Chinese Ming And Qing Dynasties Folk Coin Connotation And Application Research On Visual Elements

Folklore money refers to a special kind of currency with special lucky meaning and symbols.People use it to overcome the internal fear towards the ghosts and spirits and long for good luck. Itinvolves politics, economy, folk culture and religion of ancient China and could be viewed as animportant cultural medium since Han Dynasty. It does not function as money and just looks likemoney. In essence, it is the derivative of cultural of the society and offers a perfect explanation onmonetary art, religion art and formative art. It is related closely to witchcraft in ancient religions.The huge quantity and abundant variety of folklore money indicates the spiritual and material lifeof the time it was made. During the Ming and Qing Dynasty, folklore money developed to itsprime, due to the fact that it was the end of feudalist society of China, when folk culture has beenfully developed. This helped create a folklore monetary culture second to none of that during theother periods of time.This essay offers an introduction to historic development of money and folklore money,together with an insight into visual and social elements functioning in folklore money. It discussesvisual elements in the respect of content, religion and craftsmanship by a comprehensive analysisof the meaning and shape of folklore money. Also it probes into the modern application of suchelements as well as how to inherit such a culture. More important it explores that ways of applyingthe meaning of folklore money to modern design. In all, it starts from exploration of visualelements of folklore money and develops to the degree of learning from the past and learning forapplication.The study of folklore money regarding its visual elements and cultural connotation does notonly help with learning and inheriting traditional Chinese culture, but also becomes a good way ofanalyzing the humanistic characteristics and folk customs. It has the far-reaching meaning for boththe exploration of art value of folklore money in Ming and Qing Dynasty and the inheritance oftraditional culture.