| Furniture is one of the most important part of architectural interior decoration,among which, beds are the largest and most complex in structure. As realizing menspend half of their lives sleeping in bed, folk in East of Zhejiang Province has a longtradition using and making magnificent beds. Besides, the extravagant marriagecustoms in the area demand the bride’s family arrange dowries including a set ofred-lacquered furniture, while the groom’s family make a marriage bed, in the symbolof bringing birth to boys and perpetuating the family name.The object of this thesis is such folk marriage beds made in East Zhejiang Provincefrom Qing Dynasty, especially Babuchuang. Babuchuang is a kind of combinationfurniture made of a normal bed and a porch adding to its fa ade, where people can placea small dresser or a chamber pot. Decoration crafts commonly used are red-lacquer andgilding, inlaid shells or bones/wood, oil/lacquer based color painting, etc. Thus makesthe beds a representative of local material culture.The thesis has four main purposes: Frist, to clarify the Qing folk beds’ typicalforms and decorative features in East Zhejiang Province. Second, to understand thecrafts, including wood working, carving and painting. Third, to investigate the details oflacquer based surface decoration in Linhai based on lab analysis of bed LB028. Fourth,to discuss the possible origin and evolving trace of Babuchuang.Three approaches are focused: literature review, fieldwork and lab analysis.Literature reading covers chorography, ancient document of traditional furniture makingand lacquerware crafts, and archaeological discoveries of beds in China. Field workconsists of two aspects, one is intensive survey of100beds in Linhai, the other isextensive survey of300beds in10museums that have Qing folk beds in their collection.Lab work mainly utilizes three methods, cross-section microscopy analysis, pigmentpolarized light microscopy analysis and SEM-EDS. Samples are collected duringfieldwork. |
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