The light of intangible cultural heritage is as bright as the stars. The years grind, and the ink is as fragrant as ever. "Tonight We Taste Paintings" jointly embarks on the road of inheritance that Cao Sugong and Zhou Huchen have precipitated for a hundred years.
Cao Sugong Ink was founded more than 350 years ago, and enjoys the reputation of "the ink of the world pushes shezhou, and the ink of shezhou pushes the Cao family". According to legend, during the Kangxi Southern Tour, Cao Sugong once made a tribute to the "Huangshan Tu" ink, which was deeply appreciated and given the name of "Purple Jade Light", and the reputation of Mozhuang was greatly enhanced.
During the Tongzhi period, his ninth grandson carried ink tools and settled in Shanghai from Suzhou. Its efforts to develop have made Mofang rank first among the four treasure stores in Shanghai. In the century-old Songhai vicissitudes, Cao Sugong has kept pace with the times in Shanghai's urban development, and has deeply overlapped and reflected with the precious cultural memory of the city.
Ancient ink, complex craftsmanship, almost mysterious. The production process of ink ingots is divided into many steps such as lighting cigarettes, steaming glue, and materials, making ink, turning and drying, and drawing gold. Its craftsmanship is demanding and labor-intensive.
In terms of raw materials alone, there are many exquisite - the complete ink production process requires the addition of musk, leopard bile, bear bile, deer antler velvet, ice chips, gold leaf, silver foil and other expensive raw materials.
Of course, the ink maker will be rounded up in the selection of raw materials and the proportion of quantity, and the final products will have their own characteristics.
One hammer, two hammers... Time passes, and the ink embryo gradually becomes. Of all the steps, ink making is the most core process. The "hard embryo hammering method" is a unique secret recipe for making high-quality ink ingots - by hand using dozens of pounds of hammers to beat repeatedly until the ink is beaten into a fine and uniform state.
After that, it is necessary to go through unremitting drying every day, according to the size of the ink ingot, it takes about 4 to 12 months to dry naturally, and if it is two pounds of ink, it will be dried for two years.
The ink ingot depicting the golden eagle dragon smells like it has the feeling of traveling through time and space. One by one, all by the hand of the gold workers. Before the ink ingot leaves the factory, the worker needs to draw with paint according to the pattern and lettering on the ink ingot. It's a manual, extremely meticulous job that requires the slightest bit of patience and ingenuity.
Like Cao Su Gongmo, another skill in the factory, "Zhou Huchen Brush Making", was created during the Kangxi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty and has been handed down to the eleventh generation.
At that time, Zhou Huchen came to Shanghai from Jiangxi via Suzhou, while Cao Sugong also came to Shanghai from Anhui via Suzhou. In the 1990s, the two families of Zhou Huchen and Cao Sugong merged, and two of the four treasures of the study room were combined.
Ren Bo Nian "Benevolent Shou" ink
Chinese literati inkers have always had a tradition of customizing ink, and behind each pair of ink ingots, there is a pile of literati elegance. In the 1930s, Mei Lanfang had close contacts with the masters of Haipai calligraphy and painting. Influenced by the latter, Mei Lanfang customized a batch of ink ingots from Cao Sugong before going to New York, USA, a set of four ingots, engraved with Mei Lanfang's own paintings of plum blossoms and calligraphy, as a gift to return to fans on the other side of the ocean.
Wu Qingchun
(Inheritor of Zhou Huchen brush making skills of national intangible cultural heritage)
As a national intangible cultural heritage project, Cao Sugong and Zhou Huchen have a long history of development and a clear inheritance context, which is the most valuable wealth behind the generations of skills. With the focus of "choosing one thing in a lifetime", they lead famous teachers and apprentices, and pass on the torch, reflecting the responsibility and mission as non-genetic inheritors.
Xu Ming
(Director of Shanghai Zhou Huchen Cao Sugong Pen and Ink Co., Ltd.)
With the renewal and change of the city, "Cao Sugong" and other "Chinese time-honored brands" urgently need a broader space for development. Due to the uniqueness of national intangible cultural heritage skills, how to carry out "productive protection", that is, through production, so that production skills can be passed on, especially the cultivation of inheritors, is not three or five years of work.
Wang yi
(Member of Shanghai Municipal Commission of Cultural Relics Appraisal, Researcher of Shanghai History Museum)
Some experts believe that if fully considered, new space and support may bring rare development opportunities to China's time-honored brands, and also allow this wisp of ink fragrance that has been precipitated for a hundred years to continue to bloom in pujiang in the future.