Writing Brush Making Craftsmanship
01 · Historical Records
The Huizhou brush-making craft was first created during the Northern Song dynasty. According to the 'Xin'an Gazetteer,' during the Northern Song a man named Wang Boli founded the 'Four Treasures Hall' at the seat of Shezhou Prefecture, producing all four treasures, and was especially renowned in the world for his brushes. By the time of Emperor Lizong of the Southern Song, Xie Ji, as prefect of Huizhou, again presented Wang Boli's brushes together with Chengxin Hall paper, Li Tinggui ink, and Wuyuan date-pit inkstone as tribute. From then on, Huizhou brushes were mostly tribute items, produced in very small quantities through the ages and mostly hidden deep in the palace archives, so that very few actual specimens have survived to the present.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Huizhou brush, also called the 'Wang Boli brush' or the 'Xin'an brush,' is one of the four treasures of the study of Huizhou, named for being produced in Huizhou (today Huangshan City, Anhui Province). The Huizhou brush-making craft is a traditional technique, famed for fine material selection and complex workmanship, that produces the Huizhou brush renowned worldwide for its four virtues of 'pointed, even, round, and resilient,' mainly spread through the southern Anhui area, including Shexian, Yixian, Xiuning, Jixi, Qimen, and Wuyuan. The Huizhou brush is characterised by holding much ink, opening and closing easily, controlling the ink flow well, suiting both writing and painting, and fully expressing the ink tones of scorched, dense, heavy, light, and clear. Huizhou brush making stresses superior materials and fine manufacture. Material selection is roughly divided into two aspects: the choice of head material and the choice of shaft material. For the head, selection follows the saying 'a thousand hairs to choose one,' mainly including wool, rabbit hair, horse hair, deer hair, badger hair, raccoon-dog hair, rat hair, weasel tail hair, chicken feathers, pig hair, monkey hair, tiger hair, fox hair, ox-ear hair, and infant hair. For the shaft, the materials include water bamboo, mottled bamboo, red sandalwood, sandalwood, lacquerware, mother-of-pearl, jade, porcelain, and so on. The head-making process mostly takes place in water; the traditional 'wet' process has 72 steps, mainly including selecting hair material, layering hair, removing grease, removing skin fat and down, levelling the tip, mixing hair materials, combing the hair sheet, rolling the brush column, covering with outer hair, and binding the brush root. The 'dry' process refers to the steps other than the head: mainly selecting the shaft, mounting the head, gluing the head, the shaft, trimming the head, setting the brush shape, and carving characters. The Huizhou brush is finely selected, excellently made, beautifully shaped, and strongly artistic, with high collectible value, and it contributed greatly to the spread of Chinese culture and the formation of the Xin'an painting school. The Huizhou brush-making craft, transmitted for a thousand years with wide influence, is an important part of Huizhou culture, bears witness to the historical development of Chinese calligraphy and painting culture, and holds considerable socio-cultural value.
Process-Step Record
The head-making process mostly takes place in water; the traditional 'wet' process has 72 steps, mainly including selecting hair material, layering hair, removing grease, removing skin fat and down, levelling the tip, mixing hair materials, combing the hair sheet, rolling the brush column, covering with outer hair, and binding the brush root.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The special feature of this craft is that it can be divided into the 'wet' and 'dry' processes.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Writing Brush Making Craftsmanship · Writing Brush Making Craftsmanship · Writing Brush Making Craftsmanship.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
To protect this cultural heritage, in recent years the local area founded the Huangshan Huizhou Brush Craft Research Institute, with several dozen brush-making and research staff, producing tens of thousands of various Huizhou brushes annually, and relying on master-apprentice and trade transmission to carry on the heritage item. Yang Wen (per the official archive of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born October 1969, from Huangshan City, Anhui Province. A representative inheritor of the fifth national-level batch of the Brush-Making Craft (Huizhou Brush-Making Craft), a national intangible cultural heritage item. A Huizhou brush-making technician. Born into a brush-making family whose ancestors' brushes were once tribute items, he took part in brush making from childhood under the influence of a good family atmosphere. In 1987, he worked at the Hengyun Brush Factory. In 1994, he founded the Yangwen Brush Shop on Tunxi Old Street in Huangshan City. In 2006, he established the Huangshan Huizhou Brush Craft Research Institute. He has preserved the traditional seventy-two Huizhou brush-making steps and innovated upon them, refining material selection to the extreme—the finest brushes reaching 'ten thousand hairs to choose one.' The brushes he makes possess the traditional four virtues of pointed, even, round, and resilient, yet also the performance for modern brush use, inking, and colouring, making them excellent tools for calligraphy and painting. Devoted to the transmission and protection of the Huizhou brush-making craft, his son Yang Da has been recognised as a municipal-level intangible-cultural-heritage inheritor. In June 1999, he took part in the Kunming Art Exposition and won the gold award of the exposition's fine-arts exhibition presented by the organising committee; the exhibits were permanently collected by the World Expo Bureau.
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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