2025-05-09 Chinese Traditional Color Collection and Detection Research Ⅲ

Recently, Teacher Song Wenwen from the Color Research Institute of the Art and Science Research Center of Tsinghua University was interviewed by CCTV1 Comprehensive Channel in the "Thousand-Year Classic to New Action Column" of the evening news, discussing the topic of traditional Chinese colors.

 

 

"Traditional Chinese colors, derived from plants and minerals, are a natural language extracted by the Chinese ancestors during their long-term observation of all things in the world. They are not synthesized by chemicals, but generated naturally by mountains and rivers, grass and trees, gold and stone, and soil, carrying the breath of heaven and earth, and the traces of growth, presenting a natural texture and oriental aesthetics that are difficult to replicate."

 

Plant dyeing is the most natural and interesting part of traditional Chinese crafts.

From the extraction of pigments from su mu (wood), huanglu (smoke tree), and huaimi (pagoda tree blossom), dyeing classic colors such as "fei color" (a kind of pink), "geese yellow", and "moss green", in the past relied on the experience and feel of craftsmen. But if you want to accurately preserve these colors and reproduce them in different media, you need to change "feeling" into "data".

 

 

How to carry out standardized measurement?

 

In the "Eastern Traditional Color Plan" initiated and supported by Guizhou Moutai, the Color Research Institute of the Art and Science Research Center of Tsinghua University has established a complete set of processes for collecting traditional colors from cultural relics.

The collection objects include silk, glassware, porcelain, and lacquerware, etc. Due to the different texture structures and surface textures, how to effectively avoid the interference of highlights, shadows, and patterns on color perception becomes the key difficulty in the color measurement process.

 

The research team chose plant-dyed physical objects with stable color appearance (such as silk samples) and conducted non-contact measurements with a spectrophotometer and camera under D65 standard light sources and controlled lighting environments.

Finally, the color of the physical sample is converted into a variety of color space data such as Lab, RGB, and CMYK, establishing a quantitative standard for traditional colors.

 

 

 

 

How to collect colors from three-dimensional cultural relics?

 

Facing objects with curved surfaces, high gloss, and both transmission and reflection color (such as Qing Dynasty glassware), the team adopts a multi-angle sampling + digital modeling method, measuring and taking the average from multiple points to effectively overcome the problem of unstable color measurement.

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From craft to science, the language of color docking

Plant dyeing is no longer just the inheritance of experience, but leaves its true form in spectrum, parameters, and database.

As Teacher Song Wenwen from the Color Research Institute of the Art and Science Research Center of Tsinghua University said:

"We need to dock the traditional experience with the language of modern color science to put the traditional Eastern colors into practical application."

This process is the intersection of science and tradition, and also an important step for color culture to move towards the future.

 

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Source: Comprehensive sorting from CCTV1 "Evening News", CCTV News client, etc.