When watching the Qing palace drama, you must have noticed such a phenomenon: the concubines in the harem often wear a few long nails on their hands, and sometimes they wear armor sets. The whole hands are very beautifully decorated. ! Some nails are even more than 10 cm. I don’t know what the ancients thought.
But in fact, keeping such long nails is a lot of inconvenience in life, and the nails are also very easy to break. Such nails rarely appeared in the dynasties before the Qing Dynasty. Why did this form become popular in the Qing palace?
Some people are wondering if this is made by the TV series stylist? Actually not, the Empress Dowager Cixi had this kind of nails, and she wore cloisonne false nail covers on her two fingers! What's the point of doing this?
The ancients like to keep long nails began in the late Ming Dynasty. At that time, both men and women of all ages advocated keeping long nails. Later, we can see from the figures in the ancient paintings that people at that time had the habit of retaining armor, and noble women would retain very long, especially the left hand and ring finger. During the Qing Dynasty, this ethos was even more crazy, in the Qing Palace and some big families! Because nails need to be protected when they grow, nail covers were invented at that time.
Since the nails are long and easy to break, they need to be protected. This is one of the main reasons why they wear fake nails! There are other functions of this, that is to love beauty. For beauty, it is very difficult to simply decorate the nails, but it is much easier to make changes on the nail cover. Therefore, the nails of the queens and concubines of the Qing palace There are many kinds of textures, such as gold, silver, jade and other materials are common. They also have engravings, inlays, etc., and finally made all kinds of nail covers.
But some people think that the long nail covers don’t look good at all, but rather hideous. Many villains wear these nails when watching the palace drama. It is the queen's secret weapon.
In addition, in order to attract everyone’s attention, the noble women in the palace often pay special attention to their dresses, and they are also very delicate. Pay attention to details like nails. Because they feel that such decoration can show their status and power. Because many of the nails are made of jewelry and jade, they are expensive.
Golden engraved and ancient money pattern nail cover
Silver gilt wire and beaded nail cover
0da1a0#4#At that time, the concubines of the harem, in order to win the emperor’s favor, all objects must be compared, even nail covers, and later the nail covers became more refined and complex, just like the Empress Dowager Cixi, the nail covers are generally pure gold, For the jade, dragons and phoenixes, inlaid with pearls and gems, etc. are also required to show their noble status.
In short, keeping long nails is of great significance to the ancients, because it is a symbol of the nobility of status! Because keeping long nails is very unfavorable to work, noble ladies who keep long nails can indicate that they are out of work and are wealthy.
