From Museum to Studio – Artwork Jewellery Discussion board

Final 12 months, Marion Delarue, a French artist who works primarily with wearable objects, was chosen for a analysis residency on the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (MAD) in Paris. The aim of the residency was to check objects from the museum’s collections, with particular entry to storage areas and the restoration workshop. Her analysis targeted on objects associated to hair, headpieces, and feathered objects. Because the dian-cui method brings collectively these three parts, Delarue selected to check it in additional element. This uncommon method, originating from China, makes use of solely kingfisher feathers. This text presents the principle discoveries from her analysis.

My earlier analysis, carried out largely throughout residencies in Asia, led me to work with many supplies, equivalent to mother-of-pearl, porcelain, glass, lacquer, wooden, and stone. Amongst them, feathers have performed a central position in my follow for the previous 10 years. I first encountered featherwork throughout an artist residency in China. From September to November 2025, I joined a analysis residency on the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. With over one and a half million objects, the museum holds one of many world’s most necessary ornamental arts collections. 

These residencies permit artists and researchers to check works in distinctive situations. My analysis targeted on objects from the Jewellery, Asia, and Style departments, and particularly on these made with feathers. I thus studied carefully two dian-cui objects: a hairpin and a Dian Zi headdress. Every object reveals one of many two identified strategies used to use kingfisher feathers. Each items are very effectively preserved and are significantly beneficial for understanding this uncommon method.

The hairpin, which is completely displayed within the jewellery galleries, is particularly significant to me. It was the thing that first impressed me to go to Beijing in 2014 to study concerning the origins of dian-cui. At the moment, I spotted how troublesome it was to entry this nearly misplaced data. Xiao Guangchun, one of many final acknowledged masters, refused to fulfill with me. His daughter, Xiao Yumei, who later took over his follow and selected to work solely with dyed goose feathers for moral causes, was additionally unreachable. Greater than 10 years later, I now totally perceive how uncommon it’s to check genuine dian-cui objects in such preferrred museum situations.

The dian-cui method appeared in China through the Warring States interval, 475–221 BC. It reached its peak through the Ming and Qing dynasties, from the 14th to the early twentieth century. Historically, making a dian-cui object follows very strict guidelines and requires a number of steps. Step one, ding-cui (analyzing feathers), is to decide on feathers from the wings, the tail, or the again of the kingfisher.

The subsequent step is cai-xing (trimming feathers). On this step, the feathers are minimize into small items utilizing particular instruments equivalent to a scraping knife and a skinny brush pen. The artisan removes the black components of the wing and tail feathers. Then comes dian-pu (dotting and spreading feathers). Throughout this stage, the small feather items are positioned one after the other onto the patterned base.

Two principal utility strategies are identified. Within the first methodology (known as shun-pu), feathers from the wings and tail are typically glued onto paper earlier than being minimize to the appropriate dimension. They’re labored in the identical route because the feather barbs. Within the second methodology (known as pin-dian), feathers from the chook’s again are used. These feathers are utterly blue and are minimize whereas maintaining the central shaft. They’re positioned in overlapping layers, like roof tiles, in order that the person feathers are nearly invisible.

Each strategies are adopted by ya-he (urgent feathers), wherein the artisan presses and flattens the feathers onto the floor of the bottom. The ultimate step is gua-qing (scraping the cyan). On this step, the feathers are polished evenly with an agate instrument held at a 30-degree angle. This helps deliver out the shiny texture of the feathers and makes the floor shine with vibrant, enamel-like reflections. The adhesive is natural. Researcher Imogen Clark describes it as a mixture of animal glue and seaweed extract. This glue doesn’t soak into the feathers and leaves no seen marks, which helps protect their shade and shine.

Traditionally, dian-cui was primarily used for hair ornaments. These included hairpins, ornaments for conventional Manchu hairstyles known as liang patou, and headdresses. The lotus flower typically seems in these objects. Serving as a spot for the kingfisher’s spring mating shows, the lotus rises above the mud and blooms fantastically. It represents purity and fertility. Dian-cui objects, fastidiously positioned in ladies’s hair, inspired them to make use of the lotus as a mannequin. In historic China, younger ladies might put on their hair unfastened or braided, however custom required giving a hairpin to mark the transition to maturity. The phrase “ji” meant each hairpin and younger woman. After marriage, ladies had been anticipated to put on their hair in a bun and, relying on their social standing, they might have hairstyles of various ranges of complexity. Utilizing kingfisher feathers to brighten ladies’s hair may be linked to the colour cyan, which was related to fertility in historic China. This reveals the cultural perception that motherhood was thought of an necessary responsibility for girls, and hair ornament served as a option to present these values.

The dian-cui hairpin I studied throughout my residency follows the pin-dian methodology, dates from the nineteenth century and measures 8 ⅝ x 2 ¾ inches (22 x 7 cm). It combines feathers from two varieties of kingfishers, creating turquoise and violet tones that I used to be in a position to observe carefully utilizing a stereomicroscope (see element beneath).

The design possible represents a peony, a flower symbolizing wealth and success. Regardless of its age, the hairpin is in glorious situation, with solely minor losses, and reveals the standard overlapping layers, like roof tiles. 

Mélina Plottu, a textile restorer at MAD, defined to me that conservators and restorers actually need to assist the general public perceive and admire the worth of a murals, even when it’s not in excellent situation. Finding out the hairpin within the restoration workshop was fascinating. The entrance may be very exact and refined, whereas the again appears a lot easier.

It’s product of brown paper about 0.7 mm thick, in all probability coated with silver and polish. Throughout the Qing dynasty, paper was typically used for big jewellery items as a result of it was lighter than metallic. The metallic pin is mounted as a tremblant, permitting it to maneuver with the wearer. Small wood helps give the piece its curved form and improve the sunshine results of the feathers. The openwork design is product of a number of overlapping parts, making a full of life composition. Based on Mathieu Rousset Perrier, curator of the jewellery collections at MAD, this hairpin is without doubt one of the most necessary items within the museum. It has been displayed for greater than 10 years, and kingfisher feathers appear to maintain their shade higher than many different varieties of feathers.

The second object I studied is an extravagant dian-cui Dian Zi headdress (which within the Manchu language interprets as a “hat ring”). It additionally dates from the nineteenth century, however it follows the shun-pu methodology. It measures 10 inches (25 cm) vast and 1 ⅛ inches (29 cm) excessive and is constructed on a black basketry base. Cardboard parts coated with kingfisher feathers are connected to this construction utilizing metallic wires and textile fibers, together with semiprecious stones, freshwater pearls, and glass beads. To put on it, a lady positioned her hair in a bun, set it contained in the headdress, mounted the headdress on her head, and added hairpins. 

Based on Béatrice Quette, curator of the Asian Collections at MAD, the headdress reveals many fortunate symbols, together with bats (biānfú), whose pronunciation is similar to the phrase for “heavenly favor” (bianfu); peonies, which signify wealth; begonias, linked to refinement; and lotuses, related to purity and fertility. The sort of headdress was worn just for particular events by courtroom girls, however not by an empress, because it doesn’t embody the phoenix motif that symbolizes her.

Finding out these extraordinary objects, in addition to different fascinating items from the collections, allowed me to discover new aesthetic potentialities and, by deepening my understanding of the connection between the physique and the feather, each in Asia and within the West, to open the way in which to new conceptual instructions.

For moral causes, the analysis I’m at the moment conducting on hair and head objects that require feathers is carried out completely utilizing feathers from farm-raised birds. I additionally selected to work with recycled vegetable-tanned leather-based (as a result of producing one of these leather-based is eco-friendly, and it stays “alive,” which permits it to vary form endlessly and be molded) and guinea fowl wing feathers, whose technical qualities fascinated me. My determination to work solely with leather-based and feathers, with out including some other supplies, is supposed to immediately discuss with a chook’s pores and skin. Many legends, particularly in Chinese language tradition, inform tales of people taking animal skins and sporting them for religious causes, both as trophies or to realize the animal’s particular qualities. I discovered these tales very attention-grabbing, particularly these about chook skins.

I start by making a clay form, over which I mildew the leather-based after which let it dry. Subsequent, I put together a mix of fish glue and conceal glue. This combination is utilized to the feathers, that are dyed beforehand. The barbs of the feathers are gently stretched to benefit from the pure elasticity of the flight feathers (wing feathers), permitting them to comply with the form of the leather-based. I’ve not but managed to search out the unique dian-cui glue recipe, however I’m persevering with my experiments.

The brand new works, together with earlier items and chosen objects from the museum collections, shall be introduced in a solo exhibition on the Musée des Arts Décoratifs this autumn.

 1 Beverley Jackson, Kingfisher Blue: Treasures of an Historical Chinese language Artwork (Berkeley, CA, Ten Pace Press, 2001).

 2 Imogen Clark, “Chinese language Hairpins: Rhapsody in Blue,” Rethinking Pitt-Rivers, Pitt Rivers Museum, 2020.

 3 Yan Yan, “The Fantastic thing about Hairs within the Qing Courtroom Scroll Image,” Encyclopedic Information, no. 22 (2018).

 4 Yiqian Wu, “A Research of Historic Transformation and Cultural Change in Chinese language Dian-Cui Jewelry” (Grasp of Arts by Analysis, The College of Sydney, 2020).

 5 Alf Hiltebeitel and Barbara Diane Miller, eds., Hair: Its Energy and Which means in Asian Cultures (Albany, NY, State College of New York Press, 1998).

The opinions said right here don’t essentially categorical these of AJF.

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