This ability to associate is very valuable and allows Zhou Zhi to have a lot of fun that others don't have.

For example, Zhou Zhi later liked to sit in an old teahouse in the capital of Shu, watching people coming and going on the street outside, guessing the causes and consequences of their interactions, and making up their minds about the conversations between them.

Later, this ability turned into an intuitive appreciation of beauty and the ability to create words.

This ability is called "spirituality" by both the fourth cousin and the godfather.

After the car passed Zaoling Bridge, Zhou Zhi jumped out of the car and said goodbye to everyone. He had something to do and had to go to his fourth cousin's place.

Entering the small courtyard where the orchids are fragrant, I quietly opened the door to my fourth cousin's study with a very gentle movement.

There is a reason for this. Most workers who restore calligraphy and painting ancient books have irregular heartbeats. This problem is because the work requires full concentration and concentration. A small external interference can easily cause fright.

Come.

The door opened little by little. The fourth cousin and the fourth aunt were carefully putting together a scroll in front of the huge desk. Behind them was a huge board with a incomplete painting on it. It was Shi Yannian.

"Chou Bi Yi Poem".

To put it bluntly, the restoration of calligraphy and painting consists of five major processes: washing, uncovering, repairing, and holding.

The first step is to wash, which includes removing old surfaces and washing away stains.

The core of a calligraphy and painting work is called the "painting heart", which is usually a piece of raw calligraphy, a cooked painting, or raw silk and cooked silk, on which the calligraphy and painting works are created directly.

Later, the work will be added with supporting paper and backing paper, plus a mounting table, and made into a scroll for hanging.

The task of removing the old watch is to remove the scrolls, silk watch and other peripheral objects from the original ancient painting, leaving only the core part of the calligraphy and painting integrated with the center of the painting, supporting paper and backing paper.

These parts are pasted together. If there are "diseases" such as damage, breakage, corrosion, insect infestation, etc., they usually occur together.

Therefore, when removing an old watch, in addition to removing the outer decoration, the core part needs to be soaked with water to make it soft and soft. After it can be stretched, a repair base is laid on the table, and the painting heart is placed in the repair frame.

Here, the works soaked in water are pieced together bit by bit, using the buoyancy and tension of water to restore the fragmented ancient paintings to the original appearance.

"Invincibility starts with sacrificing the ancestor"

Errors often occur in this step. For example, in the famous "Along the River During the Qingming Festival", during the restoration process, a donkey's head was repaired in the wrong direction, and it later became a famous public eucalyptus.

After putting the picture or calligraphy back together, cover it with a layer of paper, and then enter the next step, which is the process of washing away the stains.

The reason why we can do this is the uniqueness of Chinese calligraphy and painting.

In Chinese calligraphy and painting, calligraphy uses ink that is glued and then tempered repeatedly. The ink produced by the ink ingot is ground and will not scatter when exposed to water after being written on the paper.

The same is true for painting pigments. Alum is often used to fix the color on paper, sometimes as many as a dozen times.

After the work is completed, no matter how many hundreds of years pass, it will not disintegrate when exposed to water. This is the basic premise that ancient Chinese calligraphy and painting can be restored repeatedly.

Generally, works handed down from generation to generation will be re-opened and repaired every fifty to half a year.

After removing the old watch and piecing together the heart of the painting, we entered the second step - removing stains.

There are many stains on calligraphy and painting - water stains, mildew, insect stains, oil spots... are among them.

There are different stain removal methods for different stains, which can be roughly divided into two types: physical decontamination and chemical decontamination.

Physical decontamination is to soak the paper surface with a large amount of water, and then use a wet towel to roll and squeeze it from the center of the work outwards. In this way, the stains on the surface of the work are squeezed out of the work to achieve the purpose of cleaning.

This work is very effective. The sewage washed out of centuries-old paintings is often as thick and black as Pu'er tea soup.

As for water stains, mildew, and insect stains, half of the traces left behind are acidic traces. Such stains require the use of chemical methods.

For example, the commonly used potassium permanganate decontamination method plus vitamin C solvent reduction method is one of them.

After preliminary cleaning and repairing stains, the work proceeds to the next major step - the work of removing the supporting paper.

Peeling off the supporting paper is the most critical step in repainting calligraphy and painting. It is necessary to turn over the work that has just been processed, peel off the newly added backing paper for fixation, and then remove the soaked supporting paper from the old table.

Remove the backing paper bit by bit, leaving the core "painting heart".

The supporting paper is directly adhered to the center of the painting, which is equivalent to half the life of the center of the painting. It is customary in the industry to call it "life paper".

Therefore, it is obvious that if you are not careful in the process of removing the support paper, you will definitely hurt the painting. If the craftsmanship is not precise enough, it will cause the most direct damage to the calligraphy and painting, and even cause irreparable losses.

If Shi Yannian's "Chou Bi Yi Shi" suffered such losses during the restoration process, then Zhou Zhi and his fourth cousin could basically be characterized as "national sinners."

This work is very difficult and meticulous, and often takes a long time. It usually takes two or three days, and the most difficult ones may last more than half a month.

People need to rest during the repair process. At this time, you need to cover the work with a wet towel to keep it moist.

Sometimes there are Easter eggs in the process of removing the supporting paper. If the ancient painting is created with composite multi-layer paper, after the supporting paper is peeled off, you can continue to "uncover the heart of the painting" to get two identical ancient paintings.

In the early years, many antique shops used this method to turn one ancient painting or calligraphy into two pieces and earn twice as much money.

However, the color of the painting that has been processed in this way will undoubtedly become dull, so a series of counterfeiting methods must be used to make it more "perfect".

This cannot be called pure fraud, because the two works obtained in this way are indeed genuine.

After this step, the work needs to enter the next step of repair - deacidification and protection.

Because calligraphy and painting, whether they are carriers, pigments, or surface decoration methods, use a large amount of organic matter, therefore, all old calligraphy and painting may suffer from serious acidification.

With just a little force, the heart of the painting may fall into pieces, so it is necessary to neutralize the acidic content in the painting and calligraphy in order to extend its life.

This step is called "deacidification". After deacidification, the lifespan of the work will be four to five times longer than before, and no major changes will be needed for a hundred years.

For ancient paintings, along with this step, there is also a "lead removal" process.

Ancient pigments often contained lead white, which is an important toner. Almost all pigments must be adjusted to suitability before use.

But over time, a problem will arise. The lead will oxidize and deteriorate, causing the color of the picture to become dull.

The method of repair is to use a wet towel to encircle the area that needs to be recolored on the scroll, pour white wine on it, and light it on fire. The deteriorated lead material will turn back into lead white, making the picture bright again.

It is common sense that paper will burn when exposed to fire. This step of repair depends entirely on vision and experience. What protects the paper is the large amount of water contained in the paper after being processed for such a long time.

A skilled restorer has the ability to keep the picture still moist when the wine fire is extinguished, and the lead white restoration is just right.
Chapter completed!