Category: Education/Science
Analysis:
Hui ink, one of the "Four Treasures of the Study" in China. It is named after it was produced in ancient Huizhou Prefecture. Today, Tunxi District and She County in Huangshan City are the manufacturing centers of Huizhou ink.
There are many varieties of Huizhou ink, including lacquer smoke, oil smoke, pine smoke, whole smoke, net smoke, reduced glue, fragrance, etc. High-grade lacquer smoke ink is made of tung oil smoke, musk, borneol, gold foil, and pearls. Made of more than 10 kinds of precious materials such as powder. Huizhou ink has a reputation of being light when picked up, clear when polished, fragrant when smelled, hard as jade, silent when ground, a drop like lacquer, and true for thousands of years. It is a must-have for calligraphers and painters. The calligraphy and paintings of famous people are carved by skilled craftsmen on the ink molds, integrating painting, calligraphy, sculpture, modeling and other arts into one, becoming a comprehensive art treasure. Hui ink is also widely used in many aspects such as industrial drawing, decorative arts, printing, medicine, and porcelain painting. Hui ink production has a history of more than 1,000 years. According to "Huizhou Prefecture Chronicles", Huizhou ink was founded in the late Tang Dynasty. Xi Chao, a famous ink worker in Yizhou (now Hebei), fled south to Shezhou with his family to avoid war. He saw dense pine forests and crystal clear waters here. An Jiangshui settled down and resumed his old business of making ink. Soon, he produced excellent ink with "rich skin, smooth texture, and luster like lacquer", which was regarded as a treasure by Li Yu, the later master of the Southern Tang Dynasty.
The earth ink that won the gold medal at the Panama International Exposition in 1915 is a treasure of She County Ink Shop. Since modern times, Huizhou ink has innovated, developed and restored the production of tea ink, green ink, cinnabar ink, multicolored ink and antique hand-rolled ink on the basis of inheriting traditional crafts, and has added and developed new varieties. In 1989, the "Super Lacquer Smoke Ink" produced by Lao Hu Kaiwen Ink Factory in Shexian County won the National Gold Medal.
Its founders are Xi Chao and Xi Ting Wang Gui, father and son, who were famous ink makers in the Southern Tang Dynasty. It has a history of thousands of years. The ink made by Xi's father and son has the wonderful characteristics of "picking it up makes it light, smelling it makes it sweet, and grinding it makes it clear". Li Yu, the later leader of the Southern Tang Dynasty, had great common sense and specially summoned Wang Gui of Xi Ting to serve as a pragmatic official of Mo, and gave him the "national surname" as a reward. So the Xi family became the Li family, and Li Ting and Wang Gui became the masters of ink making in ancient and modern times. Li Mo has always been praised for his pattern as rhinoceros, and he can write a thousand pieces of paper without spending three cents. Therefore, there is a saying later that "gold is easy to get, but Li Mo is hard to find".
Hui Mo uses pine tobacco as the basic raw material, mixed with more than 20 other raw materials, and undergoes lighting, mixing, pressing and grinding. It is refined through processes such as drying, edge trimming, gold tracing, and boxing. The finished product has the characteristics of dark color, firm and shiny, does not fade when put on paper, does not glue when licking the pen, does not fade over time, has a rich fragrance, and is moth-proof. The front is engraved with calligraphy and painting patterns by famous artists, which is beautiful and elegant. It is a treasure of calligraphy and painting art. There are three specifications: high, medium and low. High-grade inks include super-top paint smoke, tung oil smoke, special pine smoke, etc. Especially the super-top ink can distinguish the dark and light levels, and the paper falls like paint.
"The world's ink industry is in Jixi." Jixi has two of the four great masters of Huizhou ink in the Qing Dynasty - Jixi natives Wang Jinsheng and Hu Kaiwen. Hu Kaiwen, in particular, is famous at home and abroad and has been passed down for a long time. Hu Kaiwen's descendants were numerous and distributed all over the country. They enriched and developed the ink-making technology of their predecessors and dominated the scene for a while. His globe ink won a gold medal at the 1915 Panama International Exposition and a certificate of excellence from the Nanjing Quanye Association. Nowadays, several ink factories in Jixi not only mass-produce inks for calligraphy and painting, but also restore some excellent traditional products, such as "Cangtian Treasures", "Tingwang Gui's Legacy", "Eight Scenes of Xiaoxiang", "Eight Treasures and Rare Treasures", "Twelve Zodiac Signs", "Sword", "Moon Essence", "Golden Turtle", "Jade Chan Ink", "Eighteen Arhats", etc. are all complete sets of ink collections with both practical and appreciation values.