Huizhou Ink Making Craftsmanship
01 · Historical Records
According to extant historical records, the production of Huimo (Anhui ink) can be traced back to the late Tang dynasty, and it reached its zenith through the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. Among the four great ink-making masters of the Qing dynasty, two—Wang Jinsheng and Hu Kaiwen—hailed from Jixi County, and Hu Guobin, the renowned ink-mold woodcarving artisan of the late Qing and early Republican era, was also a native of Shangzhuang in Jixi County. They were representative bearers of the Huimo ink-making craft during the Qing and Republican periods, and their descendants continue to this day to carry forward the essence of the Huimo craft in the local area.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The invention of ink was a major contribution of our ancestors to Chinese culture and indeed to world civilization. Fine Huimo ink made with traditional craftsmanship has many merits: some is 'as hard as jade, with grain like rhinoceros horn, able to write dozens of scrolls without consuming a fraction of an inch'; some is 'fragrant to the very marrow, its scent undiminished even when ground to the last'; some is 'made from pine soot, with chosen fine glue, pounded with pestle force… leaving no residue in the inkstone'; some is 'hard as stone, grained like rhinoceros, black as lacquer, one spiral worth ten thousand coins'; some is 'so lustrous it can be used as a mirror, so sharp it can cut, its virtue comparable to jade, dense and unyielding. The carving workmanship and the ingenuity of its mounting are all perfectly beautiful.' The Huimo ink-making craft is complex; different schools have their own unique secret techniques that are not passed on to outsiders, and even within one school, different production processes are used for different ink-making raw materials. For instance, tung oil, hemp-seed oil, and raw lacquer each have their own distinctive methods of refining, smoke tapping, cooling, collection, and storage; the construction of the pine-soot kiln, the firing, the timing and quantity of pine-branch addition, the smoke collection, glue selection, glue boiling, ingredient mixing, and compounding each have their own secret formulas. Thus produced, Huimo ink is characterized as light to pick up, clean to grind, fragrant to smell, hard as jade, silent when ground, inky as lacquer in a single touch, and able to preserve its true color for millennia.
Burning and feeding the soot
Each school treats its raw soot differently, with separate methods for tung oil, sesame oil and raw lacquer, kept strictly within the workshop.
Boiling glue and blending
The ratio of glue to soot decides the weight of the ink; the criteria of lightness in the hand, clearness in grinding and fragrance all begin here.
Pounding the ink cake
Repeated pounding marries soot and glue; hardness like jade and silence in the inkstone depend on pounding it thoroughly.
Casting from carved moulds
The mould fixes the pattern and the elegance of the packaging; Hu Guobin of Shangzhuang was a noted carver whose craft still underpins Hui ink.
Shaped and collector inks
In 1993 Zhou Meihong drafted industry standards for display and collector inks, filling a gap in Chinese ink standards.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Huimo is a unique flower among China's ink-making crafts; it has distinctive features, unique techniques, a great variety of schools and types, and rich scientific and technological content, and occupies an important place in the history of Chinese ink-making.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Huizhou Ink Making Craftsmanship · Huizhou Ink Making Craftsmanship · Huizhou Ink Making Craftsmanship.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
However, owing to insufficient raw materials and a lack of succeeding craftsmen, the future of Huimo production is worrying, and the related craftsmanship is in danger of being lost, urgently requiring rescue and protection. Zhou Meihong (from the official archive of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in 1957, from Jixi, Anhui. Representative inheritor of the national-level intangible cultural heritage item 'Huimo Ink-Making Craft' (first batch), and a Huizhou folk craftsman. Zhou Meihong was exposed to Huimo from a young age, received the direct transmission of his father, grasped the true essence of the ink method, and constantly refined his skill. In 1979 he joined the old Hu Kaiwen Ink Factory to work on ink-making craft; after the Huimo Research Institute was founded in 1983, he began to study and inherit the Huimo craft from a theoretical height, striving to meet the ink-making criteria of 'light to pick up, clean to grind, fragrant to smell, hard as jade, silent when ground, inky as lacquer in a single touch, seeking truth for millennia.' In 1992, the She inkstones and Huimo ink he guided the making of were presented as gifts to delegates attending the Cross-Strait Economic and Trade Cooperation Conference in Shanghai, and won wide acclaim. In 1993, he led the drafting of industry standards for ornamental ink and collectible ink, filling a gap in product standards for China's ink industry. Representative works include: the Li Tinggui brand super-lacquer-soot ink, the Li Tinggui brand Huimo ink, and superfine oil-soot and pine-soot ink, among others.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Zhou Meihong 01-0186
- Wang Aijun 03-1334
- Lu Jianqing 04-1859
- Wang Peikun 05-2769
- Xiang Desheng
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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