About Ancient Chinese Design History

Packaging has a very close relationship with people's production and life, and its emergence is mainly due to the needs of human survival and life. In ancient times, due to the extremely low level of productivity, ancient people relied only on their hands or simple tools to obtain the necessary means of living, in this long process, they have a certain knowledge of natural things, perhaps inspired by natural things, and gradually learned to use the plant cane to tie up the items obtained (mainly food), and also learned to use the plant leaves, shells, hides, and so on, to contain and transfer the things obtained. From a strict sense, although this can not be regarded as a real packaging, but from the materialist view of development, they should be the most primitive form of packaging. Since the creation of packaging, in the long history of the evolution of the development of years, the function of packaging is constantly being expanded, from the initial bundling, wrapping, wrapping, filling, to facilitate the storage, protection of goods, and then to beautify the goods, to promote sales and other functions. It should be emphasized that the expansion of the above functions of packaging is closely linked with the social development and the increase of material products, but also with the discovery and use of materials, technology invention and improvement is closely related to the former is the performance of social demand, the source of the expansion of packaging functions, while the latter has become an important driving force for the development of packaging. First, scientific and technological progress in packaging to promote the role of materials is one of the most important factors in any artifacts, without materials, any artifacts can not be realized, the material is the basis of the artifacts activities. Technology is one of the most critical factors in the creation activities, it is the guarantee of the realization of the creation behavior. Throughout the development of China's ancient packaging history, it is not difficult to find that scientific and technological progress on the continuous development of ancient packaging plays a great role in promoting. Here I try from ceramics, bronze, gold and silver, lacquer, papermaking and printing and other aspects of a little explanation: from the archaeological excavations of historical data, pottery before the emergence of human artifacts are limited to simple tools of production, such as wood, bone, stone, etc., and there is still no packaging of artifacts, when the main use of natural objects for extremely simple package or dress. With the improvement of primitive human cognitive ability, the enhancement of the concept of modeling and the progress of the design and artistic ability, ancient people creatively realize the clay into pottery, and gradually appeared with, protection, storage, transit and other functions of the packaging containers, such as pots, jars, etc., not only that, in terms of modeling, these packaging containers gradually realize the transformation from a single to a variety of functional aspects of the progressively practical and functional, we can say that this ancient packaging containers are the most important and the most important of the packaging containers. Functionality, it can be said that this is a qualitative leap in the history of ancient packaging development. As a lineage of pottery and more progressive porcelain, since the emergence of primitive porcelain in the Shang Dynasty - "green glazed ware" began, all kinds of porcelain with a fine and hard texture, good densification, weak water absorption and other good packaging suitability, have been applied to packaging, more importantly, with the technology of porcelain making, good densification, weak water absorption and other good packaging suitability, have been applied to packaging. More importantly, with the porcelain technology, process refinement, porcelain packaging with its good surface decorative properties, become one of the most extensive and important categories of ancient packaging, it can be said that this is a new leap in the history of the development of ancient packaging. Bronze is a great invention in the history of human science and technology, and is also a symbol of mankind entering the metal age. Bronze is an alloy of copper, tin, lead, in terms of physical properties, compared with pottery, bronze has a low melting point, easy to mold; hardness, wear-resistant, corrosion-resistant and not easy to be broken and so on. These characteristics not only enrich the choice of packaging materials, but also greatly expand the design space of packaging container modeling and decoration. According to archaeological data, the bronze ware that appeared at the end of China's primitive society gradually replaced pottery as the main artifacts after entering the class society. [1] In terms of packaging containers, the practicality of bronze packaging has been improved, such as sealing, solidity and decoration, and its artistry is incomparable to that of previous packaging. In addition, in terms of decoration, they are more rich in strong spirituality, ideology, political, ideological and cultural concepts into it, so that the ancient packaging appeared in the set of functionality, spirituality as one of the man-made things, to a large extent, to promote the ancient packaging of the external decorations and the inner culture of the fusion of the creation of things, the creation of symbols of the Road.

According to archaeological data, in China's Shang Dynasty, the emergence of precious metal gold and silver products, to the Western Han Dynasty, gold and silver artifacts began to appear, which marks China's ancient artifacts craft technology into a higher stage. For the ancient packaging, rare gold and silver for the packaging of the palace luxury style provides a material possibility, in addition, gold and silver good ductility, metallic luster and increasingly sophisticated processing technology, making the ancient packaging containers in the modeling, decorative aspects of a broader expression of space, but also makes the ancient form of expression of the packaging is more diversified and artistic, the artistic value of the previous packaging can not be reached, such as the Falmen Temple Palace excavations. For example, the eight treasures unearthed in the Famen Temple Palace, not only the production process is extremely complex, the decoration process is quite complicated, extremely luxurious, and the ancient "series of packaging" interpretation is quite perfect. [2] in the invention and improvement of technology, papermaking and printing for the development of ancient packaging is extremely important, play a profound role in promoting. Since the invention of papermaking, and with the improvement of manufacturing technology, different properties of paper has been invented, some of which are used in packaging, such as waterproof paper, anti-moth-eaten paper and so on. Papermaking on the ancient packaging to promote the role of the following aspects, one, greatly enriched the packaging container modeling form. Some ancient paper has good flexibility and folding resistance, can be processed into different shapes of packaging containers, such as paper bags, paper boxes and so on. Lu Yu's "tea scripture" has a relevant record on paper bags: "paper bag: the thick white paper with the river vine clamped seams, to store the sizzling tea, so as not to leak the fragrance." ; "both the heat with a paper bag storage, the essence of the gas has nothing to disperse Yue, Hou cold end of the." [3] the bag, the bag. According to the "New Tang Book" records, in the Tang Dynasty began to use thick cardboard to manufacture paper cups, paper boxes and other packaging containers. Secondly, the extensive expansion of the range of packages, making packaging tends to folklorization, living, expanding the convenience function of packaging. Relevant historical records, the ancients often use paper packaging storage, transportation of some daily life items, such as tea, medicine, fruit and so on. As another important technological invention in ancient times - printing, to a large extent, expanding the packaging of beautification, promotional functions, and improve the composition of the packaging elements, but also makes the packaging decoration to become an independent entity to serve the packaging, and this is particularly evident since the Northern Song Dynasty. Such as now preserved in the Museum of History, "Liu's trademark", carved with the title "Jinan Liu family Kung Fu Needle Shop", in the middle of the white rabbit pounding medicine pattern, in the pattern of the left and right marked "Recognize the white rabbit in front of the door as a mark! ", the bottom is engraved with the description of the texture of the goods and the sales method of the advertisement text: "buy the best steel bars, make kung fu fine needle, do not steal the work, the people to use, if the Xingtrade, do not have to add ra, please remember the white." The whole layout is illustrated with text, the white rabbit pounding medicine is equivalent to the store's logo, and the text publicity highlights the quality of the needle and the method of selling it. Second, the traditional economic structure and packaging of the relationship between packaging since the emergence of primitive society, in the slave society, feudal society in this long period of history, its development is very slow, there is no qualitative leap, the reason for this, lies in the traditional economic structure. Since the establishment of the Xia Dynasty, China has entered a slave society, and the economy under the conditions of slavery is basically a self-sufficient natural economy. The slave masters fully possessed the social means of production, thus forcing countless slaves to engage in production for them, and mainly provided all kinds of luxuries to satisfy the production and living needs of the slave masters; therefore, the production of their material materials was not aimed at the needs of society and the market, which made the possibilities of product exchanges minimal; in other words, it was difficult for the products of society to enter the circulation area to realize their value; in the system of slavery, the production and distribution of material materials followed the principle of the social and market needs of society. materials were produced and distributed according to the use value of the product, not the value of the product. [4] This self-sufficient natural economy seriously hindered the development of product packaging. On the one hand, the complete possession of the social means of production by the slave owners largely inhibited the existence of different consumer groups and the emergence of the scale of market exchanges, thus restricting the emergence of the diversity of packaging styles. On the other hand, social production is not based on social and market demand as a starting point, hindering the development and formation of the social market, making it difficult for products to enter the circulation field, hindering the expansion of the packaging function. Spring and Autumn and Warring States period, China's society underwent a revolutionary transformation, from slave society gradually transitioned to feudal society, since then to 1840, the economic structure of China's feudal society is a combination of natural economy and commodity economy, while the natural economy dominates. Along with the occurrence of the third social division of labor in feudal society, commerce detached from industry and emerged to form an independent industry. Compared with the slavery society, the commerce in the feudal society had a great development, but under the suppression of the traditional policy of "emphasizing agriculture and suppressing commerce", the commodity economy had not been able to detach itself from the natural economy and become the dominant one in the society. Although feudal society in a certain period of time in the commodity economy was once developed, commercial capital once became very active, business once appeared prosperous situation, and even appeared the bud of capitalism, such as since the middle and late Tang Fang market system collapsed, the market was once diversified, liberalization. However, since the production of commodities did not develop accordingly, it was commerce that made products into commodities, not commodities that formed commerce by their own movement. [5] Furthermore, the low consumption ability of the lower classes and their limited demand for the market could not stimulate the development of commodity production. The above two aspects make the economic operation chain of production and consumption of the two links are very weak, greatly restricting the diversified production of products and the formation of diversified markets, thus indirectly hindering the development of diversified commodity packaging.