"Cracked Ice" Surface Design - Part 2

冰裂紋窗 Cracked Ice Window, by lienyuan lee, CC BY 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

I continue my investigation into the Chinese surface design called cracked ice.  Last time I introduced it and tried to answer the question: What principles or method underlie its design?  Today, I ask the same question, but in copy-pasted Chinese. 

I do not speak or read any Chinese dialect... this is me swimming in dark waters.  But since I can't find the information in English, I have to do my best with Google Translate and luck. 

As for pictures, if I'm not using my own work, I seek photos under free public licenses.  In today's post, however, I use one photo without permission (because I have no idea how to get permission).  But then I mangle it beyond recognition in the pursuit of design, so I'm not sure where copyright law falls on that one!  Nevertheless, I still do my best to credit the originator and link back. 

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

I search Wikimedia Commons for "cracked ice" and find a variety of examples of Chinese art.  Some of the photos of Chinese windows also have Chinese characters in their names (冰裂窗 and 冰裂紋窗), which I take to Google Translate to see if they might be the search terms I need:

Two screenshots of my Googling, merged in MS Paint to save space.

Huzzah!  I think they are!  So I google them, make it an image search, and click on the first image that looks like a diagram.  The links below are for the original Chinese pages.  I run them through Google Translate, but you can try your own translation methods, if you like. 

板橋林家花園亂亂講04--冰裂紋窗
Banqiao Lin's Garden Random Talk 04--Ice Cracked Window

Promisingly, this page does indeed talk about construction... or rather, about deconstruction.  The author's username is Angkor space / 吳哥的空間, a "Naturally playful and mountain-climbing Sagittarius"!  Angkor space begins with a picture of a cracked ice window, and a puzzle: if one of the sashes (is that what we should call the pieces of wood?) is broken, in what order would the repairman take the window apart to fix it?  Then the author numbers various sashes (but not every sash in the window is numbered, and the number 25 is missing!), and tells us that "no matter which wooden strip is damaged, it must be removed from No. 7 first, because No. 7 has only one joint. After removing No. 7, remove No. 8, one by one." 

I.... I don't understand the methodology of the puzzle or its answer!  I keep looking at it.  Depending on how you define an intersection, I guess Number 7 is the only sash with only one intersection.  Its two ends terminate in the frame of the window, so if we don't consider those to be intersections, then there's only one.  Does this mean it was the first sash to be laid down in the pattern, or perhaps the last?  Does the repair methodology tell us anything about the order of construction?  That seems like a question for a carpenter. 

後記:觀稼樓的三個冰裂紋窗都一模ㄧ樣,大概是太難做了,所以工匠只做了一個,另兩個就照抄了 

為何另兩個窗子要照抄呢?工匠說了一個冷笑話:

話說小蜈蚣上學從未穿過鞋子,有ㄧ天小蜈蚣跟蜈蚣爸爸說想穿鞋子去上學,蜈蚣爸爸說 : 你想累死老子啊

Postscript: The three ice-cracked windows in Guanjialou are all exactly the same, probably because it was too difficult to make, so the craftsman only made one, and copied the other two

Why should the other two windows be copied? The craftsman told a bad joke:

It is said that the little centipede has never worn shoes to school, one day the little centipede told the centipede father that he wanted to wear shoes to school, the centipede father said: You want to exhaust me to death

I decide to ask my search engine for help more directly: back to Google Translate I go, typing "How to draw" in the English side, and choosing Simplified Chinese for the translation.  I get 如何绘制.  I add "cracked ice window" (冰裂紋窗) and get a compound search term: 如何绘制 冰裂紋窗.  I am aware that it's not a proper phrase or sentence in Chinese... but search terms don't have to be proper sentences, just key words. 

This leads me to a video called "The problem of summing the exterior angles of polygons and pentagons".  Because it's a video, I can't run an automated translation, so I just watch it and see if I can make anything of it.  This screenshot is particularly interesting, because I recognize the look of a math problem (even as I break out in hives at it).  Maybe it's asking what the sum of all those angles is?  The voice-over explains that the answer is C, 360 degrees, but how he knows that, I don't know! 

I shake my head and keep going, clicking on pictures and subjecting every promising website to Google Translate until I hit paydirt:

冰裂纹窗户的图案有何规律
What are the patterns of ice cracked windows?

The user 烃秀a8 answers with great confidence: 

冰裂纹镂窗图案在早期是用尺规作图实现的，其构造规律就是基本几何图形（三角形、菱形、方形或多边形）的四方连续图案，同时又添加了短直线，以及花草文装饰等。具体图案要具体分析，但都跑不出这个规律。

The ice crack open window pattern was realized in the early days by drawing with a ruler and compasses. Its structural law is a square continuous pattern of basic geometric figures (triangle, rhombus, square or polygon), and at the same time, short straight lines and flower and grass decorations are added. Specific patterns need to be analyzed in detail, but this rule cannot be escaped.

And below that are related questions, several with the exact same answer but from different users.  I smell copy-paste... maybe it came from Chinese Wikipedia.  (It's not in English Wikipedia, alas.  If English Wikipedia had the answer, I wouldn't be on this copy-paste goose-hunt!)

I don't know what "a square contiguous pattern of basic geometric figures" means (it might make perfect sense in Chinese, but I am looking at a computer translation).  But, thanks to the mention of compasses, I am ready to theorize. 

COMPASS RAYS?

Maybe the traditional designers laid out a cracked ice window by drawing lines out from the center of a compass, like the rays of a sun in a child's drawing.  The compass center would be the point of origin, and the lines would be radii or rays, ending at different lengths.  If they did this with the compass center outside the window frame, we'd only see the rays.  And if they did it several times, the rays of the different compasses would intersect and form the basis of the pattern.  Then, as in the explanation above, "short straight lines" can be added, to fill in any gaps. 

To both demonstrate and test this theory, I use a photo of the famous window from the Lin family garden (林家花園) as my reference, and draw on it.  My apologies to olina155, the user who uploaded the photo: I don't know what the licensing is, and I am using it without permission.  However, as my use of it is so transformative that you can't see much of the original, and I'm making no money and losing a lot of time in this endeavor, hopefully no-one is offended! 

Original photo by olina155. Colored lines by me.

Where the black lines intersect is the center of the black compass; ditto for the pink intersection, the red intersection, et cetera.  Some points of origin are closer to and some farther from the frame of the window.  Perhaps the early artists did this with string, charcoal, or chalk, and added a few crossbars as needed to make the pattern balanced.  Then, once they had something they liked, perhaps they took the extra lines away and made the window based on the template. 

Let me see if by this method I can make my own cracked ice pattern.  I open Microsoft Paint and draw a frame (BLACK).  Then I dot a few points of origin around the frame (RED), and draw my rays (VARIOUS BLUES).  Finally, I add a few crossbars (ORANGE).  What do you think?  It's crude, but recognizable as cracked ice.  With practice and tinkering, I could get something more balanced, harmonious. 

TRACING THE PATTERN THROUGH TIME?

Another way of I could look at this question is to do a historical survey... go to a website with lots of examples of cracked ice in Chinese garden or architecture pictures, or a gallery of ceramic art with the cracked ice painted on (not cracked glaze, which happens because the clay and the glaze shrink at different rates in the kiln), or textiles like the rug I showed last time.  Order them chonologically, and see how the pattern evolved over time.  Perhaps it was made through several different methods, depending on time or region.  Maybe people just like me were looking at a cool pattern, and copying it based on speculation about how the first artist did it. 

I won't be doing that study, though.  I don't feel like opening that many tabs in my browser, all in a language I can't read!  For now, I am happy with my theory; perhaps I'll even use it in a quilt someday!