, the strict ban led to price fluctuations, business depression and public dissatisfaction, and Song was suspended. Later, Xuanzong also realized that it was useless to ban private casting of money, so he changed his policy and adopted methods such as opening more copper mines and adding money furnaces, but they were not effective enough. Generally speaking, the monetary policy in the Kaiyuan period was not very successful. & gt In the Tang Dynasty, due to the rapid development of cultural undertakings, the government set up many papermaking workshops, including more than 90 in Anhui, Sichuan, Jiangxi, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and the papermaking industry was very prosperous. Judging from the technology, variety and texture of the paper industry, the paper industry in the Tang Dynasty really surpassed the previous generation. Some famous papers produced at that time, such as Xuanzhou Jingxian Xuan paper, Zhejiang Jiteng paper, Shujun Shuangliu paper, Xuetao paper, ten-color paper, caviar paper, etc., are well-known at home and abroad and exported to all parts of the world. At that time, the most developed area of paper industry was Sichuan, and other areas also developed, such as cereal paper produced in Nanhai and scented paper produced in Luozhou. Compared with the previous generation, the paper industry in the Tang Dynasty was more widely distributed, with more types and names, more exquisite printing colors and more extensive uses. In a word, the unprecedented development of the paper industry in the Tang Dynasty is closely related to the prosperity of social economy and cultural undertakings and the rise of block printing. The emergence of block printing is a great contribution of the Tang Dynasty to the development of printing in China. The so-called engraving printing is to engrave characters on a whole board (or other board materials) of a certain specification, and then add ink to the whole board for printing. The centers of printing industry in Tang Dynasty were Chang 'an and Chengdu, which were distributed in Shaanxi, Henan, Jiangxi, Sichuan, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. & gt With the unprecedented development of domestic and foreign trade in the Tang Dynasty, water transport from inland rivers to the sea undertook important tasks. This realistic need is a great driving force to promote the development of shipbuilding industry in Tang Dynasty. At that time, the wood used for shipbuilding was hard and durable nanmu, followed by camphor wood. In addition, magnolia, fir and ko trees are also used for shipbuilding. Because most of these trees grow in the Yangtze River basin and the Qiujiang River basin, the shipbuilding industry is also mostly distributed in this area. According to relevant records, during the Kaiyuan and Tianbao years of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty, the shipbuilding industry developed greatly in scale and mode. It is reported that Ada (7 15-780), favored by Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty, once set up the 10 official workshop in Yangzi County (now Yizheng, Jiangsu Province) to build 2,000 ships for inland navigation. At that time, there were many kinds of inland shipping vessels, including gondolas, sitting boats, shallow-bottomed boats, miscellaneous boats, seagulls, net boats, vehicles and boats, horse boats, steel-toed boats, Teng shallow boats, mangoku boats and so on. Lacquerware industry in the Tang Dynasty had a "red-picking" process in addition to the dry lacquer process which was quite popular in the previous generation. This technique, engraved on Ping Jin with a printing plate, was the pioneer of picking red lacquerware in Song Dynasty. Among the lacquerware in the Tang Dynasty, the so-called "level meter" is quite famous. The gold and silver flat-top wares collected by Masakura Research Institute in Japan are well preserved and have a wide variety, which shows that flat-top lacquerware has become very popular in the Tang Dynasty. & gt The larger salt areas in the Tang Dynasty are Luchang Salt Area, Lianghuai Salt Area, Liangzhe Salt Area and Fujian Salt Area. There were 18 salt ponds and 640 salt wells at that time. Due to the popularity of tea drinking in the Tang Dynasty, the tea industry in the Tang Dynasty developed rapidly. The Yangtze River valley starts from Sichuan in the west and goes down the river. Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and even Fujian are all important tea producing areas. In some areas, there are also large tea gardens and tea-making workshops. The sugar industry in China began in the Tang Dynasty. In the 11th year of Zhenguan reign of Emperor Taizong (637), he sent envoys to Mojietuo (present-day India) to learn how to absorb and cook sugar. The area where sugar was produced in the Tang Dynasty was similar to today, although it was related to the distribution of sugar cane in this area. Today, the sucrose production in Guangdong, Sichuan, Fujian, Taiwan Province and other places has been recorded in the historical records of the Tang Dynasty.