Chapter 891 Playing with Jade

Su You smiled and said: "They are all two-year-old adult cattle. I will keep fifty of them for crossbreeding with local cattle breeds. You can take the rest to Liangzhe Road and give them to the ranch so that they can try crossing them with Erlin breeds."

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In addition to cattle and horses, this pasture also has several large donkeys that Zhang San brought back this time. Su You plans to use them to breed large mules with the big horses. The current Jiaozhi Road basically relies on sea and water transportation, and land transportation capacity is relatively lacking.

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According to statistics, there are only 30,000 elephants on Cochin Road, and they all belonged to the army in the past.

Suzhou Oil deemed it unnecessary and converted all of them for civilian use to improve road traffic reconstruction and engineering construction in various places.

The arrival of the rainy season brought many constructions to a halt, so Su You returned to Jiaozhou and took Shi Wei to the Sichuan Crafts Processing Base to inspect the production of crafts.

Su You was a poverty alleviation cadre in his previous life. The way he found for his counterpart villages was to restore intangible inheritance techniques, develop products that meet market demand, and lead everyone on the road to getting rid of poverty and becoming rich. Therefore, this is his specialty.

Never tires of work.

For example, craft knives are not as simple as a knife blade. If they are sold to Dashi, scriptures must be etched on the knife blade, and then gilded and gilded, or precision cast and inlaid with brass.

gems, grips and

The scabbard should be covered with dragon skin, or pearl fish skin, or even decorated with antlers and ivory. Nowadays, even more luxurious materials include toucan skulls and whale teeth, and the pommel is a silver or brass wolf head.

Bear head, eagle head.

Each handle head is precision cast and then carefully carved with an engraving machine. The animal eyes are inlaid with coal essence, amber or cat eyes. Just one animal head is a valuable handicraft.

Oriental knives are even more particular.

If Western swords are inlaid with gold, silver and precious stones and are full of nouveau riche atmosphere, Eastern swords and accessories are full of restrained, elegant and subtle beauty.

The blades of Oriental knives are usually kept in hardwood sheaths such as basswood or beech, as are the handles, which look like a curved stick.

The handles and sheaths are all made of raw wood. They are usually maintained with coconut oil so that the light can be seen.

The real knife outfit is another set.

The scabbard is made of solid wood covered with a layer of linen, and then painted with gray paint. The paint gray is made from raw lacquer and glutinous rice flour, and is usually wrapped in dozens of layers.

Then apply mortar on the outside, polish it into shape, and start applying lacquer. Each layer must be finely polished. After ten or so layers, the luminous snails, abalone snails and clam shells are polished as thin as paper and carved.

The required petals, branches and vines are then pasted onto the scabbard with raw lacquer to form a beautiful pattern.

Then it is painted again to cover the mother-of-pearl, and then polished to make the mother-of-pearl and the paint layer integrated. Just a scabbard involves nearly a hundred processes.

Another important decoration is the knife tangs. Today's knife tangs are different from those in the Tang Dynasty. They have become square, round or heart-shaped. They are basically made of iron and silver, but are covered with delicate landscapes.

Flowers and plants, even sea dragons, tigers descending from mountains, plum blossoms, orchids, bamboos and chrysanthemums, and occasionally people.

The colors are generally black, white, and gold, and generally only two are used. The other color is only slightly added to the exquisite bas-relief, forming a subtle and elegant style that you will never tire of.

The decoration of other parts, such as the handle roll and the lower thread, which is the silk rope wrapped around the middle of the handle and scabbard, are also made in a very complicated way;

There are also millet-shaped and hairpins, which fix the scabbard to prevent slipping when the knife is tied to the waist, as well as small pieces made of horns for fixing the blade and decoration. The craftsmanship is no less than that of a fine hairpin or ear palladium.

There is also the shark fin, which is the fish skin wrapped around the handle of the knife. That kind of fish is called pearl fish. The surface of the fish skin looks like pearls inlaid on it. It is very strange and dazzling. It is called pearl scale.

Pearl scale skin happens to be a specialty of Jiaozhi. It has been expensive since ancient times, but it was a favorite material for handles among warriors.

Such high-quality swords were specially enshrined and maintained in the homes of princes and nobles in the Song Dynasty, Japan, Korea, and Ryukyu.

When encountering a major ceremony or meeting important guests, the sword worshiper would take a shower and change clothes, take out the sword from the storehouse, then knock out the nail on the plain wood handle with a full sense of ceremony, take out the blade, and reassemble and braid it into a sword. A richly decorated sword for the master's ceremony.

It is simply not something that ordinary people can afford.

The climate in Cochin is very hot, and folding fans are now very popular here.

"All red sandalwood, ivory, and ebony are made of common materials, but those made of palm bamboo and moso bamboo are called Huaixiu elegant objects. Their surface is heavy with gold, which is not expensive, but the bones are the fashionable ones."

Su You usually only plays with bamboo fans.

Bamboo of sufficient age has been stored for more than eight years. After being roasted at high temperatures, polished, and played with for a long time, the bamboo itself becomes as warm and moist as jade, which is called Polygonatum odorifera.

For ordinary folding fans, the core bone of the folding fan is usually made of single skin, or even made directly from bamboo meat. The folding fan used by Suyou has a core bone made of two pieces of Polygonatum odorifera skin glued together relative to each other. That is to say, after opening, the folding fan bone becomes From both sides, it looks like bamboo skin. This craft is called "Heqing".

Nowadays, Sichuan craftsmen have developed techniques such as relief carving, lettering, and pyrography. Su You only likes plain bones. When he met a good Xiang Fei Zi Yun Ban, he also collected them.

The beauty of his folding fan lies in its surface.

Now that Su You was a great scholar, he exchanged many letters and poems every year. He simply entrusted Cheng Sheren Printing House and Su Jia Weaving and Dyeing to make a special batch of fan paper and silk every year, and distributed them everywhere so that everyone could have poems. When writing or drawing, just write on it and send it to yourself.

Dasu Xiaosu, Cai Jingmi Fu, Huang Tingjian Qin Guan, Wang Anshi Sima Guang, Wen Tong, Li Gonglin and Guo Xi...

Both Da Su and Huang Tingjian were very free and easy. Sometimes they would write simple letters of greeting directly on the fans sent by Su You and send them back.

The calligraphy of the Song Dynasty valued meaning, and this kind of casual calligraphy was often the best of their calligraphy.

Mi Fu is a little worse. Su Shaobao's silk paper is a good thing that is famous throughout the Song Dynasty. Generally, it can be given as a gift from Shaobao, which is a symbol of becoming a master of calligraphy and painting. Mi Fu, a small county magistrate, used it after getting Shaobao's paper. With caution, the calligraphy on the fan is next level.

There was only one time when I was drunk and graffitied, and I took the opportunity to send it to Su You. After I woke up, I was scared to death, and I quickly wrote a letter to apologize.

Su You liked the calligraphy very much and decorated it with great care. He specially sent Mi Fu twenty bottles of the best Yongchun Dew, called "Jiangjiu Wine".

Then in a letter to Da Su, he proudly talked about this incident and called Mi Fu "Mi Dian".

Su Dazui felt that this nickname was very suitable for Mi Fu's artistic conception in cursive script, and everyone started shouting like this.

Therefore, the folding fan craft is no longer an ordinary craft for craftsmen, but a painting and calligraphy mounting project.

Li Shunju was so envious of something that was truly worth a fortune that he almost cried with envy.

Su You only gave a few folding fans to Li Daocheng, Li Wensheng and Yang Shi. On one side was a picture of blue stones and on the other side was a small poem of his own, which promoted the fan-playing style in Jiaozhi.

In her free time today, Su You took Shi Wei to pick up the jewelry customized for her.

People in the Song Dynasty admired jade, but today's high-quality jade producing areas were isolated in the north by the Xixia and Liao people.

Zhang San was lucky enough to find a batch of Hetian jade in Central Asia this time. It turned out that the Eastern Silk Road was broken, but the Western Silk Road was not broken yet.

A large amount of jade flowed into Central Asia through Congling and Guge in the west of Xixia. Judging from the few jade articles brought back by Zhang San, the prototype of the "Xikun Jade Craftsmanship" style has now begun to form there.

This batch of jade materials is so precious that it will also be the best carrier for the new style of jade carving in Sichuan. Li Ruoyu is personally responsible for the project here. He once managed the inner workshop and is now back to his old business.

Su You is not very interested in these. Instead of chasing the trend, it is better to create the trend himself.

The trend is jade.

People in the Song Dynasty did not like completely transparent jewelry. This was also an aesthetic tendency influenced by thousands of years of jade culture.

Therefore, today's jadeite is not as valuable as jasper.

On the contrary, Su Yuanzhen discovered a pure color red agate in the Erlin Department. In the Song Dynasty, when red was still popular, it was highly valued.

Therefore, glass-type Zhengyang green jadeite, later known as dragon stone type, is now abundant.

Su You customized five pairs of bracelets for Shi Wei, as well as three sets of headdresses, as well as a series of handicrafts such as pendants, clangs, pendants, and beaded shirts.

There are also inlaid peacock brooches, rings and other exotic accessories.
Chapter completed!