Intangible Cultural Heritage - Traditional Palace Bag Making Technique

The traditional palace box making technique is referred to as "box making", and its history can be traced back to the "box making" in the Imperial Household Department during the Yongzheng period of the Qing Dynasty. After the abdication of the Qing emperor in 1912, the box making craftsmen were exiled to the people and continued to make boxes in the brocade box shop. After the founding of New China, the craftsmen returned to the Palace Museum one after another to pass on the box making technique, which has been passed down for four generations. There are many types of boxes. According to the type of inner box, they can be divided into soft boxes, inverted boxes, hollow boxes, hard boxes, soft and hard combinations, etc.; according to the type of cultural relics, they can be divided into book covers, calligraphy and painting, ceramics and jade, bamboo, wood, ivory and horn, gold and stone clocks, etc.; according to the type of classification, they can be divided into dark-type box boxes, bright-grid combination, hollow-box door-covering type, top and bottom cover type, pull-out type, etc. This technique involves more than a dozen steps, including style setting, size calculation, cardboard cutting, drawing reference lines for the tags, gluing the outer box, gluing the concave strips on the upper cover, etc. Imitation Song brocade is often used as the bonding material for the outer box. The final configured cultural relic box seems to be tailor-made for the contents, fitting perfectly.