As I viewed The Giant Lotuses, I was fascinated by the beauty of the images and the power of the ink. Sotheby’s notes that Chang Dai-chien “spared no expense in creating this towering masterpiece, using only the finest materials, including a full block of Ming-era ink and Qianlong-era xuan paper.” His wife, Madam Chang, is quoted in the exhibit as having said, “‘[n]ext time we paint such a large work, it would be best to have a machine made for grinding the ink…My hands ache from the effort, and it’s quite a struggle: this task is truly not easy.’”
I realized in reading Madame Chang’s comment that I had no idea how the ink was made. I am accustomed to thinking of ink as a liquid. What did she mean by “‘grinding the ink?’” I decided it was time to learn more.
“Ever since the Chinese began writing with Ink and Brush, scholars and artists have ground their own ink [from solid ink],” observes the blog and supply shop Asian Brushpainter.com
An oversimplified explanation of the process is that the solid ink “stick” is ground against an inkstone or slab and combined with water. “[G]rinding of the ink …is … the best way to get a variety of ink effects,” observes Asian Brushpainter.com
While the idea of solid ink sounds a bit like an oxymoron, it’s not. An article published by the University of Pennsylvania’s art museum notes, solid ink has a long history having been found in excavations dating to the 3rd century B.C. “The industry [of making ink sticks] reached its heights in the Ming and Qing Dynasty when methods were most refined and a lot of special formulas were devised,” says the art supply website Inkston. (As noted, Chang used an ink block from that era to create The Giant Lotuses.)
Solid ink was made by combining a carbon material with a glue made from animal products. Jonathan Winter, an organic chemist who worked as a conservation scientist at the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery Tech Lab, is the author of the article published by Penn Museum. He writes in his article Chinese Ink, that protein in the glue “when thoroughly mixed with the carbon, ensured that in good ink a fine dispersion was readily formed when the stick was rubbed with water.”
Initially, pine wood was burned to create soot for the carbon base. Winter explains in Chinese Ink, the soot that “drifted the farthest was considered” to be the best, because the longer the drift, the more the carbon was separated from the ash and other “by-products.” Methods were devised to extend the flight of the soot. Starting in about the 11th century, vegetable oil burned in a lamp became an alternative source of soot, perhaps because of a reduced number of pine trees. The “lampblack” was collected and used in the making of ink sticks.
The quality of the animal glue dictated the ratio of carbon material to glue in a stick. Winter writes, “[m]ost commonly, glue was made by heating bovine skins in water, but other animal products [including deer antlers] could be used,” According to Winter, the lowest ratio of glue to carbon was 1:4.
In Chinese Ink, he recounts that an agricultural encyclopedia from the 6th century included instructions on how to mix the carbon and the glue. His summary of the instructions is reminiscent of directions for creating pastry or croissant dough. “[T]his mass [of the carbon material and the glue] was repeatedly pounded, rolled, steamed, sprinkled with water, and so forth. The necessity for repeated pounding was often stressed.” Winter notes that the 6th century encyclopedia “suggested [pounding thirty thousand times, though this number was reduced in later texts.”
After the mixing procedures, the material was “pressed into wooden molds to form the sticks, which had to be dried slowly and carefully” to avoid cracking.
The solid ink stick (or mo in Mandarin) is the starting point, but “[t]he quality of the Ink Stone [against which the stick is rubbed] is important for getting the best result,” notes Asian Brushpainter.com. A too smooth stone will make it difficult to generate “even a small amount of Ink.” However, a stone that is too rough will create uneven grounds and thus an inconsistent ink. Attention has to be paid to the motion, angles, and amount of force used in grinding the stick against the stone.
Winter writes in Chinese Ink, “[i]nk is expected to rub smoothly with water on the ink-stone to give an optically dense, black liquid (‘each drop black as lacquer’ is a metaphor sometimes encountered) that can be diluted to any desired shade of grey.”
Some of the websites I visited include historical recipes for making ink sticks and discuss production of ink sticks in modern times. Winter and two colleagues explain in another article, “[c]hemically, Chinese ink is set apart from other types of dyes and pigments in that its primary particle size and surface play a unique role in its effectiveness and longevity as an artists’ material.” Clearly, The Giant Lotuses is evidence of this!
The links to the materials I rely on can be found here. Enjoy an artful journey at Sotheby's Maison.
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