Hello tea friends, here is the tea in the end.
Friends who are familiar with the purple sand pot have probably heard of a name - Shi Dabin.
For the history of purple sand, the character of Shi Dabin is too important.
He is the master of the art of making purple sand pots, and from him, a complete set of production techniques for purple sand pots was officially established.
Today, let's take a look at the legendary life of Shi Dabin and the purple sand treasure created by his clever hands.
First, blue out of blue
Shi Dabin (1573-1648) Shaoshan, also known as Dabin and Shibin.
He was a generation of masters of Purple Sand Art in Yixing, and his life spanned between the Wanli Dynasty of the Ming Dynasty and the Shunzhi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty, through the Ming and Qing Dynasties.
Shi Dabin's family was very prominent, he was a direct descendant of the Northern Song Dynasty minister and literary scholar Shi Yan, and the son of Shi Peng, a famous purple sand master in the Ming Dynasty.
It is said that Shi Dabin's appearance is not impressive, and he looks no different from a cropper who faces the loess with his back to the sky.
At that time, the literati used the tip of the pen to engrave, and one Mr. Xu Yinglei once had many disrespectful words about his "behavior": "Its shape is simple and wild, and its face is dirty." ”
He even teased him for not cutting his nails, so much so that he left his nail prints on the purple clay pot.
In general, Shi Dabin is an informal temperamental person.
He was cheerful and talkative, good at making friends, and was always surrounded by many friends, many literati and scholars were Shi Dabin's best friends.
Entering the depths of history, we know that the era in which Shi Dabin lived was the era when China's handicraft art began to rise.
After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, despite the dark and corrupt government, Jiangnan City was still prosperous, the commodity economy and handicraft industry were very developed, and a number of crafts with the highest creative techniques in the history of Chinese craftsmanship were created.
During the Ming Jiajing period, there was a saying of "four great people of purple sand", that is, Dong Han, Zhao Liang, Yuan Chang, and Shi Peng, four pot-making masters.
Shi Dabin's father, Shi Peng, was one of the "Four Great Purple Sands" of the Ming Dynasty and a cultural celebrity at that time.
His father was a master pot maker, and Shi Dabin naturally heard about it from an early age and fell in love with this art under the influence of his father.
Shi Peng's requirements for Shi Dabin are very strict, and since the son has chosen the same career as his father, he must be blue.
Shi Dabin's heart was even higher than his father's, although his father had already achieved fame in the art of purple sand, but Shi Dabin did not think much of it.
In his opinion, it is not difficult to surpass his father in terms of skill, but it is difficult to push the art of purple sand pot to a higher stage.
"Parents of those who give birth to me, and those who know me offer Haruya." Shi Dabin said.
Shi Dabin's true master in his heart is actually for The Spring.
The so-called spring offering is the "originator" of the purple sand pot.
Born during the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, Fu Chun first learned to make pots with monks.
Fu Chun was the first pot maker to promote the purple sand pot to all levels of society, and the first craftsman to become famous for making purple sand pots.
The era of Life for Spring was more than half a century earlier than Shi Dabin, and the two did not meet.
However, Shi Dabin has always regarded The Offering Spring as his master, and he imitates the Spring Pot to imitate both the divine form and the form.
However, for a genius pot maker like Shi Dabin, emulating others is not a long-term solution after all.
Second, change the big to the small
Shi Dabin initially liked to make a large pot, and with today's eyes, it should be 2500 ml in size.
Da Bin has always been good at making large pots, and his style tends to be simple and elegant, but he has done too much and cannot avoid repetition.
He himself began to be dissatisfied, always smashing pots, others pity, he still fell, made ten pots, leaving only one or two.
At that time, Shi Dabin was already famous, and all the purple sand pots made by his hands, even if they were inferior, were worth thousands of gold.
Friends felt pity, so they advised Shi Dabin not to drop the pot, but to give the unsatisfactory purple sand pot to others.
Shi Dabin firmly disagreed, and he felt that the works he was not satisfied with could never flow into the folk.
Because he could not make a purple sand pot that satisfied him, Shi Dabin became depressed and his temperament began to change somewhat.
Friends saw that Dabin was hiding in the kiln all day, so they suggested that he go out and walk more.
In the area of Changshu and Songjiang, sometimes Dabin has many friends, and under the recommendation of friends, Shi Dabin came to Loudong, Jiangsu.
His "Loudong Travel" not only changed his later life, but also brought earth-shaking changes to the history of China's purple sand pot.
Shi Dabin's monk hat pot
During Shi Dabin's travels in Loudong, he met friends and made friends with pots.
He met Chen Jiru, a Ming dynasty writer, calligrapher and painter, and collector of pot art.
Chen Jiru has a high appreciation of tea pots, once hired a pot maker Jiang Shiying to make pots at home, and then Chen Jiru wrote for it, famous workers and celebrities, and later became known as "double pot".
During the two travel together, Shi Dabin often discussed with Chen Jiru the mystery of tea tasting.
One day, Chen Jiru suggested: "It would be nice to change the pot from large to small and make it into a graceful instrument that can be held with one hand and chanted with the other." ”
Other friends also echoed: although there are many large pots of stored tea, it is easy to taste, and it is not convenient to carry the products to play, so why not shrink the pot? With yourself and guests, more convenient.
Shi Dabin's round button pot
Therefore, Shi Dabin began to make small pots, and the purple sand pot was changed from large to small, to only about 300 to 400 ml.
I didn't expect such a change, but I actually changed it out of the great name hall.
Shi Dabin's newly made small pot is plain and unpretentious, and the wind and bone are cold, which is very in line with the hearts of the literati.
The small purple clay pot has become a delicate palm treasure, and its value has soared.
Shi Dabin's change basically fixed the pot making process method and the size and specifications of the pot type, and has been handed down to this day.
Shi Dabin's purple sand pot does not strive to be carved, but is known for its simple elegance and overall sense, elegant style, smooth and flexible shape, although it does not pursue craftsmanship and craftsmanship, but ingenuity, simple and elegant, wonderful.
3. A generation of masters
Shi Dabin's life has spent about seventy years, and he has produced thousands of works and circulated them widely.
There is a poem as evidence: "Gong Gong Yan said that the big bin pot, overseas competition for Mingyuan disc".
Chen Zhenhui, one of the four princes of the late Ming Dynasty, had this record in the Autumn Garden Miscellaneous Pei:
"The name of the pot of time is far greater, that is, the realm of the reverie is known. Its production began with the spring offering, the pot style is simple and elegant, and the tea utensils are interesting in the wilderness. Later, such as Chen Ju and Xu Ju, none of them can be like a big bin in case."
Even in the era of extremely closed information at that time, Shi Dabin was already a national celebrity.
Shi Dabin's pot-making skills are very comprehensive, in addition to changing the purple sand from large to small, he has excellent achievements in mud preparation, forming techniques, instrument design, inscription, and calligraphy.
In the middle age of Shi Dabin, he established a difficult technical system of forming out of thin air with mud sheets and inlays that is still inherited by the purple sand industry.
He selected purple sand mud to mix into various mud colors to form a simple and majestic style.
He mixed sand into the mud and created a sand adjustment method pot, which the ancients called "sand coarse ancient texture uniform", which is very interesting.
In terms of forming techniques, the production method of "cutting wood as a mold" for spring has been improved, and the body shaping method and the inlay barrel forming method have been combined, thus determining the basic method of purple sand pot mud sheet inlay forming, which is a big leap forward in the purple sand pot making method.
He also pioneered the square and round pot style, which became a typical pot style in the shape of a purple sand pot.
Shi Dabin listened to the advice of his literati friends and introduced the literati's taste into the pot art, so that the pot art was combined with the tea ceremony, and the pot art was pushed to a new height.
Mr. Gu Jingzhou, a master of Chinese arts and crafts, also gave high praise to Shi Dabin, who once wrote in the "Introduction to the History of Purple Sand Pottery":
"Everyone who has unanimously recommended in the history of sand art should take Shi Dabin as a model. His contribution lies in the creative innovation of the technical rules of the pioneering period of sand art, which should be sung by future generations of practitioners; more importantly, he has left a world-shattering masterpiece for future generations, creating a precedent for purple sand art pottery culture. ”
Mr. Gu Jingzhou, a modern purple clay pot master
Although there are many works by Shi Dabin, very few people have survived.
Among them, the surviving garden pots, hexagonal pots, three-legged pots, Kaiguang square pots, Tiliang pots, book flat pots, monk hat pots, printing bag pots, linghua pots, half melon water cups, etc., are stored in the hands of public and private institutions and collectors in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Hong Kong and other places, all of which are priceless treasures.
As a folk craftsman and the most prestigious purple sand master more than 400 years ago, Shi Dabin single-handedly set off a major change in the purple sand industry of the Ariake generation.
Shi Dabin deserves the reputation of "a thousand generations of masters", and his works are also worthy of the value of "a thousand golds".