Knowing All about Hunan

Hunan Provincial Museum to Debut 500 Cultural and Creative

Editor:李莎宁
Source:湖南省博物馆
Updated:2017-11-29 10:43:33

  To celebrate the opening of the Hunan Provincial museum, 500 kinds of cultural and creative products will meet the public in late October this year. At present, 300 more are undergoing the proofing process while the rest has also entered the final stage of design.

  As one of the first batch of pilot organizations for cultural and creative products, Hunan Provincial Museum, with a wealth of cultural resources, has set up a cultural research center in collaboration with the Hunan University, Hunan Qianjin Health Products Co., Ltd. and many other institutions. The R&D team, with museum experts, partner designers and related technicians as its core, has conducted specialized and systematic studies on cultural relics and literature. They extract design elements from the Mawangdui Han Tombs, bronze wares, ceramics, paintings and other collections of the museum. After repeated discussions and integration, the museum created those unique products with the theme of "Mawangdui", "Hunanese "and Hunan intangible cultural heritage to display the unique charm of Hunan culture.

  In order to innovate the products of the Mawangdui, the Hunan Provincial Museum refocuses on the unearthed cultural relics from the Mawangdui Han Tomb. On this basis, they created three series of cultural products--- "health care", "costume”, and "dining ". With “Mawangdui health care” being the star products, the museum not only improves the quality of health pillow and incense of Mawangdui style, but also invents the latest product ---health soap with incense. They learn from the ancients to make use of natural herbs such as Flos Magnoliae and Herba Eupatorii, and combine those extracts with traditional soap-making technology. As for the “costume” culture inspired by the unearthed silk pieces from Mawangdui Han Tomb, they use elements like “riding-clouds embroidery" and "longevity embroidery" in the creation of silk fabrics, such as scarves, ties and so on."Dining" culture focuses on the food with the "Mawangdui" characteristics based on the fermented black soybean and ginger, which is a kind of condiment unearthed from Xin Zhui’s tomb, the No.1 Han tomb of Mawangdui of Han Dynasty.

Meanwhile, based on the new exhibition "Hunanese - The exhibition of Hunan History and Culture", the museum will design and create a variety of cultural products that are fashionable, practical and popular among the public. For example, Hunan ethnic minority clothing patterns are adopted in the design of scarves, shawls, T-shirts and other clothing supplies with regard to its ethnic style and modern fashion characteristics; the illustrated books will use Changsha nursery rhymes as the theme; the key cultural relics’ colors and patterns are added to the creation of children’s daily necessities; Changsha dialect, illustrated and improved by calligraphers and designers, will be presented on the teapots, cups, green bags, daily necessities, bookmarks, postcards, poker and other publications; quotations of Hunan celebrities and representative symbols are also printed on various types of bags ,stationeries and so on.

To develop products of Hunan intangible cultural heritage, the Hunan Provincial Museum will launch a series of brand-new cultural derivatives with Huxiang regional characteristics, such as the simple and practical Liuyang summer cloth bag, Xiang embroidery art crafts that combine "painting and embroidery" and the delicate and exquisite Liling porcelain paintings and so on. These cultural products, based on deep interpretation and exploration of cultural relics, are designed and developed from multiple perspectives and are of diversity, bringing together cultural relics and aesthetic needs of contemporary people so that the audience can take history and culture back home in real sense.

Since the new museum will soon be open to the public, Hunan Provincial Museum is vigorously exploiting its IP resources as well as conducting in-depth study on Hunan local characteristics to integrate them into the design and development of cultural products, so as to better preserve, inherit and carry forward the Huxiang culture and intangible cultural heritage. At the same time, Hunan Provincial Museum will continue to forge ahead with innovation to promote the full alignment of development with the market of cultural products against the positive backdrop where China is striving to encourage the development of cultural and creative industries.

  The museum will also strive to build a platform to strengthen in-depth cooperation with the market entities and spare no efforts to blaze a new trail suitable for the growth of cultural innovative industry in the new Hunan Provincial Museum, which will surely promote the development of the cultural cause nationwide.