Liu glaze is an art work made of artificial crystals of various colors (containing 24% lead oxide) as raw materials and sintered at high temperature using the crystal lost-wax casting method. This process requires dozens of careful manual operations to complete, and a slight oversight can cause failure or defects. The bead-like and jade-like beauty of colored glaze incorporates creativity and ingenuity. It has both traditional and modern Chinese cultural characteristics, allowing the brilliance of colored glaze to shine and create a colorful beauty of art of life. Chinese colored glaze is the perfect combination of ancient Chinese culture and modern art. Its brilliance, change and magnificence are the exquisite, delicate and implicit reflection of the Orientals, and the fusion of thoughts, emotions and art.
Liu glide is an ancient Chinese material. Its use has a history of 2466 years. It has been exclusively used by the royal family since ancient times. It has extremely strict grade requirements for users, so it is rare among the people.
Liu glide is known as the first of China's five famous utensils (gold, silver, jade, colored glaze, ceramics, bronze) and one of the seven Buddhist treasures. By the Ming Dynasty, it had been basically lost and was only found in legends and supernatural novels. There are records that the Sha Monk in Journey to the West was demoted to heaven for breaking a glass lamp.
However, even the very incomplete craftsmanship of the Ming Dynasty was still protected by grade. The colored glaze at that time was already very opaque, so it was called medicinal jade. "Ming Zhi" records: The ornament awarded by the emperor to the number one scholar is medicinal jade, and only those with grades four or above are equipped with it.
If you stay at home, you will be rewarded with riches, and if you are an official, you will be rewarded with ministers. A passage in "Historical Records" is related to the origin of colored glaze. ("Xi Shi Tears" abbreviated), Tao Zhugong is the God of Wealth in folklore. The earliest cornucopia of the God of Wealth in the legend was also made of colored glaze. Therefore, colored glaze is considered to be a token of the God of Wealth that gathers wealth and good fortune. It is more precious than the commonly used citrine. Directly effective.
Characteristics of colored glaze
1. The production process is lengthy: from conception, design, sculpture, firing, fine repair, polishing to the completion of the work, it requires forty-seven delicate and cumbersome steps. It can only be completed by manual process.
2. Handmade: Workers must master exquisite skills before they can operate. Each process has its own variable factors, and repeated experiments are required during the process. The colors of the works are not the same, and the production is difficult. Extremely high.
3. One mold, one product: One mold can only bake one work and cannot be used twice. Large and complex works even require multiple mold openings and firings to complete. The low success rate makes the work more valuable and precious.
4. High-temperature firing: The selected raw materials are melted into various colored crystal glasses at a high temperature of more than 1400°C. After multiple selections and cleanings, they are placed in the mold according to the proportion of materials used in the work. And set strict temperature rising and cooling curves, and the furnace temperature must be controlled within 1000℃±5℃. The firing process lasts for more than 15 days, making the crystal raw materials precise to every detail. Only then can we ensure that the works are exquisite, three-dimensional, real, streamlined and clear.
5. The colors in the glass are made from various metal oxides sintered at high temperatures, and there will be no aging phenomena such as fading or oxidation.
6. Glass bubbles: Liuli works should have artistic vitality. The bubbles existing in the works have more imagination and aura. Bubbles are Liuli's breath, which is the unique knowledge in Liuli's art field.
Liu Li in the eyes of Buddhists
Liu Li is one of the "Seven Treasures" of Buddhism and the first of the "Five Famous Utensils of China". Made of colored artificial crystals, the process is complicated and requires dozens of steps, mostly by hand. Because of its craft characteristics of "coming from fire and going out from water", Buddhism believes that colored glaze is the incarnation of the realm of thousands of years of practice. In all classics, "form and spirit are like glass" is regarded as the highest state of Buddhist cultivation.
In Buddhism, glass is a spiritual substance that can eliminate diseases and ward off evil spirits. There are three kinds of blessings that can be obtained by placing or wearing colored glass:
1) Curing diseases: Practitioners believe that colored glass is the incarnation of the Medicine Buddha, which can eliminate diseases and exorcise evil spirits, so that people can obtain good health.
2) Tenacity: Due to the difficulty of firing, Buddhism believes that colored glaze can make people feel the difficulty of refining the truth and gain the strength of tenacity.
3) Inspiration: The colors are gorgeous and the changes are beautiful, giving people artistic beauty and imagination space, as well as inspiration and wisdom.
Lost-wax casting of colored glaze:
1. Creative design: Draw the creative concept into a graphic design drawing.
2. Prototype production: Sculpt a three-dimensional prototype based on the artwork.
In order to master the perfect proportions, graceful lines and meticulous decoration, every stroke must be extremely precise and delicate.
3. Make silicone mold: Apply silicone evenly layer by layer on the surface of the prototype, wait 2-4 hours (even 10-24 hours for large works), and the silicone mold will be ready. , and fixed with plaster.
4. Filling the wax mold: Prepare the wax slurry, pour the hot melted wax into the silicone female mold, and wait for it to cool naturally.
5. Remove the wax mold: Take the cooled wax mold out of the silicone plaster mold. Among them, the hollowed out and chamfered details are easily damaged when removing the wax, so you must rely on care, patience and the skill of your hands
6. Repair the wax model: the wax model is prone to shrinkage and deformation due to cooling , plus the traces of mold lines left when the mold was removed, were carefully trimmed to perfection with tools.
7. Making gypsum mold: Prepare the correct proportion of refractory gypsum, cast and embed it outside the modified wax mold to form a wax-containing gypsum mold.
8. Steam dewaxing: Place the entire wax-containing gypsum mold into a dewaxing machine and heat it with steam to dewax it. After dewaxing, it becomes the refractory gypsum negative mold.
9. Selected raw materials: In order to accurately control the proportions of various colors and the flowing beauty, it is necessary to carefully select glass raw materials of specific colors and sizes according to the shape and design, and arrange the distribution position of the color blocks.
10. Enter the furnace for sintering: After clearing the mold and removing dust, put the entire plaster mold and the prepared glass frit into the furnace and slowly heat it to about 850 degrees to soften the hot-melted crystal glass. Such as maltose, slowly flow into the plaster mold to form.
11. Plaster mold: Due to different shapes, the slow cooling time is also different. After slow cooling, take it out of the furnace, carefully remove the plaster mold with a knife, and obtain the rough embryo of the glass work.
12. Section cutting: After removing the mold, the rough glass embryo needs to be cut to remove the excess glass at the grouting port.
13. Coarse grinding and fine grinding: Because the cutting surface is uneven, it is necessary to use coarse and fine grinding sand to smooth and finely grind the casting opening of the crystal glass. At this time, special attention should be paid to adjusting the work to the best level.
14. Cold work and careful repair: The delicate parts of the work must be carefully carved and repaired with diamond pens and other tools to make the surface of the work more uniform and detailed. These require extremely skilled workmanship and long-term investment. .
15. Signature and packaging: After final confirmation that the work is complete, sign and number it.