What is mother-of-pearl inlay?

Mother-of-pearl has a very long history. It is said that it originated from lacquerware in Shang Dynasty. In the early 1980s, Chinese archaeologists excavated a large number of mother-of-pearl lacquerware from the Western Zhou Dynasty in the Yan 'guo Cemetery on the west side of the glass river, including lacquerware 1 piece. Mother-of-pearl craft is used to draw animal faces on the Feng Niaowen, which is one of the earliest mother-of-pearl lacquerware in the world. By the Tang Dynasty, China's mother-of-pearl craft had reached a quite mature stage, especially the mother-of-pearl with bronze mirror painted back, which was the craft treasure of this period. Mother-of-pearl furniture reached its peak in the Qing Dynasty and was favored by the Qing court. According to some data, in 177 1 year (thirty-six years of Qianlong), Li Zhiying, a salt official of the Huai River, once had more than 10 pieces of Yangzhou lacquer mother-of-pearl furniture for tribute to the Qing court. After liberation, archaeologists unearthed mother-of-pearl lacquered bronze mirrors in the tombs of Tang Dynasty in Shanxian County, Henan Province and Luoyang. The back of the bronze mirror is painted and inlaid with shells to make a picture pattern, which is very exquisite and elegant and has high artistic value and collection value. Mother-of-pearl inlaid lacquerware is made by selecting high-quality shells such as mussels and luminous snails as raw materials, grinding, collaging and inlaying on the lacquer blank to form figures, pavilions, flowers, birds, fish and insects, and then painting and polishing.

Mother-of-pearl inlay can be divided into soft mother-of-pearl inlay and hard mother-of-pearl inlay. Soft mother-of-pearl inlay, also known as point snail, is made of shells, luminous snails and other raw materials, carefully made into spiral pieces as thin as cicada wings, and then point them on the lacquer blank. The method of making hard mother-of-pearl inlay is the same, except that the shells used as raw materials are ground thicker. Mother-of-pearl is generally used in precious hardwood furniture, such as mahogany, Huang Huali and mahogany. Among them, mahogany is the majority. However, mother-of-pearl in Soviet-style furniture is rarely used alone, and it is often mixed with other inlays, such as jade, ivory, colored stone, coral and so on. This is what people usually call "treasure mosaic". Treasure inlay was created by Zhouyi in Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province, and is called "Zhou system" in history. Through carving, engraving and embedding, he made landscapes, figures, terraces, flowers, birds and animals and other patterns, just like an authentic embroidery, which is very beautiful. However, Cantonese furniture attaches great importance to mother-of-pearl technology, from benches and chairs to beds and cupboards, most of them are covered with cymbals, which makes their colors more magnificent, wonderful and elegant, and has a unique folk flavor, thus becoming a major feature of Cantonese furniture.