[Editor's Note]
Porcelain pillow and pillow screen are both beddings that were once popular in people's lives and have now withdrawn from the stage of history. As bedding, they brought convenience and comfort to the people at that time, and also became the object and carrier of artistic creation such as poetry and painting; as cultural relics, they reflected the aesthetic characteristics of an era, people's daily life, and even the customs and styles of the entire society. This article uses porcelain pillows and pillow screens to gain a glimpse of the social living habits at that time, and interprets some related poems to explore the historical value and aesthetic interest of these two cultural relics.
The so-called pillow screen is a type of screen, a wide and short screen designed in the Song Dynasty placed on the end of the couch. "The Art of Cong Tantra" says: "The screen is to block the wind and also to separate the shapes... The bed has a screen, which is applied to the bed; the pillow has a screen, which is also applied to the pillow." The length of this screen is close to the width of the bed, and the proportion is low and the horizontal length, and its shape is no different from the large seat screen at that time. The body is light and unique, with landscapes painted on the screen, skirts embedded at the bottom, and cirrus-shaped stand-up teeth and drum sills, carefully crafted. It is placed at the end of the bed and has functions such as light-shielding, lying and decorative aesthetics.
pillow screens are difficult to attract the attention of historians, so there are very few records of them, and the records of their development, rise and fall in the literature are extremely limited. The pillow screen was no longer used in the Ming Dynasty. In addition, the main body often uses materials such as cloth, silk, and paper that are difficult to preserve, so there is no real thing passed down from generation to generation. People today have no chance to see it. They can only find traces from ancient paintings and literary works, as well as murals and carved bricks in tombs, and explore its passing charm.
A brief history of pillow screen
China's screen culture has a long history, and in "Wuyuan", there is a saying that "Yu made screen". Based on this calculation, the screen has a history of more than 4,000 years. "The Literature of Zhou·Zhangci" describes the description of "setting an imperial residence". The residence is the early title of Pingfeng. The residence is usually located behind the emperor's throne, showing the emperor's "Nine Five-Year Plan" honor. This is true for all dynasties of all dynasties.
Judging from known archaeological materials, the history of combining screens and beds is quite long, and there are corresponding images on the portrait stone of the Han Tomb in Zhucheng, Shandong.
Stone portrait of Han tomb in Zhucheng, Shandong Province, see the picture
"During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the daily habit of sitting on the ground began to be broken, and furniture developed to high and large... Buildings evolved from mixing civil and wooden structures to wooden structures... Changes in furniture and building space prompted the creation of screens on the bed.
Eastern Jin Gu Kaizhi (biography) The female historical master's picture (partial)
In the Tang Dynasty, the emergence of new furniture such as tables, chairs, and stools changed the previous living form centered on the bed. Therefore, the shape of the bed was greatly changed, and the pillow screen began to separate from the bed. It was also called "pillow barrier" at that time. Li Bai had a poem "Wushan Pillow Barrier", and Gu Kuang also had a poem saying: "Du Sheng knew that I was in love with Cangzhou, and his paintings blocked the head of the bed." It can be seen that the "pillow barrier" has penetrated into people's lives.
In the Song Dynasty, with the emergence of special bedding, the development of pillow screens also reached its peak. Many Song paintings depicting daily life have pillow screens. For example, in "The Wind Eaves Show Volume" and "The Embroidered Mirror Picture", there is a very small screen on the head of the bed. Ouyang Xiu's poem "Shu Suping" even talks about: "I traveled three thousand miles, where can I be close to me. I remember this ruler and the screen never left me. "The pillow screen at this time is small and exquisite, easy to carry, easy to use, and is very popular among people.
Southern Song Dynasty Zhao Bozhi Wind Eaves Distribution Picture
Northern Song Dynasty Wang Guan The embroidered silhouette of the silhouette
However, the popularity of pillow screens was not long. After the Song Dynasty, fenced beds were widely used. As the shape of the bed changed, the pillow screen gradually faded out of people's lives. Since the Ming Dynasty, the use of brick walls in buildings has greatly weakened the ventilation of the bedroom, resulting in the complete loss of the practicality of the pillow screens, which announced that the pillow screens have since withdrawn from the historical stage. From then on, paintings and real objects from the Ming Dynasty and later no longer appeared in the world.
The weapon to protect the cold and wind ward
In order to understand the role of pillow screens at that time, we must first base ourselves on the relatively warm climate environment of the Tang and Song dynasties. Especially in the Northern Song Dynasty, thanks to the "Medieval Warm Period", our country's buildings did not need to consider the warmth function at all.It can be seen from the paintings of the Song Dynasty that the Song Dynasty houses often only use thin wooden boards as walls, few thick brick walls, and even "stone steps, osmanthus pillars and bamboo walls". Paper-paste doors and windows or a thin screen are used to resist the wind and cold. It can be seen that in the Song Dynasty, people paid more attention to the heat dissipation and ventilation performance of houses, and did not have many requirements on the issue of warmth. In his article "Winter and Summer in the Residence of the Song Dynasty", Mr. Yang Zhishui mentioned that setting up warm pavilions or paper pavilions or fire pavilions in the living room was a common practice for people to spend the winter at that time. This is completely unimaginable for people today - in the autumn and winter when windproof and warmth are the most needed, in the houses without thick brick walls and ventilated on all sides, the Song people actually used only a thin screen made of paper or silk to block it into a closed space, and it is called a warm pavilion, which can keep the cold and survive the winter! But the facts proved that people thought that this was sufficient and the actual effect was indeed good enough. Otherwise, this kind of house that was incapable of keeping cold in modern people would not have existed so widely in the Song Dynasty.
Winter is still the case, let alone other seasons. As spring was just beginning and when the spring was chilly, the Tang people hurried out to explore the spring. When "the frozen flowers were not blooming, and the cold wine was hard to wake up", they "moved the light bed in the sun to hide the wind and spread the small screen" and began to enjoy the spring with great enthusiasm. We noticed that the only thing the poet used to block the wind and spring cold is the small screen on the couch.
Then in summer, as depicted by the Song Dynasty's "Lotus Pavilion Children's Play Picture" and "Wind Eaves Exhibition Volume Picture", when people are cool and resting in the open and spacious cool halls and attics, the bedding used is only hard pillows, cool beds and pillow screens. Among them, the pillow screen is specially designed for windproofing on the head. Cai Que even explained the standard configuration for the cool-off at that time in the poem " Summer Boarding the Car and the Pavilion ": "Paper screen, stone pillow, bamboo square bed, hand tired and throwing books and dreams of noon are long."
Southern Song Dynasty Anonymous Heting Children's Play Picture (collection of Boston Art Museum)
You can also see the figure of pillow screen in autumn and winter. Jiang Jie's "Golden Banana Leaf: Unsleeping in the Autumn Night" says: "The update of the pillow screen is painted with flat sand and broken swallows falling." This means that it is autumn season. There are also four poems about "Book of Pillows" by Lu Fangweng , with the title "Written in Shanyin in the third year of Kaixi", which proves that there is also a place for Pillows to be used in winter.
It can be seen from this that the pillow screen could be used all year round at that time, rather than what Mr. Yang Zhishui believed in "Winter and Summer in the Song Dynasty" that he only used in summer.
Since the function of pillow screen is to prevent wind, there is a problem. Since the ancients liked to sleep in hard pillows for shade and stayed on top without feeling cold, why did they use pillow screens to prevent wind? Isn’t this a contradiction? In this regard, the ancients' answer was: "Wind is the qi of heaven and earth. It can produce all things and can also damage people. It first enters the pores, gradually reaches the skin, transmits the meridians and reaches the internal organs. When the transmission changes are wide, it will be deep when it is affected." Therefore, "avoiding wind is like avoiding arrows." From this we can see that the ancients regarded wind as arrows, which was extremely lethal and harmful to the human body. They must be guarded against. But I don’t care about the slight coolness coming from the pillow.
The aesthetic taste of the pillow screen in the poem
The fifth generation of " Huajian Ji " densely appeared in the "screen" image of a woman: she leaned on the screen without saying a word, leaned on the flower screen with hatred and secretly hurt her feelings (Wei Zhuang's "Looking at the Far"), leaned on the screen without saying a word, cried in the red ( Li Xun "Xixizi"), etc. We know that in Chinese classical literature, there are patterns to follow in the images of women full of emotions and sorrow, such as "residing against the cage", "residing against the railing to meditate", "rolling the curtain to look leisurely", etc. So, where does the image of "residing against the screen" come from? Because the pillow screen has tended to disappear after the Song Dynasty, if future generations do not know the existence of the pillow screen on the bed, but only know other screens such as plug-in screens, then there will be huge deviations in the understanding of "resisting the screen".
The specific image of "relying on the screen" has been expressed in "Huajian Ji", not only sad but also moving. Just as Meng Hui interpreted the word "Luyan Branch" in "Sixteen Sounds of Flowers":
Sleeping in a new window against the cloud screen, thinking about dreams and laughing. The red cheeks hide from the pillow and flowers, some of them.
"A woman woke up and refused to get up, leaning against the screen on the bed, sitting half-lying half-lying, as lazy as a cat... The reason why the beauty couldn't hold on to her was because she had a good dream. She was savoring the dream that had been a moment ago. On her cheeks, there were also traces of patterns imprinted on the pillow during her sleep, and her smile rose on her cheeks that had not yet fallen asleep." The two aesthetic interests are perfectly combined here, making people feel endless aftertaste.
Conclusion
With the development of society, things that were originally well-known and used gradually faded out of people's sight and eventually disappeared. If we do not study and preserve it in a timely and effective manner, then the history and interest in them will also drift away and be scattered and difficult to find. For the two objects, porcelain pillows and pillow screens, which have left our lives, fortunately there are still real objects, images and poems, which allow us to understand and perceive the lifestyles of the ancients through the tools and documents, and remember and appreciate the ingenuity and aesthetic interests of the craftsmen contained in it. And this is also the main theme of cultural relics appreciation research.
References:
1. Hu Desheng. "Ancient Chinese Furniture", Commercial Press International Co., Ltd., 1997
Ren Rixin. "Portrait Stone of Han Tombs in Zhucheng, Shandong". Cultural Relics, 1981 (10)
2. Wang Maolin. "On the Relationship between the Rise and Fall of Screens on the Bed and Changes in the Ancient Living Ways". Decoration, 2011 (07)
3. The warm period of the Middle Ages: https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/The warm period of the Middle Ages
4. Bai Juyi. "The New Bu Mountain Residence Under Xianglu Peak, the Ancestral Cottage was first completed, and I occasionally wrote about the East Wall"
5. Yangzhishui. "New Certification of Famous Relics of Ancient Poems and Prose". Forbidden City Press, 2004
6. Yang Heng. "Occasional Topics in Spring". Complete Tang Poems
7. Pu Qianguan. "Baosheng Records·On the Gate of Residence"
8. Meng Hui. "Sixteen Sounds Between Flowers". Life·Reading·New Knowledge Sanlian Bookstore, 2006
