DESIGNING AND CONSTRUCTION OF THE SPECTRAL LIBRARY FOR TYPICAL PIGMENTS USED IN CHINESE PAINTINGS

Abstract. Suffered from the environmental changes and human’s influence, Chinese paintings are facing a worrying situation in documentation, which leads urgent into establishing digital archives to realize the permanent preservation of its surface information. Non-destructive identification of pigment types using hyperspectral techniques is the key to ensure the colour restoration scientifically. At present, one commonly used method for spectral identification is to calculate the similarities between unknown spectra and standard spectra in spectral library. The purpose of this study is to establish a spectral library of typical pigments specifically for the information preservation and pigment types identification on surface of Chinese paintings. The main works of the research are: (1) collecting the standard spectra in laboratory and the pigment spectra on surface of real cultural relics as the data source of the spectral library; (2) adding the expert knowledge of traditional pigments and normative descriptions of spectra measurement as part of the spectral library; and (3) constructing the spectral library website with the Browser/Server structure, and by using MySQL database for storage, SSM framework for background building and JSP page for displaying. The significance of the design and construction of the Typical Pigments of Chinese Paintings (TPCP) spectral library is not only to establish a standard spectral library for pigment types identification, but also a digital archive of pigment information on the surface of real cultural relics, to achieve permanent preservation, and provide spectral data sources and pigment information references for conservation workers and researchers in related fields for further research.