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March 18, 2017

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Preserving antiquities, restoring skill sets

EVERYONE agrees that China’s historical heritage should be preserved, but restoring relics requires skilled hands that are short in supply.

Hands like those of Jiang Daoyin, 71, an expert in restoring porcelain ware. The former specialist with Shanghai Museum is now a professor at the Shanghai Institute of Visual Art, which recently opened the new School of Cultural Relics Restoring and Preservation.

The school is integrating existing majors in the restoration of ancient papers, ceramics and paintings and expanding the curriculum to include preservation of bronze ware, furniture, buildings, textiles and frescoes.

It’s a start on what will be a long road toward building up a wide field of specialists.

“The issue is that 80 percent of unearthed relics are broken and now locked in warehouses because not many people are able to restore them,” Jiang says. “Though not everyone of them is worth restoring, the workload is still huge.”

He estimates that there are fewer than 20 true experts among the hundreds of people currently working on restoration projects.

For the past two years, Jiang and his students have been engaged in rehabilitating the South China Sea I, a wooden ship that sank near Guangdong Province 800 years ago and was discovered in 1987.

“There are about 60,000 to 70,000 ancient pieces from the boat waiting for restoration, but we are a team of only 15 students and several teachers,” Jiang says. “Starting last year, we are spending a month every year in Guangdong, but at this rate, it will take not only our lifetime but also the lifetime of the next generation to complete the work.”

Restoring cultural relics goes way beyond fitting pieces back together like a jigsaw puzzle. The job requires comprehensive knowledge of history, chemistry and materials sciences.

Take the relics on the South China Sea I for example. The ceramic pieces were buried undersea for more than 800 years with ironware, so that the first stage of restoration involves desalination and rust removal.

Chen Qi, a lecturer at the school who participated in the project last year, restored a white porcelain bowl made during the Song Dynasty (960-1279).

“It took us a long time to find the right type of reagent to clean the porcelain without damaging its glaze,” says Chen. “We had to do a lot of experimentation.”

Working with reagents can be dangerous. Students on the project suffered from nose bleeds, sore eyes and vomiting after too much exposure to the chemicals.

“No one quit,” Chen says proudly. “They were determined to do a good job. However, some of them said they wouldn’t work in a similar environment again.”

Choosing restoration work as a career isn’t easy. Chen herself is an example.

After graduating from the Shanghai Institute of Visual Art in 2008 with a major in ceramic restoration, Chen had hoped to work at the Songjiang District Museum. But the museum told her that there was a backlog of applicants and she would have to wait it out. Discouraged, she gave up the idea and became a lecturer at her alma mater.

Now, just six years later, it is almost impossible to find undergraduates for restoration projects. Museums and other institutions usually set the bar quite high, demanding at least a master’s degree.

Chen recalls only about 30 students in her class — half of them majoring in ceramic ware, half in oil painting restoration.

“A few of my old classmates are still in archeology,” says Chen. “But I see fewer and fewer graduates getting into the field. Of those who do, many go to study abroad and some chose to work for auction houses.”

Museums, she says, don’t actively try to recruit professionals by providing interesting, well-paying jobs.

“A thorough reform of the field is needed if restoration efforts are to expand and succeed,” she says.

Besides relatively low pay, restoration specialists have to endure exposure to chemicals, dust and sometimes radiation, even though the job haven’t been included in China’s list of occupational disease prevention.

Jiang couldn’t agree more about the obstacles that tend to shunt people from restoration work.

“Doing this job, you have to put up with loneliness and great challenges,” he says. “You won’t starve, but you won’t become well-off either.”

Jiang says the newly founded school aims to lift the profile of restorers and try to create challenging professional opportunities.

“Our graduates will be capable of not only restoring relics, but also identifying relics and creating the best methods of conserving them,” Jiang says. “They will ultimately find their places in the field, no matter what role they play.”

The South China Sea I

About 800 years ago, a ship fully laden with ceramics, pottery and metal ware sailed from Guangdong Province, bound for ports in Southeast Asia. It was one of the largest cargo ships of its time, a symbol of the prosperity of the Maritime Silk Road.

Everyone expected the ship to return home laden with treasure, but that never happened. Not long after the ship left port, it sank for reasons never discovered.

Chinese frogmen spotting the remains of the ship in 1987, when they were salvaging another vessel lost in the South China Sea. The new discovery was given the name South China Sea I.

At 30 meters long and 10 meters wide, it is the largest ancient vessel ever recovered in China.

Miraculously, the wreckage was still rather complete. Underwater work continued for two decades, and the ship was finally raised from its watery grave in 2007.

Seven years of cleaning and digging found more than 80,000 relics onboard. The booty included 13,000 sets of ceramic ware, 151 sets of gold ware, 124 of silver ware and 170 of bronze, including 17,000 bronze coins. Some of the restored relics are now displayed at the Maritime Silk Road Museum of Guangdong.

However, mystery still shrouds the vessel. The owner of the ship remains unknown, and its chronology is under debate.

The ship carried coins from three dynasties: Han (202 BC-AD 220), Northern Song (960-1127) and Southern Song (1127-1279), spanning nearly a millennium.




 

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