Cultural Illumination Of Chinese Ancient Screen Designing

Chinese Screen, as a sort of Chinese traditional furniture, has no exactevidence to show its production time. It is so difficult to hand down fortheir making materials that existing screens at present mainly belong to theperiod of Ming and Qing Dynasty. But long time ago there was therecordation that bear on the screen, and which hold the important status inthe history of designing furniture. Chinese Screen is not only the practicalfunction goods in people's life ,but also satisfy the design requirements ofChinese ancient furniture:'fine weather, favorable terrain, good timber,clever artisan; Gathering this four, then can make good product.'and moreis the mirror which condensed connotation and etiquette system of Chineseculture in the course of several millennium. The developing history ofscreen design was dug and illuminated across-the-board and systematicallyby methods such as historical organon, iconography , culture anthropologyand cultural connotation was explored which not only are the demand ofdesign research of traditional furniture, but also offer the reference for ethosvalue and practical application value of contemporary design.Based on such understanding, this paper was divided into two partsroughly: Part One: the origin and evolution of Chinese screen design wasdescribed historically; its forms and decoration techniques were combed.Part Two: Mainly profited from H.H.Stern's content and cultural classification manner, the culture of screen design was divided into threelevels: Surface layer culture, namely material level culture; Intermediatedeck culture, namely design art level culture; The core level culture, namelythe energetic level culture and the illumination was carried on from thethree aspects.Take these three level cultures as the subject investigated tocarry on the analysis about the traditional culture mirrored by the screendesign.Hereinto, the surface layer culture namely its material practicalculture performance was the induction and the category division ofpractical function; The intermediate deck culture was illuminated fromculture aspect of the screen design, including different shape, decoration,craft, material in each historical period ;Finally based on the research of thepainting, the historical data and the material object, uniting the Chinesetraditional culture essence, core level culture connotations implied in screendesign were analyzed which include etiquette symbol, geomancy culture,cultural carrier that is different from other design From the outside to theinside, layer upon layer the cultural characteristic of screen design wasprobed into deeply.