Ancient times: the names of incense burners, screens and curtains

Incense burners are the most widely used among ancient artifacts in China, and their shapes are quite different. In the eyes of ordinary people, incense burner seems to be a kind of incense burner, so when it comes to the style of incense burner, most people always think of the binaural furnace of Ge kiln or Longquan kiln in Song Dynasty, and then the bronze Xuande furnace and its imitation in Ming Dynasty. In fact, the types and uses of incense burners go far beyond this, and their historical origins are at least two thousand years.

Most of the incense burners written by predecessors are just words and things. In recent years, there are people who specialize in incense burners. First, there are beautiful articles about incense burners and aromatherapy in Yang Zhi-shui's New Proof of Ancient Poems and Famous Things. Firstly, it is a collection of "adding fragrance", "smoking cage" and "fragrant beast sachet" in Meng Hui's Sixteen Sounds in the Flower Room. Coincidentally, both authors are women. With the delicate insight and thinking power unique to women, they told stories about incense burners, aromatherapy and other objects in the past dynasties and their functions and interests in life. The former pays attention to the textual research of famous things, while the latter looks for incense and incense burning benefits from the notes of poems of past dynasties.

Boshan furnace was popular in the court and aristocratic life of Han Dynasty. The golden boshan furnace unearthed from the tomb of Liu Sheng, the king of Zhongshan in Mancheng, Hebei Province, has reached an extremely exquisite level in both shape and technology, and has been in use until the Sui Dynasty and the early Tang Dynasty. The so-called Boshan is not.

It means that this furnace is from Boshan Mountain, but refers to the stacked mountain decoration carved on the surface of the utensils. According to Miscellanies of A Tale of Two Cities, Chang 'an skillful craftsman can make Boshan furnace slowly, carve exotic birds and animals, and decorate the surface of incense burner. The complexity of Boshan furnace technology far exceeds that of the three-legged or five-legged incense burner that appeared later. From the poems chanting Boshan Furnace in the Six Dynasties, it can be seen that the overlapping features of Boshan Mountain include not only "hiding thousands of trees and haunting Chung Shan Man", but also the modeling of "carving a dragon from below, and riding a crane with purple smoke from above".

The appearance of Boshan furnace in the Western Han Dynasty is probably related to the raw materials and ways of burning incense. Maoxiang was used before the Western Han Dynasty, and incense or wormwood was directly lit in a bean incense burner. Although the fragrance is rich, the smell of fireworks is very strong. During the Liang Wudi period, Borneolum Syntheticum and Styrax from the South China Sea were introduced to China. The spices were made into fragrant balls or sweet cakes, and charcoal fire was placed under them. These resin spices are slowly ignited under the high temperature of charcoal fire, with rich fragrance and little fireworks smell, so Boshan furnaces with different shapes and wonderful workmanship appear. Although Boshan furnace covers are more beautiful, they are all engraved with pores, and the aroma rises from the engraved holes.

Boshan furnace has metal, pottery and later white porcelain, but the structure is generally similar, all of which are incense utensils with charcoal fire.

In addition to the Boshan incense burner, celadon or white porcelain three-legged and five-legged stoves appeared in the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, and folk porcelain with ears was also common in unearthed cultural relics. The furnace ear is quite practical. In order to facilitate carrying and moving, its decorative function and practical effect have reached a perfect combination. In addition, there are incense shovels, incense sticks, incense sticks and incense boxes attached to the incense burner, which are all used to add incense and burn incense.

Among the silverware unearthed in Famen Temple in the Tang Dynasty, there are also many incense burners and treasure boxes, and the exquisite craftsmanship can be described as the pinnacle. Whether it is the furnace body or the furnace cover, whether it is carved, carved or inlaid, there are even double-layer incense burners supported by silver-plated gold plates, or incense burners with treasures attached to the furnace body, mostly in the form of lotus petals, and the top of the furnace cover is decorated with lotus buds for placement around.

As the name implies, what smells animals is all kinds of animal-shaped incense burners. Burning incense to taste is the original purpose of incense, but the ancients paid attention to viewing, so incense burners can be made of metal or ceramics into various animal shapes, so that incense can burn in the abdomen of birds and animals, and cigarettes can be ejected from the mouths of birds and animals, which is full of fun. The shapes of birds and animals are mostly Kirin, lion, lion, duck and crane, but the principle of Ruo roasting spices is the same. The "golden beast" in Li Qingzhao's most familiar poem "Drunk Flowers" is actually a fragrant beast, so some versions of Yi 'an Ci also use "gold" as the "fragrance" and "Renault" as the spice.

Until the Song Dynasty, in addition to Boshan incense burner and all kinds of incense beasts still in use, Gao Zubei incense burner, Kailian incense burner and hollow cover incense burner were widely used in life, and their shapes were relatively small, which was convenient for indoor installation and was more favored by literati. Due to the unprecedented prosperity of porcelain-making technology in Song Dynasty, incense burner firing has made great progress. Its shape is similar to that of Ding, Gui, Wei and Lian, and it is elegant and solemn, and the porcelain is round. All famous kilns have different styles of products.

Before the appearance of linear incense, the basic way of burning incense in ancient times was not to light perfume directly, but to obtain its aroma by baking with charcoal fire. There are often mica flakes between fire and spices, which makes the spices "fragrant but not burnt", which is completely different from the incense burner with one wick or three wicks of incense in our impression. The appearance of incense sticks was about after the Ming Dynasty, so we only saw incense sticks with different images in ancient paintings, tomb murals, Dunhuang murals and Buddhist scriptures prints, but did not see incense sticks inserted on the stove. "Reading tea at night with fragrance" has always been a dream of scholars, and this kind of "fragrance" is not just as simple as lighting a fragrant head, but a complicated process of slowly baking all kinds of sweet cake, fragrant balls and fragrant pills on a charcoal fire, and constantly adding spices to make the fragrance gradually rise, otherwise it will be boring.

During the Xuande period of the Ming Dynasty, bronze alloy was used to imitate the incense burner of the Song Dynasty, which was called Xuande Furnace. In fact, it is a temporary trend to imitate the Yi, Wei, bowls, cans and other utensils in the Song Dynasty and cast copper furnaces with simple and smooth lines. From the Xuande period to the Republic of China, there were countless imitations of Xuande furnace. Although there are advantages and disadvantages, they are all fakes.

There are many kinds of incense burners in Qing Dynasty. Apart from antique shapes, there are also many kinds of materials, such as porcelain, copper, jade, French enamel, cloisonne or cloisonne, but most of them are ornamental objects and have little use value.

The most interesting thing about incense burner is that it is a printing incense burner, also called incense seal. Although it is an incense burner, it has the name of a furnace without the shape of a furnace. Its styles are mostly stacked incense boxes, or square, oblate, petal-shaped, wishful and so on. Originally, it was a tool for chanting and timing in the temple, so the incense biography can be classified as a timer. The burning principle of incense burner is similar to that of ordinary incense burner, but the structure is more complicated, with several layers and tools for loading spices. The most important part is the incense burner in the furnace, through which the burnt incense ashes are made into various patterns and figures. During the Tang and Song Dynasties, the incense burner was not only a timing tool for chanting in temples, but also an exquisite plaything for ordinary people to burn incense.

All kinds of incense burners are closely related to culture and social life. They are carriers of interest and artistic conception. As a vessel with complicated shapes and materials, it is still loved by collectors. However, with the change of life content and lifestyle, its practical function has disappeared like a faint light smoke.