Chapter 635

"Thank you

Chu Chen took the tea cup and said with a smile, "in fact, it's nothing. It's mainly because of the better relationship between acupuncture and moxibustion in my family."

Chu Chen said that it was the ancestral acupuncture. Although Professor Zhu was curious, considering the taboo, he crossed the topic and talked about treatment.

So he asked, "Dr. Chu, when are you going to do the next acupuncture?"

Chu Chen thought for a while: "tomorrow is going to do surgery, then I'll come back the day after tomorrow!"

"OK..."

Next, they exchanged their views. Seeing that everything had been explained clearly, Chu Chen took a sip of tea and was ready to leave. However, when he was drinking tea, his eyes just saw something on Professor Zhu's desk, which immediately aroused his interest.

"Professor Zhu, your root carving looks good!"

"Is this a root carving?"

Professor Zhu's expression was a little confused, and then he said with a smile: "I don't know anything about it. It was given to me by a parent a few days ago because I cured his child's illness. Originally, I refused, but he said it was a family thing, which was not worth a few money. He threw it on my desk and ran away. Dr. Chu, is this very expensive? "

Chu Chen shook his head: "I haven't looked at it carefully. I don't know whether it's expensive or not, but it seems that the craft is very good."

"That's it Professor Zhu frowned: "I originally planned to find someone to help me see what the value of this thing is. If it's a few hundred yuan thing, it doesn't matter if I accept it. If it's too expensive, I must return it to that parent."

Yesterday, Chu Chen inquired about Professor Zhu from Liu Qinshu. He knew that he didn't receive much red envelopes, and he didn't accept gifts from his family members. In fact, for Professor Zhu, as long as he goes out for an operation or guidance during the holidays, he can get a lot of income. There is no need to receive any red envelopes.

Professor Zhu then said, "Dr. Chu, since you know this, please help me identify it, OK?"

"No problem..."

Root carving is the traditional carving art of our country. It takes the self generated and distorted forms of tree roots (including tree body, tree nodule, bamboo root, etc.) as the artistic creation object. Through conception, artistic processing and craft processing, it creates artistic image works such as figures, animals, utensils, etc.

The root carving process stresses "three parts of artificial, seven parts of natural", which means that in the creation of root carving, the natural form of root material should be mainly used to express the artistic image, and auxiliary artificial treatment and modification. Therefore, root carving is also known as "root art" or "root art".

The root carving on Professor Zhu's desk is a longevity bamboo root carving.

The raw material of bamboo root carving is Phyllostachys pubescens root. In nature, Phyllostachys pubescens grows in clusters with various types and shapes. It is evergreen all the year round. After decades or even hundreds of years of wind and rain, it has formed its own style of tough texture, fine texture and elegant color. Its interesting roots and strange knots, which grow occasionally, should be regarded as rare.

The success or failure of bamboo root carving depends on whether it can win by skillful carving with natural beauty. Therefore, the works require novel conception, ingenious composition, appropriate choice and interesting points in artistic modeling.

Of course, the surface of bamboo root theory seems to show "Ugliness", but this kind of "Ugliness" brings us the charm of capturing materials and displaying skills, and urges us to induce imagination. As Rodin said, "what ordinary people call ugliness in nature can become very beautiful in art.".

The bamboo root carving in front of us is carved from the full root of the bamboo node, with the longevity star as the standing figure. It is made completely according to the characteristics of the bamboo root, which is very appropriate.

The longevity star holds a fan in his left hand and a staff in his right hand, all of which are attached to his body for hidden relief.

Simple lines, less wrinkles. There are not many layers. The knife edge is round, strong and powerful. It has a little texture and is polished smooth. It makes full use of artistic exaggeration to depict the head of the birthday star. Therefore, the proportion of the head increased, about 3 cm, accounting for about a quarter of the body length.

The width of his head is almost side by side, his forehead is high, and there are three deep wrinkles on it, indicating that he is both long-lived and weather beaten.

The longevity star has wide eyes, nose and mouth, big ears and shoulders, narrow eyes and looks down. He has a gentle face, a kind face, a short beard and a square face. His spirit is dazzling, leisurely and unrestrained. He vividly depicts the characteristics and inner world of the birthday star and gives people a deep impression.

This bamboo root carving has been passed on for a long time. Its pulp is rich and clean, which seems to have the spirit of immortality. In addition, the carving is exquisite, and the sabre technique looks like flowing water. It has a feeling of "the shape of the extreme object, the spirit of the object, and the interest of the object".

Therefore, at a glance, Chu Chen knew that this should be an old work of root carving, and from the perspective of carving style, it should be a work of Jiading bamboo carving.

Jiading bamboo carving was popular in Ming and Qing Dynasties. During the reign of Zhengde and Jiajing in Ming Dynasty, famous bamboo carvers Zhu He, Zhu Ying and Zhu Zhizheng appeared. They were handed down from generation to generation and were known as "three Zhu". Three Zhu's calligraphy and painting into bamboo carving, with a knife instead of writing, with the stroke applied to the knife, original deep, high relief bamboo carving techniques. It had a great influence on later bamboo carving and formed a unique bamboo carving School of Jiading.Zhao Xin of the Qing Dynasty wrote Zhu Bi Zun Fu, in which it is recorded: "Yicheng is named after bamboo carving It was originally carved by Zhu Sansong. It is not a hundred years since Zhu's death that he competed to imitate each other and provided food and clothing, so he wrote with his products.

Sure enough, after a while, Chu Chen saw the "three pines" inscriptions on the bottom. This "three pines" is the name of Zhu Zhizheng, Zhu Ying's second son.

The year of Zhu Zhizheng's birth and death is unknown. His works were produced in Chongzhen, and the year of his death may have entered the Qing Dynasty. Lu Fuzhao said in his essay of Nancun: "Sansong is good at painting distant mountains, light rocks, clumps of bamboo and dead trees, especially donkeys. The carving knife is meticulous, and it was created at the beginning of its development. It has been used for many years.

Although Zhu Songlin was the founder of Zhu's Bamboo carving, his technique became more refined with the development of Zhu '.

Chu Chen didn't expect that he would meet a work by Zhu Sansong, and it happened to be used to celebrate his birthday. If he could buy it, he would have a gift to celebrate his birthday in Jinling later.

As for whether he can buy it or not, Chu Chen is a bit uncertain. Judging from the appearance of this bamboo root carving and the sculptor, the market value is certain. He estimates that it should be between 350000 and 400000. Judging from Professor Zhu's character, he will definitely return this bamboo root carving to its original owner.

Therefore, if he wants to buy it, he can only ask the original owner. When the other party hears that it has such high value, he doesn't know whether it will sell. However, he can't buy it or sell it by force. In the end, he can only talk about it at that time.

When he put down his things, Chu Chen said with a smile, "Professor Zhu, this is the real thing carved by Zhu Sansong in the late Ming Dynasty."

"Late Ming Dynasty?" Professor Zhu was quite surprised at the result given by Chu Chen: "it's not that this thing has been for hundreds of years. How can it look so new and smooth?"

"It's not new, it's Baojiang! It's a kind of natural oxidation reaction that the previous owners often play with. "

Chuchen explained with a smile: "as for the smoothness, it's not right. Although the whole picture of the old root carving is clean, natural and simple, it's all in one go, but because it's used by people for a long time, there are natural scars. You see..."

At this point, Chu Chen picked up the flashlight and shone it on the surface of the object. Professor Zhu was surprised to find that, as Chu Chen said, there were tiny scratches on it, and the number seemed to be quite large.

"Is this the mark of real antiques?" Professor Zhu raised his head and asked.

Putting away the flashlight, Chu Chen explained: "this is really one of the signs to distinguish the true from the false, but now there are many ways to make the false, and this kind of trace can also be imitated. Of course, it's easier to tell whether something like this is true or false. For example, the new root carving imitates the old one, most of the carving methods are coarse and stiff, and the skill of the knife has not changed. Many characters have a face, a variety of patterns, a pattern, mechanical or rigid. "

"The overall carving technique of Laogen carving is perfect. It comes down in one continuous line. From the main characters to the environment (houses, furniture, trees and so on), it is carved seriously, with smooth lines and a sense of natural and unrestrained. Like this statue, it looks very natural and vivid. If it's an imitation, it's hard to make it like this... "

Listening to Chu Chen's explanation of some key points of identification, Professor Zhu said with a bitter smile, "I'm not the material of your profession! By the way, since it's real and Ming Dynasty, it should be very expensive, right

Chu Chen said: "antiques don't become more valuable over time. The key is to see what kind of things they are. Things with low artistic level or popular style are also not worth much money. But you are really better. Zhu Sansong, as I said earlier, is very famous among bamboo root carving artists. I estimate that the market value of this thing should be between 350000 and 400000. "

"Hiss!"

Hearing the price offered by Chu Chen, Professor Zhu took a breath. It was not that he had never seen so much money, but that he did not expect that a statue only 12.3 cm high would be worth hundreds of thousands. This made him think it was incredible.

After a while, Professor Zhu was a little surprised and asked, "are antiques so expensive?"

Chu Chen shook his head: "of course, it's impossible. There are good and bad things. Only a small part of them are valuable. Of course, hundreds of thousands of things are not too expensive in antiques. The price is hundreds of thousands, even hundreds of millions."

Professor Zhu was stunned, and then asked: "I've heard people say that it's true that there's something that makes you rich overnight."

Chu Chen replied: "this kind of thing does exist, but there are also many fakes in the field of antiques. If you don't study, you will get rich overnight, and you will lose face and nose."