Writing Brush Making Craftsmanship
01 · Historical Records
In 1694, descendants of Zhou Huchen traveled from Jiangxi to Suzhou and opened the Zhou Huchen brush-and-ink shop. After Shanghai opened as a port, the Zhou Huchen brush-and-ink shop moved from Suzhou to Huangpu District, Shanghai, in 1862. In 1958, it successively merged with ten famous Shanghai brush-and-ink shops to form the Old Zhou Huchen brush-and-ink shop. In 1987, the enterprise expanded and established the Shanghai Old Zhou Huchen Brush Factory. Spanning three hundred years, the craft has been transmitted through eleven generations.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The craft of brush making is extremely intricate and delicate; the making of a single brush passes through five major processes and more than seventy steps, from the selection of hair to the carving of characters. The Zhou Huchen brush-making craft is named after its founder Zhou Huchen and was built up over more than three hundred years by the Zhou Huchen brush-and-ink shop (and factory). Zhou Huchen combined the brush-making skills of many schools and drew on their strengths, continuously innovating on the basis of inherited tradition—from making wolf-hair water brushes, to goat-hair and mixed-hair brushes, and on to wolf-hair painting-and-calligraphy brushes. Drawing on the brush-using characteristics of Shanghai-school painters and calligraphers, he created the brush-making methods of 'waist-firming,' 'tip-leveling,' 'layered-peak,' 'fine-trimming,' and the 'blending' of animal hairs, improving the brush's usability and expressing the centuries-old character of brush making as synthesising many strengths rather than perfecting a single one, raising the Shanghai-school brush-making craft to a new height. At present the brush market is shrinking; brush making is entirely handwork—intricate, laborious, low in social status, and poorly paid—and young people have little interest in learning the craft, so over time the brush-making trade faces a shortage of successors and stands on the brink of crisis.
Process-Step Record
The craft of brush making is extremely intricate and delicate; the making of a single brush passes through five major processes and more than seventy steps, from the selection of hair to the carving of characters.
The waist-firming method
One of the Zhou Hu Chen techniques, adjusting the fit between shaft and hair so the brush stays firm rather than limp.
The tip-leveling method
A finishing method that keeps the tip even, so the point meets the paper squarely and the stroke can be gathered back.
The layered-peak method
Layering hair of graded length into the head gives the tip several tiers of firmness for different inks and purposes.
The fine-trimming method
The final trimming of the head; an even tip decides whether the brush writes smoothly, and Zhou Hu Chen applied it to wolf, goat and mixed hair alike.
Carving characters on ivory-tipped shafts
The inheritor Wu Qingchun fused calligraphy with carving, excelling on ivory-tipped shafts; his 2008 Olympic licensed pair of brushes is in the National Museum.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Zhou Huchen line began when the shop opened in Suzhou in 1694, moved to Huangpu District with Shanghai's opening as a port in 1862, merged with ten famous Shanghai brush-and-ink shops in 1958 to become the Old Zhou Huchen brush-and-ink shop, and expanded again in 1987 into the Shanghai Old Zhou Huchen Brush Factory. In brush making it inherited the exacting brush preferences of Shanghai-school painters and calligraphers, combining the waist-firming, tip-leveling, layered-peak, and fine-trimming methods with the blending of animal hairs, expanding from wolf-hair water brushes to goat-hair, mixed-hair, and painting-and-calligraphy brushes; one craft thus forms a continuous line between Suzhou and Shanghai, transmitted through eleven generations to this day.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Writing Brush Making Craftsmanship · Writing Brush Making Craftsmanship · Writing Brush Making Craftsmanship.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Wu Qingchun (per the official archive of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born March 1961, from Shanghai. A representative inheritor of the fourth national-level batch of the Brush-Making Craft (Zhou Huchen Brush-Making Craft), a national intangible cultural heritage item. A brush-making technician of Zhou Huchen. He fuses his calligraphic grounding with carving skill, handling the knife with ease and producing elegant lettering; especially in carving characters on ivory-tipped shafts he stands alone, becoming a versatile technical expert. He has taken part many times in the appraisal events of the China Association of the Four Treasures of the Study, with his works ranking at the top. His dragon-and-phoenix paired brushes, licensed merchandise of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, have been collected by the National Museum. His Ruyi-brand wolf-hair brush received the 1993 Shanghai Famous-Brand Product title awarded by the Shanghai Recommended Famous-Brand Products Committee.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Wu Qingchun 04-1928
- Shi Qingpeng 04-1929
- Yang Wen 05-2884
- Zhou Pengcheng
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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