one of the mounting styles of China's paintings and calligraphy. Also known as leaf book, leaf book. It consists of a piece of folded cardboard, which can be flipped left and right or up and down. There are three styles of album pages, one is horizontal painting heart, which is framed and flipped up and down, which is called "pushing tent type"; One is a vertical painting heart, which is folded left and right, called "butterfly style"; The other one is called "warp folding" (warp folding), and the smaller vertical bar is called "passbook"; Some are mounted into a single piece, which is called "bulk".

Generally, album pages are even, ranging from four pages to eight pages, and from twelve pages to sixteen pages to twenty-four pages. Any number of pages can be divided into two volumes, and each album page is divided into two or four pages with plain white pages (also called pages) before and after. Generally, the outer frame is set, and the hard-shell board mounted with ebony, nanmu or Song Jin is used as the front cover and back cover, and when folded, it becomes a book. This is convenient for appreciation, carrying and preservation.

I. Origin

Originated in the Tang Dynasty, it is a form of painting and calligraphy mounting influenced by book binding to solve the inconvenience of turning over long scrolls and preserving scattered pages.

Before the Tang Dynasty, books, calligraphy and painting were mostly scrolls, and scroll books were inconvenient to read. If you want to read the last chapter of a book, you must spread it to the last, which is time-consuming and laborious. In order to facilitate reading, the Tang people folded the books with horizontal roll style, like a folding fan, and then pasted them with thicker paper as the cover, which played a firm role. Because most of the books in the Tang Dynasty are classics, they are called "classic folding" albums. The invention of printing promoted the development of this style, and later "Bao Beizhuang" and "Butterfly Dress" appeared, which have been used ever since.

since the Tang dynasty, someone cut and mounted a long picture scroll into a single leaf, but it was inconvenient to save the leaf because it was turned over for a long time, and then decorated it into a book, which was called a "page book". Since the Tang and Song Dynasties, collectors of calligraphy and painting in different generations have converted some scattered one-piece calligraphy and painting sketches, group fans and folding fans into album pages in a centralized way. The existing original album pages before Ming and Qing Dynasties are hardly seen except for a few Dunhuang objects. However, many small original paintings and calligraphy before the Ming and Qing Dynasties have been preserved to this day because of the collection of books by the Ming and Qing Dynasties. It can be seen that the album is valuable for the collection and protection of small-scale original paintings and calligraphy. In the Ming dynasty, album pages began to become fashionable, so the cost of album pages in the Ming and Qing dynasties was mostly pre-mounted and made into a book, and then made into calligraphy and painting.

ii. categories and formats

there are two ways to classify album pages, namely, the classification of styles and formats.

in terms of style, album pages can be roughly divided into two categories. One is folding, and the other is loose-leaf. The upper and lower surfaces of the folding album are provided with hard-shell covers, and the page center connected with the hard-shell covers is a connected stack that repeatedly opens and closes back and forth, and both sides of the folded album can be painted; Loose-leaf album is relatively simple. Generally, a single work is framed into a single page and boxed.

in terms of format, it can be divided into two categories: integrated album pages and blank album pages. Integrated album is an album with heart painting and calligraphy first, and then mounted; The blank album is a pre-made album. It can be inferred from the historical evolution that the integrated album should be the origin and always occupy the mainstream in history; From the perspective of contemporary development, the blank album system has become the mainstream.

The album has a small frame, which is long like a small axis in the vertical direction, and long like a small roll in the horizontal direction. There are also many squares, perfect circles, ellipses, gourd waists, and detached sectors of various shapes, which are assembled into a book.

iii. Application

The contents of the album are rich and varied, and all-encompassing. There is a complete set of paintings or calligraphy books, and there are also half of paintings and calligraphy, including landscapes, figures, flowers and birds, miscellaneous picture books, figures in a dream of red mansions, Mei Lan Zhu Ju books, and more inscriptions, official documents, memorials and so on. In the contemporary era, western learning has spread to the east, and Chinese painting has been influenced by western sketching, and album pages have become portable sketchbooks for some Chinese painters, which can be called making the past serve the present. On many occasions now, it is also used as an autograph book.

four. Mounting;

album pages need not be spliced, and the painting center is placed (positioned). Just dig (cut). The five-inlay type can be directly inlaid.

Butterfly dress, tent-pushing dress, folding dress and edge-turning album are placed and dug in the same way. The specific steps are as follows: put the painting center on the panel as required, after positioning, apply a little thick paste on the four corners of the back of the painting center to stick to the panel, and then press it aside to wait for drying. The cutting method is the same as the vertical shaft (only the vertical shaft is dug alone, while the album is dug together with the painting heart and the panel), so I won't go into details. In order to avoid mistakes, the painting centers and panels can be numbered in sequence.

there are the following methods to dig and cut special-shaped painting centers such as four fans and folding fans.

1) Skilled people can directly hold the knife to cut; It requires the operator to have accurate eyesight and steady hands.

2) Fold the cardboard into a local strip width to make a "look" and stick it on the inside of the cutting knife. When cutting, the "look" is aimed at the edge of the painting center, which can achieve satisfactory results.

3) First, trim the painting center (called "trimming the fan surface"), and glue it to the panel with thick paste as a "sample mold", and then cut it according to its edge.

4) Trim the painting center first, press it on the panel, and then draw a line along the edge of the painting center for notes. Then, cut according to the line.

5) Place the molded fan on the center of the painting for scale, and cut and fold the fan along its edge.

In addition, auxiliary tools such as curve ruler can also come in handy.

in order to ensure the accuracy of the swing and dig, you can mark the center, bottom, left and right directions of the special-shaped painting together with the insert to make notes, so as to avoid the dislocation of the position and stick to the bottom.