The Cultural Significance of Lake Brush

Huzhou brush, referred to as the Lake Pen, is the best of the brush, well known at home and abroad for its excellent production and quality, and has become synonymous with the brush. Huzhou brush is a typical representative of Huzhou culture, nurtured, produced in the rich cultural environment of Huzhou. As a state of cultural relics, Huzhou has contributed to the brilliant and splendid culture of lake brush for the people in the age of bamboo and silk. Lake pen is not only a rare flower in the long history of Chinese civilization, but also the pride and projection of Huzhou culture.

There are many varieties of brush materials, including more than 300 varieties of soft bristles, partially bristles and hard bristles in three categories. Sheep hair, for example, traditionally only choose the Hangzhou-Jiaxing-Huzhou area produced high-quality goat hair, this area of the sheep hair for the top grade, the front of the tender texture net. Lake Pen strict selection of materials, the main choice of goat underarm hair, taken by the material shall be more sunshine, remove dirt, and then according to the material flat and round, straight and curved, long and short, with or without the edge of the characteristics of the material, immersed in the water for the classification of the combination, generally through the soaking, pulling, and, combing and other more than 70 procedures, is known as the crown of the pen. The shaft of the lake brush is mainly taken from the chicken hair bamboo under Lingfeng Mountain at the northern foot of Tianmu Mountain in western Zhejiang. This kind of bamboo is sparse and straight, with small gaps within the bamboo, making it an ideal raw material for making pens.

The exquisite craftsmanship of the lake pen is an important part of the lake pen culture with distinctive regional characteristics. But the social and cultural transformation, the innovation of writing tools, the one-sided pursuit of economic benefits, leading to the production of lake pen in the proliferation of defective products, the loss of craftsmen, the lack of inheritance of the situation, the traditional lake pen technology has been a great impact on the urgent need to take active measures to protect. This situation has attracted the attention of the relevant state departments, in February 2002, the lake pen was approved for the protection of geographical indications products, in May 2006, the lake pen production techniques approved by the State Council included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage list, the protection and inheritance of the lake pen from now on embarked on a standardized, healthy development road.