Chapter 725 Heart-changing bottle

Based on this, Sister Xiaojuaner also expanded the scale of production, reluctantly cutting off many products such as stinky tofu, sweet and sour garlic, and focusing on the development of mustard, sauerkraut, dried radish, and three other products that can outperform these three in terms of profits.

——Beef spicy sauce, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar.

The last three items have become Xianshi Jiangyuan's flagship products. In order to expand the business, Zhou Zhi made a tough move for Xiaojuan'er, poaching people with high salaries. Relying on Sister Xiaoliu's connections, she hired someone from the sales department of Laojiao Winery.

A vice president and his sales team.

This manager had an extremely wide network of contacts in the national food industry, and he was indeed worthy of a high salary of 10,000 yuan a month. He soon sold spicy sauce, soy sauce and balsamic vinegar to all parts of Sichuan, even in Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and the middle reaches of the Yangtze River.

Influence.

With these big things going on, Zhou Zhi's little troubles are not worth mentioning.

The so-called small troubles are the steady rise of Microsoft's stock price and the historic bottom of IBM.

Zhou Zhi only spent US$7 million to become the majority shareholder of Microsoft's outstanding shares, and the remaining US$13 million, under Jack Lee's routine operations, completed his position in IBM.

It took a year to establish the position, costing $40 per share, and now both stocks have begun to make profits, making Jack Li look at Zhou Zhi with admiration again.

With the remaining five million US dollars, Zhou Zhi began to try to invest in Lin Wanqiu's Haitong Auction House for short-term lending to purchase overseas cultural relics.

However, there is absolutely no profit to be seen from these investments, because Lin Wanqiu will always offer Zhou Zhi a bait that Zhou Zhi cannot refuse, exchanging the profits that Zhou Zhi deserves to pay off with cultural relics.

It was like Zhou Zhi lent her money to gain performance. In the end, Lin Wanqiu exchanged Zhou Zhi's profits for cultural relics and threw them to him to gain another wave of performance.

But Zhou Zhi simply couldn't refuse, because in his opinion, many things were simply the lowest price.

For example, Lin Wanqiu helped Zhou Zhi receive two rotating bottles from the Qianlong Dynasty.

The rotating bottle is a special-shaped porcelain. Like the Jiaotai bottle and the rotating neck bottle, it is similar to a matryoshka doll in that a certain part of the porcelain can rotate.

The three types of bottles are actually somewhat similar. The outer bottle, inner bottle, or bottleneck can be rotated, and you can see different images of the two layers of bottles.

Rotary bottles are divided into two types: rotary bottles and rotary bottles. The inner bottle can rotate is called a rotary bottle, and the outer bottle can rotate is called a rotary bottle.

The revolving bottle is the most expensive among them.

In a perforated outer bottle, a rotatable inner bottle is set, with various patterns painted on it, including scenes of the four seasons, landscape figures, flowers, birds, insects, fish, etc. For a bottle, the inner bottle, outer bottle and base are first fired.

, and then combine them again.

The upper part of the inner bottle has an exposed mouth, and the bottle body is cylindrical. When the inner bottle rotates, different images can be seen through the holes in the outer bottle, just like a revolving lantern.

Xu Zhiheng recorded in his famous work "Drinking Liuzhai Talking about Porcelain" that "the belly of the bottle is exquisite and clear, and there is a bottle inside the bottle that can also rotate. If so, it is called 'turning heart', and it is a special item prized by the imperial court."

How difficult is it to make? You can tell from the process flow.

The inner bottle needs to be made first; then the outer bottle needs to be made. The outer bottle needs to be fired in two parts, one for the mouth and neck, and one for the shoulder and belly.

After that, the mandrel needs to be processed, and the bottom of the outer bottle should be made into a raised heart-shaped button, and the bottom of the inner bottle should also be made into a heart-shaped groove that matches each other. The buttons and grooves must be absolutely consistent.

Then the inner bottle and the outer bottle are put together. The outer bottle and the shoulder of the inner bottle are first glued, then the outer bottle belly and the inner bottom are glued. Finally, the inner bottle and the outer bottle are combined together and fired again.

In the process of combining and firing, it is necessary to correctly control the drying rate of the outer bottle and the inner bottle, and more importantly, the shrinkage rate after firing. If there is a slight mistake, the chicken heart button and the chicken heart groove will not match, or the glaze will flow and stick.

, causing all previous efforts to be wasted.

Therefore, production requires superb craftsmanship, and at the same time, it also requires a huge cost, and this price is often "one in a hundred".

In addition to this one, there is another kind of revolving bottle, which is even more ingenious.

This kind of bottle has a vertical shaft between the outer bottle and the inner bottle. There are switches and conduits in the neck of the outer bottle. The vertical shaft is connected to the inner bottle, and there are copper paddles underneath.

Fill the bottleneck with clean water, turn on the switch, and water droplets will drip through the conduit onto the paddles, thus driving the inner bottle to rotate.

There are holes at the bottom of the bottle, so water will be collected by the base and will not flow everywhere.

No matter what kind of revolving bottle it is, its exquisite design and high difficulty of firing make it the pinnacle of porcelain.

Qianlong's "Archives of the Construction Office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs" records: "On May 12, the 18th year of the lunar month...the decree was passed...Jiangxi burned a dragon boat, and a rotating bottle with a lamp touching the person...was delivered on the 4th day of the 19th year."

"

It takes more than half a year to make a revolving bottle, which shows how difficult it is.

Moreover, behind its complicated craftsmanship, a large amount of manpower, material resources, and financial resources were consumed. Even the "local tycoon" Qianlong felt that the financial resources consumed were too great. He approved in the memorial: "It is not necessary to burn as much as ordinary porcelain," and told Tang Yingfeng

Just burn a few during the holidays.

Now Lin Wanqiu has brought two of them.

One was found at an unknown small auction house in Europe. The auction house kept it secret in order to protect the identity of the owner, but it was known that it came from a British family and has been in a room of this family since around 1930.

It has been sleeping on top of a bookshelf in a dusty attic for seventy years.

Zhou Zhi and Lin Wanqiu speculated that this thing was plundered to the West during the Boxer Rebellion.

This bottle is very "Qianlong-style", with a height of 40 centimeters, a well-proportioned shape, and a full and rich color.

The body of the bottle is engraved with four carps, which are lifelike, and the hollow water ripple carving design makes it look majestic and rich, which perfectly reflects the auspicious meaning contained in the red word "吉" on the neck of the bottle.

The outer bottle is made of foreign color, enamel color, and pastel color, with enamel color as the main glaze, and uses various techniques such as gold tracing, hollowing, turning, relief, and shallow engraving, which is extremely luxurious and breathtaking.

The inner bottle is decorated with blue and white flowers, and the bottom of the bottle is rotated through the holes, just like a revolving lantern, which is very interesting.

This bottle is called "Qianlong Enamel Lucky and Prosperous Turning Heart Vase". Before the small auction house was about to put it up for auction, Lin Wanqiu discovered it. After negotiation, they spent 200,000 pounds to help Zhou Zhi get it.

The other one also comes from overseas. It was specially made by Emperor Qianlong for his mother's 60th birthday. It can be called the best of the revolving bottles.

This bottle is 60 centimeters tall and is currently the largest in the world, larger than all known revolving bottles.

The outer wall of the bottle is with a neck, and the bottom of the bottle is decorated with carmine red ground rolling and Yangcai, with plastic dragon ears on both sides.

The upper part of the outer wall of the belly vase is engraved with auspicious clouds and mountains and forests, and the lower part is engraved with mountains, rocks, and vegetation.

The overall picture is of beautiful mountains and streams, lush flowers and trees, and a colorful phoenix flying on the top of the white clouds. The theme is "There is a phoenix coming to the ceremony";

The picture is complex but not cluttered, revealing the majesty of the royal family at every turn. It is ingenious and extremely beautiful.

Gently turn the neck of the bottle, and the inner container will rotate accordingly. In the hollow area, you can see quails, reed geese, golden pheasants, eagles, peacocks, mandarin ducks and other birds. They may stop and look up, or fly gracefully, mostly in pairs, as if they are rolled up in front of your eyes.

When unfolded, it feels like you can hear all the birds chirping, and the sounds of nature are in your ears.

Each bird has its own auspicious meaning. For example, quail is a homophone of "an", which means peace; golden pheasant symbolizes wealth; and mandarin duck means the harmony of husband and wife.

As the bottle rotates, all the birds seem to be coming towards the phoenix, like a procession for pilgrimage, and the overall meaning is "a hundred birds heading towards the phoenix". The fragrance of flowers is filled with the chirping of birds. The painting is complex and the brushwork seems to be that of the painters of the Qing Dynasty.

Throughout the Qianlong dynasty, the person who enjoys the status of a hundred birds paying homage to the phoenix is ​​none other than Qianlong's biological mother, the Empress Dowager Chongqing.
Chapter completed!