When learning Chinese calligraphy, people will refer a famous term: four treasures of the study. What are they about? The writing brush, ink stick, paper and ink slab are the traditional implements and materials for writing and painting and have always been named collectively as the "four treasures of the study".
When
learning Chinese calligraphy, people will refer a famous term:
four treasures of the study. What are they about? The writing brush, ink stick, paper and ink slab are the traditional implements and materials for writing and painting and have always been named collectively as the "four treasures of the study".
Each of these items is represented by its "best": the xuan paper, hui ink stick, hu brush and duan ink slab are highly valued in the country and known abroad as well.
Xuan paper (Xuanzhi)
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This paper is mainly used for writing or painting on with a brush. It has a history of over 1,000 years, being a "tribute paper" for the court as early as the Tang Dynasty (618-907). What we know today as
Chinese painting is, for the over whelming part, executed on xuan paper, without which one might say there would be no Chinese painting as it is.
Xuan paper is known to some Westerners as "rice paper", which is a misnomer. In fact, it is made from the bark of the wingceltis mixed with rice straw. Its home is Jingxian County, Anhui Province. As the county belonged in ancient times to the prefecture of Xuanzhou and the trading centre of the paper was at Xuancheng, so it has always been called xuan paper.
The xuan paper is praised as the "king of all papers" and is supposed to "last a thousand years". This is because it is white as alabaster, soft and firm, resistant to ageing and worms. It absorbs but does not spread the ink from the brush, which goes over it with a feel neither too smooth nor too rough. For these qualities, the xuan paper is not only used for painting and calligraphy, it is increasingly used nowadays for diplomatic notes, important archives and other documents.
The Hu writing brush (Hubi)
The writing brush is a functional handicraft article peculiar to China, an instrument still used by its pupils in calligraphy and painting exercises.
The first writing brush, according to legend, was made by Meng Tian, a general under the First Emperor of Qin (259-210 B.C.), long time in command of the troops stationed along the Great Wall.
The hu brush is made of the hairs of the goat, hare and yellow weasel, all marked by a quality which is at once soft and resilient. Dipped in the black Chinese ink, the hu brush may follow the maneuvers of the writer's hand to produce a variety of strokes in dark or light, wet and solid or half dry and hollow for different effects in the writing or painting.
First-grade hu brushes must meet four requirements: a sharp tip, neat hair arrangement, rounded shape and great resilience. Their making involves more than 70 steps of careful work. The sticks for the brushes, made from local bamboo of high quality, are often decorated with ivory, horn or redwood; some are mounted at the top with horn or bone for the purposes of inscription.
Hu brushes, renowned as "king of writing brushes", used to be supplied to the imperial court. They were also a necessary item on the desks of men of letters or of means.