Research On The Furniture In Tang Dynasty And Its Cultural Value

The development of the culture of ancient Chinese furnitureexperienced an evolution from a low-seat furniture system primarily based upon mat and couch to a high-seat furniture system primarily based upon chair and stool, and an evolution from box-plate modeling to frame-type modeling.The Tang dynasty was the key period of the above evolution. In this thesis, I shall mainly adopt anapproach of combining the bibliography, picture, andobject study, to unveil the scenario of the furniture development inthe Tang dynasty, and the rich cultural connotations inside it. The main contentof the thesis is divided into five chapters.The first chapter presents a brief overview of the furniture development prior to the Tang dynasty. The furniture development in the Tang dynasty not only inherited and carried forward the traditional furniture culture, but also was affected by the new furniture style that had been gradually imported from the western regions into central China since the end of the Han dynasty. In the traditional living habits during and before the Confucianism of Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern dynasties, low-seat furniture of box-plate type dominated, yet such a tradition had begun to be impacted by a few kinds of new frame-type high-seat furniture even before the Tang dynasty.In the second and third chapters, I distinguish the furniture in the Tang dynasty into several categories, i.e., the sitting-lying dual-purpose furniture, the sitting furniture, the bearing furniture, the storing furniture, and the screen-and-shelf furniture, and perform a detailed category study on them. Firstly, via a combing analysis through the literature, I first clarify the correspondence between the name and the real object of the furniture in the Tang dynasty.I then investigate the development and the basic usage of various categories of furniture in the Tang dynasty through pictures andreal objects. The sitting-lying dual-purpose furnituremainly inherited the preexisting basic style in the Confucianism of Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern dynasties, and continued to be dominant in the people's daily life in the Tang dynasty. The sitting furniture, as an enrichment and complement of the sitting-lying dual-purpose furniture, underwent particularly active development in the Tang dynasty. A number of imported high-seat furniture originally related to Buddhist monks'living, such as the folding stool, the rope stool, the quan-ti, were further popularized into secular people's livings and, after interacting with the traditional furniture culture, created some new styles such as the kunmen-style high-seat, qulu-style rope bed, crescent-shape square stool, sit pier, and Tang round-backed armchair etc, that were more con-formal to the aesthetic taste in the Tang dynasty and carried on the structure characteristics of the traditional furniture. Under the influence of the development of high-seat furniture, besides the traditional low-short-style bearing furniture, several high-style bearing furniture developed and indicated that the people's living style was changing. The storing furniture is divided into the large cabinet and the small box. Their shapes are rich of variability. The artisans in the Tang dynasty could also design the shape-following storing furniture according to the actual shape of the stored goods, with very high-level technology. Influenced by the traditional aesthetic tendency, the high-grade bearing furniture and storing furniture in the Tang dynasty often had a kunmen-style leg. The screen-and-shelf furniture, used for screening and supporting, is an accompaniment of the sitting-and lying-furniture. It not only served some serious purposes such as space dividing, orientation pointing, and identity showing, etc, but also acted as an important ornamental in indoor and outdoor spaces. The screen-and-shelf furniture played the role in supporting various living facilities, and is the most specialized furniture in terms the functional use in the Tang dynasty.In the fourth chapter, on the basis of category analysis Iinvestigate the craft technology of furniture. The constructing technology of furniture in the Tang dynasty had made significant advancement as compared to before, but the mortise-tenon structure was still under development and heavily inferior to that used in the Ming and Qing dynasties. The panel construction mostly took an entire piece of thick plate, but the method of collecting together frame had already emerged on few kinds of furniture; the "lip" structure made along the surface of some kunmen-style bearing furniture was the pioneer to the baffled decant line made on the bearing furniture in later centuries. Panel jointing and straight timber jointing mainly adopted the form of mortise-tenon structure aided by glues and nails, and the capital block construction was used on top of the straight timber in some furniture. A remarkable progress of the mortise-tenon structure of furniture was shown in the jointing part among the straight timber, the side frame, and the plate face. The construction of the foot-jack stockade and the architrave embedded in the straight timber had a great influence on the furniture structure after the Song dynasty.The technology of furniture decoration in the Tang dynasty was very good.Main techniques included several categories such as coating, mosaic, sculpture, dyed fabrics, calligraphy, and painting. The decorative color was enthusiastic, and the decorative pattern favoredthe use of arabesques, bees and butterflies, animals, poultry and birds, trees and stones, etc, all of which were full of realism style. Their decorative taste was aesthetically inclined to be flat. Some decoration technology such as powder color painting, litargite painting, clamp resist dyed, etc., were gradually lost after the Song dynasty.In the fifth chapter Ielucidate the inter-relationship between the furniture and the culture in the Tang dynasty, from the aspects of architectural culture, external cultural communication, and the social life. The influence of the architectural culture onthe furniture in the Tang dynasty is reflected in two aspects, the architectural layout and the architectural technology. The increase of the indoor space and height of the building in the Tang dynasty promoted the overall elevation of the furniture height; the half-open-style of the palace and hall determined that the furnishing of the hall was not a fixed style. Several new construction methods shown on the frame-type furniture benefited from the experiences in building large wooden frame structure. The cultural communication between the Tang dynasty and other countries had implications in both importing and exporting.The importing of external furniture culture in the Tang dynasty experienced the choice of styles and the modification of structures. In terms of the exporting, the northeast Asian area, including the Bohai sea, woosong, and Japan were all influenced by the furniture culture of the Tang dynasty, among which the impact on Japan was particularly outstanding. I also reveal the practical role of furniture in people's daily living via a study of furniture in the Tang dynasty in the context of social life mainly from two aspects, the, grade and gender difference of the furniture, and the display and usage of the furniture.Through discussions on the above contents of this thesis, I reveal the specific change of the furniture culture in the Tang dynasty during the transition period of the Chinese furniture history, and clarify the inter-relationship among the furniture in the Tang dynasty and various cultural aspects; Ifind the main reason underlying the transition of the traditional living custom during the co-exiting period of low-and high-seat furniture, and display a spectacular landscape of the art of the furniture in the Tang dynasty and the cultural character embedded in it.