The New Product Development Research of Chinese Ming and Qing Dynasty’s Furniture Based on 3-D Printing

In the protection and inheritance of the traditional cultural heritage, the use of 3-D printing technology has become a trend of globalization. As an important part of Chinese tangible culture heritage, Chinese Ming and Qing Dynasty’s furniture really a rarity in the world classic furniture system. It has scientific structure, fastidious materials, elaborate fabrication, concise modelling, exquisite pattern, appropriate decoration and bears many aspects information of ancient Chinese people life style, aesthetic consciousness and value orientation. [1] With the arrival of 3D printing era, the designer does not only sell simple products any more, but creation. The 3D printing cannot only be used to protect and inherit the great cultural heritage, but also endow the cultural heritage with brand new life. Facing this development opportunity, how to promote the great Chinese Ming and Qing furniture to the world and how to design the neo-classical furniture with the connotation of Chinese culture has become an important subject for the modern Chinese furniture industry.

The Chinese Ming and Qing furniture was developed based on the furniture from the Song and Yuan Dynasties, and the furniture reached its peak development in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. High-quality materials were mainly used to make the furniture, such as rosewood, nagkassar, nanmu, wenge and redwood, which had changed the long-term manufacturing method with lacquer finish. In the meantime, [2] the elegant material, natural texture and smooth gloss of the timer were also used, which generated brand new atmosphere, taste and unique aesthetic value of the furniture hard to be expressed with language. [3] Through the exquisite fine wood techniques, it has built a monument in the world furniture history. When summarizing the achievement of Ming and Qing furniture, the famous arts and crafts theorist Mr. Tian Zibing pointed it out that the reason why the Ming and Qing furniture could have high artistic achievement is because it smartly and properly used the design principles of arts and crafts. The yellow pear wood round-backed armchair shown in Fig. 1 has the classic style of Ming Dynasty, the chair circle extends from the head part downward to form the armrest, the back panel presents an “S” shape, which is decorated with small reliefs, there is an insert panel under the seat, and the “step-by-setp” plank method is used for the bottom plank. All these are classic Ming style, which has combined the pragmatic and scientific features. [4] The Qing furniture is significantly different from the Ming furniture both in style and decoration. Generally speaking, the Ming style is simple, while the Qing style is complicated; the Ming style prevails on its style, while the Qing style prevails on its decoration. Figure 2 shows a rosewood armchair with inlaid jade and flower decoration from the Qianlong Period of Qing Dynasty, which is similar to the “pillar style” wing chair. The back panel is exquisite with delicate engraving, the board engraving, is elegant below the waistband, the chair legs are stretching cabriole legs, and the foot part has the shape of lion’s paws. It is of the classic Qing style, and we can see it was affected by the style of western European classic furniture.

Yellow pear wood round-backed jade armchair of Ming style

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Rosewood armchair with inlaid and flower decoration from the Qianlong Period of Qing Dynasty

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3.1 Accuracy of the Inheritance of the Chinese Ming and Qing Furniture

The inheritance of the Chinese Ming and Qing furniture should not only include the 2D images of decoration patterns, color and material, but also the overall presentation of spatial structure and the mortise and tenon joint structure. The past traditional recording method generally used the drawings, films and physical or structural model expressed with three views, and mistakes were unavoidable during the message delivery with drawings. [5] With the digital expression carrier, the message is delivered through accurate instrument and equipment, which can accurately reflect the actual object and scenario, the 3D technique representation is also used to avoid the errors during the recording process, and it can more accurately represent the structure and patterns of Chinese Ming and Qing furniture. [6] Digital product research and development is a kind of reversal design method, based on the design requirement analysis, the designer uses the 3D modeling software such as PRO/E and Rhino to import the furniture information in the 3D database, and by adding new processing information, the furniture that satisfies the requirement of era can be developed.

3.2 The Chinese Ming and Qing Furniture Has the Experiencing Characteristic of Inheritance

Based on the 3D printing technology, the design and exploration of Chinese Ming and Qing furniture has inheritance have gradually reached the frontline of the furniture design filed. With the introduction and gradual maturing and promotion of various technologies such as 3D printing, cloud computing and big data, the model of furniture design will have major change, even innovation and subversion. Then, the brand new production, business and economic forms will trigger unprecedented change in consumption model, and for the furniture designer, the 3D printing means revolutionary process in technology. [7] The development of 3D printing technology changes with each passing day, in the future, more efforts will be made to explore the new combination between the 3D printing model and the traditional culture, and more designers will provide the experiencing and participating production model to satisfy the personal and differential consumption.

4.1 Build Systematic and Complete 3D Printing Database Related to the Chinese Ming and Qing Furniture

The establishment of 3D printing database of the Chinese Ming and Qing furniture is a complicated process. Based on the early information collection and post data processing, related developer will set the basic framework and relational structure of the database, and the development will be conducted through the API interface of Revit software platform. In this way, it can not only adequately utilize the strong 3D modeling function of Revit software, but also provide convenient and reasonable storage method for the file management on the Revit software platform. The 3D database has many similarities with the traditional 2D database, as well as some differences. Through the 3D database, we can not only obtain related 2D information mentioned above, but also various kinds of 3D digital information such as the empirical cases of Chinese Ming and Qing furniture, modeling characteristics, technology features, decoration features and the mortise and tenon joint structure, in this way to realize 3D dynamic visual browsing. The designer can export the data based on requirement to conduct reverse design. By building the 3D database of Chinese Ming and Qing furniture, it can not only help the furniture manufacturer to look up and manage the design files of traditional furniture, but also make it convenient for the designer and user to share and call related design material.

4.2 Design and Development of Neoclassical Furniture with 3D Printing Technology Based on the 3D Model Database

The 3D database of Chinese Ming and Qing furniture has provided massive 3D data information of great traditional furniture. During the research and development of neoclassical furniture, the designer can adequately utilize the 3D database and introduce a new furniture product development mode based on the 3D model, in this way to adapt to the digital design and manufacturing that have been extensively used in the furniture industry. At present, the development in the furniture industry generally uses the 2D drawings based on the 3D model, and this kind of furniture research and development model has several problems: the deepening of 2D drawing requires a lot of time, it tends to increase the error rate when the designer has to repeatedly input the data, and there is a low association between the design data and manufacturing data. Some furniture manufacturers have started to try the digital product research and development based on the 3D model. During the research and development of neoclassical furniture, because modern people are significantly different from the ancient people in life style, behavior and psychology, they also have different requirement for the furniture functions. Therefore, we should not simply replicate the great traditional furniture, but also make evolution and innovation in the category, function, style and structure of furniture, so that the modern Chinese furniture will not only have the characteristics of oriental culture, but also have the functions and aesthetics required by modern life. The designer can use 3D printing for forming treatment, and consider and optimize the design plan to satisfy the modern personalized requirement for furniture.

The fast development of 3D printing technology can not only change the future capital and work allocation method, but also make it possible that the design and manufacturing industry won’t rely on the production scale, but the creation. By introducing the 3D printing technology into the research of classic Chinese Ming and Qing furniture, the digital research method for neoclassical furniture is proposed. Finally, efforts are made to extend to the design of neoclassical furniture to guide the research and development practice of neoclassical furniture, and a new approach for the inheritance, application and promotion of traditional Chinese furniture is explored, which can provide beneficial reference to the new product research and development of neoclassical furniture. It requires the massive modern furniture designer to conduct deep exploration and research to well utilize modern 3D printing technology and effectively promote the development of outstanding traditional culture of Chinese furniture.