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.
Feeding soot with lacquer
Zhao Peikun's method of feeding soot with raw lacquer is rare in China; the heat and the fall of ash decide the fineness of the soot.
Iridescent gilding
His iridescent gilding makes colour shift across the surface as the piece is turned, the cleverest flourish in the Tunxi school.
Carving the ink moulds
He trained first in inkstone carving and later with the seventh-generation inheritor and a master mould carver, holding both knife skills at once.
Soot burning and blending
Burning, blending, dosing and forming are each mastered per ink type, with different raw materials calling for different processes even within one school.
Engraving pictorial ink moulds
For works like the Binhong treasure ink or the Wangchuan poem ink, poetry, painting and calligraphy are all cut into one mould, their positions fixed at carving.
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. Wang Peikun (from the official archive of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in April 1950, from Xiuning County, Anhui Province. Representative inheritor of the national-level intangible cultural heritage item 'Huimo Ink-Making Craft' (fifth batch). Senior craft artist. In 1964 he studied She inkstone carving under Wu Shuiqing; in 1989 he studied under Hu Liansheng, the seventh-generation Huimo inheritor, and Hu Chengjin, a master ink-mold carver, to learn, study, and transmit the Huimo craft and ink-mold carving. Since taking up the craft, his innovatively developed Huimo 'iridescent method' (huan cai fa) gold-tracing technique and raw-lacquer-dot burnt-soot technique are rare in China's ink industry today. Works such as Binhong Precious Ink and Wangchuan Landscape Poetry Ink have won national, provincial-ministerial, and industry gold awards. He actively teaches apprentices and transmits the craft, regularly imparting knowledge to Huimo artisans.
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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