Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

"This inkstone feels so light." The first time the inkstone fell into his hands, Liang En discovered that the weight of the inkstone was wrong. In his impression, the inkstone should be made of stone and weigh about the same as a brick in his hand.

But now that he was holding the inkstone in his hand, Liang En felt that the thing in his hand was light and airy, as if it were a plastic product.

"Plastic - no, no, if it is plastic, there is no need to hide it like this." At first, Liang Enzhen thought this thing was made of resin, but he quickly denied it.

On the one hand, if this thing was really made of resin, there would be no need for such elaborate hiding. On the other hand, the box just found in the center of the table has been confirmed to be a black lacquered mother-of-pearl product, and no one would use it to store cheap resin.

"Could this inkstone be lacquerware?" After thinking for a few seconds, Liang En thought of something from the black lacquer mother-of-pearl box. To be honest, he had never thought that lacquerware could be used as an inkstone.

In particular, the inner material of this inkstone looks delicate and moist. It is equipped with a red lacquered inkstone box and is inlaid with mother-of-pearl to create a beautiful picture of a lotus pond. No matter how you look at it, it looks like a top-grade Duan Inkstone.

After further inspection, he found a small vermilion seal on the back of the inkstone, with the two characters "Kui Sheng" written on it.

"It seems like this thing was made by a famous person." After discovering the seal, Liang En suddenly became excited. Because in ancient China, only a few craftsmen could leave their names on their works.

The reason for this situation is that ancient China traditionally insisted on being agricultural-based, and craftsmen were often regarded as inferior people, so most of the time they did not have the right to leave their names on their works.

But because of this, the craftsmen who can leave their names on their works are often only very famous ones, and the things made by them are naturally high-quality.

Because of his specialization in the art, Liang En knew nothing about this strange lacquer inkstone. Fortunately, the Internet era allowed him to quickly find out the origin of this thing.

The correct name for this lacquerware inkstone should be lacquered sand inkstone. This kind of inkstone is made of wood and painted with lacquer. Fine sand with particles is mixed into the lacquer to aid grinding, so it is called lacquered sand inkstone.

Because it is made of wood, it is very lightweight and very practical.

This kind of stationery first appeared out of pragmatism. After all, traditional inkstones are made of stone. Carrying that thing with you is no different from carrying a brick. Therefore, wealthy literati will naturally want to find lightweight alternatives.

Inkstones are something used by literati, and those literati in ancient China were actually similar to Western aristocrats and were the rulers of this country.

Therefore, lacquered sand inkstones were further improved soon after their birth. Craftsmen often inlaid turquoise, mother-of-pearl, mica, colored stones, ivory and other materials into them, and decorated them with patterns of flowers, plants, fish and insects, which were very delicate and beautiful.

Among those craftsmen, three generations of the Lu family from the Qianlong period to the Daoguang period are masters of making lacquer sand inkstones.

And the seal with the word "Kui Sheng" written on it behind the inkstone is the seal of Lu Dong, the third generation of the Lu family. According to the records searched online, the other party would stamp a small red seal with the word "Kui Sheng" on the things they made independently.

"The converted price is about six to seven thousand pounds." After checking the Chinese Internet, Liang En calculated the price of the inkstone in his hand through the auction prices of similar items.

Compared with the previously discovered things, this thing is indeed of lower value, but it is always a very good thing to be able to find such things from my hometown in this place, not to mention that this inkstone can bring back the original. .

Unfortunately, the historical value of this inkstone is not very high, so it just gave Liang En a [Appraisal (N)] card.

After looking at the inkstone, Liang En went to look at the black lacquered mother-of-pearl box just now, because he learned from the inquiry just now that this master of lacquerware from Yangzhou is not only good at making lacquered sand inkstone boxes, but also good at making various lacquerware boxes.

Sure enough, after a brief search, Liang En also found the "Kui Sheng" style of Zhu lacquerware on the bottom of the lacquerware box.

At first he felt quite happy, because apart from the inkstones, the most expensive lacquerware made by Lu Dong was a variety of ornately decorated lacquerware containers.

However, when Liang En took the container in his hand and looked at it carefully for a few minutes, he immediately noticed something was wrong, because according to the information he found, everything Lu Dong made could be said to be ingenious and beyond the reach of ordinary painters.

But the quality of the box in his hand is obviously much worse now. Although it is made of black lacquer and mother-of-pearl, the overall production is extremely rough. The various inlays are dullly carved, and even the paint surface is a bit uneven.

"It seems that fake and shoddy products can be found everywhere." Looking at the box in his hand, Liang En smiled bitterly and shook his head. Then put the inkstone into the box.

Just when he was about to close the lid of the box, he suddenly stopped as if he thought of something, then removed the lid and stared at the box with the inkstone.

Because he realized at this time that this type of inkstone is not a standard product, and each piece may not be the same size, so naturally there will be no so-called universal packaging.

This black lacquered mother-of-pearl box is obviously made for this inkstone, but this method is not normal. For ancient literati, the Four Treasures of the Study were their faces.

Especially those who can afford this type of lacquerware inkstone are all rich people. It is hard to imagine that those rich people would put a layer of box outside the real inkstone, which can be said to be fake at first glance.

It is not even possible to use this method to change the package. Compared with the packaging box outside the package, it should be easier to remove the inkstone inside the package.

More importantly, after a brief recollection, Liang En realized that the kang table sharing existed to hide the broken box, but the ink stone was actually used to attract other people's attention.

After all, the space hidden under the kang table is large enough. After stuffing the box into it, the remaining space is more than enough to stuff three or five inkstones. There is no need to use the current method.

This sense of weirdness immediately made Liang En excited, because he knew that situations that were different from normal often concealed some very valuable secrets.

In order to ensure that he could obtain this secret instead of recklessly destroying it, Liang En immediately used an [Appraisal (N)] card on the box.

Sure enough, a series of new texts revealed the secrets inside the box.

[There are many secret organizations in Chinese history, and members of these organizations also have various identities on the surface, but naturally this identity cannot be put on the surface. 】

[Whether it is the previous elm Kang table or the box, they are all designed to hide some representative objects from an ancient Chinese secret organization. 】

"It looks like we have to take this box apart." After reading these words, Liang En thought as he glanced at the box, because this box obviously left no structure for disassembly.