The Arrangement And Research On The Longevity Locks Of The FoShan Museum

The longevity lock is a kind of folk cultural accessories in china. It originated in the Han dynasty, and it is the period of Ming between Qing that the longevity lock is the most popular. They are of the large number, species diversity, different shapes,and pattern is rich, which makes them be one of the most important fundamental research of Chinese traditional folk culture. But the research about it is so limited, especially for the part of material, shape, pattern, and process.The purpose of this paper is to use the method of typology from the material, shape, pattern, and process to classificate the 256th longevity locks of The Foshan City Museum. From the material aspect, this batch of the longevity locks are diversity. Most of them are silver materials, and individual has mix materials as well. Such as copper, gold, glass, enamel and so on. From the process aspect, the longevity lock is seemingly simple and small, but it also has to go through a set of relatively complete system of production process, which is used to carve, engraves, hollow out, gold bluing ect.What's more, from the shape, pattern, different shape and diversity pattern embodies the longevity locks'commonness and individuality. In short, its generality is mainly manifested in preference for certain shape modelings and certain pattern subjests. Such as in the best shape, wing shpe, lock shape, kirin shape, and the qi zi pattern, fortune pattern, warding off bad luck pattern. On the contary, its character is mainly manifested on its geographical characteristic of each region. And the most typical is the same shape or pattern in different parts of expression forms of the same topic.As a peculiar Chinese folk culture, the longevity locks contain its unique cultural features, which is mainlv embodied in the moral fuction and the decorate fuction.