Research On Restoration Of Qing Dynasty Epistles

Epistle,a means of interpersonal communication that gradually developed during the transmission of information,has,in turn,become an essential branch of the art of calligraphy.What’s more,it is being attached importance to by degrees as more and more scholars study and deepen its history,artistic and documentary value.As a convenient way to transmit information to all classes in the Qing Dynasty,the epistle has a long history.As a result,many documents and handwritten letters have been preserved,involving enormous writers,intricate relationships,and a wide range of content.But because they are scattered,it isn’t effortless to collate and study.Furthermore,abounding handwritten letters pose many difficulties in protecting cultural relics of letters,and the aging of cultural relics has also increased over time.In particular,some of the handwritten letters in poorly preserved environments show disease characteristics such as paper acidification,insect infestation,and adhesion,which seriously affect the life of the relics and thus have an indirect impact on in-depth research in areas related to their contents.Grounded on the conservation and restoration of the epistle and combined with the restoration practice of Zhao Jinjian’s epistle album,this paper takes the private epistle in the Qing Dynasty as the critical point.Through the arrangement of development and mounting of the epistle,the most common way to communicate information,it also provides an in-depth understanding of the development laws and characteristics of the epistle,studies and ponders over the epistle itself,and discovers valuable information.The information obtained from the theoretical research of epistles in the early stage will be fed back and applied to the actual restoration work,summarizing the restoration methods of works such as epistles and laying the foundation for future research on the restoration of epistles in the Qing Dynasty.This paper includes four parts: the first part briefly describes the research object,significance,and the current situation at home and abroad;the systematic arrangement of development of epistle and the detailed mounting of some epistles are introduced in the second section;and the third part combines the theoretical research of the previous paper with restoration practice to test the restored works;The last part is about the discussion of restoration methods and the documentation of restoration practice for epistles and other pieces.