Explore

Showing results

Hide images

Liuquan Qin

The top surface of the qin is made of fir wood and the bottom surface is made of ovate catalpa wood. The bridge (yueshan) and dew-receptor (chenglu) are both made of hardwood, and are not painted with lacquer. There are no cap corner (guanjue) or tuning pegs (qinzhen). The goose feet are made of hardwood, and are shaped like square columns. These look like boots when viewed from the side. The mother-of-pearl inlays (hui) are worn away. There are no cracks (duanwen) on the surfaces of the qin. The top surface is painted with black lacquer (which has a grey coating as underlayer) and the bottom surface is painted with chestnut lacquer (which has a grey coating as underlayer). The raised sound retainers are rectangular (with rounded corners). The pieces of wood that are used to make the sound retainers have large knots on them which can be seen from above the large and small sound holes. This suggests that the wood is not paulownia wood. Traces indicating that the qin had been opened before can be seen on the top and bottom surfaces of the instrument. The seam above the shoulders of the qin has become unglued.

  • Measurements:Total length: 125.5cm, string length: 116cm, width of the forehead: 16.4cm, width of the shoulders: 16.8cm, width of the tail: 14cm, the large sound hole is 17.4cm long and 2.2cm wide, the small sound hole is 8.7cm long and 2cm wide.