What is a Chinese cinnabar?
Cinnabar: The Chinese Art of Carved Lacquer Lacquer is the resin (or sap) of a family of trees (rhus verniciflua) found throughout southern China. Carved lacquer, which is predominantly red, is often known as “cinnabar” lacquer, a reference to the use of this powdered mercury sulphide as the primary colorant.
How can you tell if cinnabar is real?
If you have a magnifying glass look for a ‘grain’ pattern in any cuts that run diagonally from the surface down, because real cinnabar is made up of layers of lacquer built up one on top of the other. Signs of plastic are moulding lines, lack of toolmarks, bubbles in the decoration.
What is cinnabar vase?
This vase is an example of cinnabar, a technique practiced mainly in Asia. It’s made by applying hundreds of layers of red lacquer, then carving them by hand.
Is cinnabar Chinese or Japanese?
Cinnabar is often used to describe a Chinese style of carved, vermilion-colored lacquer. However, cinnabar is actually the name of a red mineral, a form of mercury(II) sulfide, used to dye the lacquer.
What is cinnabar made from?
In its original form, cinnabar is crystallized red mercuric sulphide (HgS), the main ore bearing mercury. It can also be manufactured by treating a mixture of liquid mercury and sulfur with potassium hydroxide. Cinnabar is the primary pigment in colors commonly referred to as vermillion and Chinese red.
Can you wash cinnabar?
The cinnabar piece may also just be plastic, just straight up plastic. When looking at cleaning strategies, you can get the mineral wet, and scrub at it lightly with soap and a brush. But you wouldn’t want to take a stuff brush to the surface.
How is cinnabar lacquer made?
Cinnabar lacquer-ware was made by painting thin layers of lacquer on to a base article usually made of bamboo, wood or metal. As many as 300 layers were applied in this painstaking and time-consuming process, with each layer being allowed to dry before the application of the next.
What are cinnabar boxes made of?
The most popular known use of cinnabar is in Chinese carved lacquerware, which involves a technique that apparently originated during the Song Dynasty. Carved cinnabar lacquer boxes, made from natural resin derived from the Chinese lacquer tree, have always been coveted luxury items.
How do you clean a cinnabar vase?
What does cinnabar look like?
Cinnabar is generally found in a massive, granular or earthy form and is bright scarlet to brick-red in color, though it occasionally occurs in crystals with a nonmetallic adamantine luster. It resembles quartz in its symmetry. It exhibits birefringence, and it has the second highest refractive index of any mineral.
Is cinnabar still used today?
Cinnabar (contains mercury sulfide) has been used in traditional medicines for thousands years as an ingredient in various remedies, and 40 cinnabar-containing traditional medicines are still used today. Following long-term use of cinnabar, renal dysfunction may occur.
How do you store cinnabar?
Cinnabar is a rather safe mineral to handle. Just do not heat it, avoid dry-grinding and dry-sawing. If the specimen also holds native mercury, keep it in an airtight box and away from heat.
How big is a 18 H cinnabar vase?
Huge 18″ H Antique/Vintage Asian Chinese Red Cinnabar Lacquer/Resin. Antique Signed Chinese Ornately Carved Cinnabar Vase. Base is signed. 7.75″
How is cinnabar made?
Before modern plastics, the most common way to reproduce carved lacquer was to first make molds of genuine pieces. These molds were then used to make plaster copies. The copies were then painted with thick reddish-orange paint and sold as carved cinnabar.
How was the original cinnabar painted?
The copies were then painted with thick reddish-orange paint and sold as carved cinnabar. Slightly better reproductions were made by coating the plaster with a single layer of lacquer as a top coating.
What is a cinnabar-colored snuff bottle?
Technically, those pieces are carved cinnabar-colored lacquer snuff bottles and vases. Cinnabar is the color; lacquer is the material from which the objects are carved. Lacquer–plain or carved–comes in many colors other than cinnabar including black, green, purple and others. The use of lacquer was developed in China about 3000-2500 BC.