Chinese experts restore 1,400-year-old crown

Beijing, Sep 6 (IANS) Chinese archaeologists have restored a 1,400 years old royal crown, which belonged to the wife of Emperor Yang Guang, the last monarch of the short-lived Sui dynasty (581-618).

The crown was unearthed in 2012 from the tomb of Empress Xiao in China's Jiangsu province.

It is the oldest official crown of a queen ever found in China, Xinhua news agency reported.

Archaeologists dug it out of a rotten wooden box near the queen's coffin and sent it to a relic restoration lab with the Cultural Relic Protection Institute in China's Shaanxi province.

Yang Junchang, a professor with Northwest Industrial University, who led the restoration project, said his team carefully cleared fragile copper wires from the crown, inch by inch, to restore 13 flower decorations.

The flowers made of gilded bronze wires are very delicate with shapes of stalks, petals and stamen. The decorations are gold coloured and flicker with movement.

The crown was made with a variety of materials, including bronze wire, gold, pearls, cotton and silk.

Shu Jiaping, head of the Yangzhou Institute of Archaeology, said that lab research had helped to rediscover the materials and ancient techniques used for making a royal crown.