Scholar's House Four Treasures - Pine Smoke Ink Ink

The Four Treasures of Scholar's House - Pine Smoke Ink - Ink

The wisps of pine smoke dyeing clouds full of paper, light ink color dense into the mist of the mountains and forests. It is the gift of the mountains in the layers of pine forests, is the tacit collaboration of glue and ink, is the desk to play with the treasures of the antique. It is Wang Xizhi tasted when he was a young excellent flavor, is the day to wash the pen left a pool of black ink. It is more fragrant than tea, won the Dongpo spring Gu, has a paragraph of distant aroma left.

Readers love it and respect it, hate to drink three bucket of ink, for fear of falling into the ugly name of the chest without ink; scholar love it and cherish it, even if the pro under the workshop, smoke full of eyes, but also to make a spindle carefully treasured. The system of eight shares, the examination, write a chapter, the temple everywhere away from it; write a post, remember the travel notes, painted landscapes, rivers and lakes, it is always there.

The history of ink

The Shuowen Jiezi explains: "ink, writing ink," revealing the original identity of ink as a pigment used for writing. The history of ink use in China is as old as the brush. Traces of ink use can be found on painted pottery decorations and symbols from the Yangshao culture sites, although the ink at this time was not artificial; some of it was ink from squid ink, while others were black mineral pigments.

By the late Shang Dynasty, the pigments used on oracle bones and pottery were already charcoal ink made artificially. People in the Zhou Dynasty already used artificial ink in many fields. For example, in divination, ink was used to write the words of divination; craftsmen used rope dipped in ink to make straight lines, called "rope ink"; and there was also the humiliating ink torture, which was called "tattooing the face of the face", in which the criminal's face was engraved with the symbol of the crime and then dyed black with ink.

Entering the Qin and Han Dynasties, the ink production process has improved, began to use incomplete combustion of pine boughs produced by the end of the smoke as raw material, and then add lacquer or glue made into a block or pill shape, which is the famous pine ink. Li Tinggui (gui) of the Southern Tang Dynasty improved tung oil ink on the basis of the craft of making pine ink, and it became popular. Later, the ink made of animal oil and petroleum and other fats appeared, but they were not as good as the quality of tung oil ink.

After the Opium War, the imperialists invaded China and plundered a lot of materials, even tung oil became scarce, and the traditional ink industry has been in ruins ever since. Nowadays, most of the ink we use for calligraphy is ink juice instead of the traditional ink ingots and ink blocks. The production process of ink has also changed from handmade to mechanical production. The color of the ink is still the same, but has lost the light and elegant fragrance of a thousand years.

Types of ink

The ink made by the traditional process is now very rare, the ancient ink used in the smoke material has pine smoke, tung oil smoke, lacquer smoke and petroleum smoke, etc. Among them, pine smoke has the longest history. Among them, the pine smoke has the longest history, which is because the ancient people lighting often use the pine mingzi.

What is pine myrtle? After the pine tree withered, aging corrosion, pine tree itself, the oil penetrated in the wood, after a long geological period, full of water vapor erosion, oil and wood intermingled to form a blended material structure, which is the pine Ming Zi due to the pine Ming Zi burned out of the smoke is very thick, and thus deposited a lot of soot readers often collect their own soot to make ink.

There is lacquer and pine smoke ink, ink color deep, but unfortunately over time will become hard, damage to the ink stone later appeared with animal skin boiled into the glue to blend the ink process after countless pestle and mortar, the gum fully penetrated into the ink, and finally the ink was rubbed into a strip or pill.

Many ancient literati liked to make their own ink, and Su Shi, a great writer, was one of the best. Su Shi was very fond of collecting ink, he wrote: "I have seventy pieces of Jia ink, but still seek to take endless, not close to stupid? Is also can be scoffed." He already had seventy pieces of good ink, or can not help but continue to collect around to buy, simply can not stop! Su on the love of ink as obsessive, in his relegation to Hainan during the period, still not stop making ink.

After repeated tests, Su Shi found the "pine smoke to take far" "oil smoke to take near" the poor door, the homemade ink jokingly referred to as "Hainan pine smoke Dongpo method ink". It is said that one year in the waxing moon, Su Shi in order to make ink, almost burned down the whole house.

Ming and Qing dynasties, in the ink production process, not only the workmanship and materials are more and more fine, people are also in the ink on the shape of the article. Some of the rich ink cartridge gold embedded silver, carved and decorated, gorgeous to the extreme; elegant ink surface carving with poetry, calligraphy, painting and other patterns, faraway mood, the intention of the ancient and elegant; more elaborate some of the ink will also be added to the ink production of cattle, musk, rhinoceros horn and other precious herbs, and then ask the well-known ink production and sign the name, to highlight the extraordinary origin.

These firm and light, warm texture like jade ink some as tribute, become the imperial ink; some are used to collect and enjoy, become a rare ink; some can also be used in medicine to cure diseases, is called medicine ink; more still be placed on the desk of the literati, become daily stationery.