The History of Pen, Ink, Paper and Inkstone —— Pen (I)

Because I study calligraphy and painting, I want to know more about pen and ink, so I pretend this article.

Originally, pen, ink, paper and inkstone were indistinguishable, but in order to facilitate memory, I wrote the story of writing brush first.

A brush is a tool for writing and drawing. It is made of various hairs and fixed at one end of the pen tube.

In the prehistoric stone age, ancestors first used sharpened bamboo and wood as painting and calligraphy tools. In the late Neolithic period, a large number of decorative patterns on painted pottery of Majiayao culture in Gansu showed bifurcation and protruding traces, which is the characteristic of painting with brush.

Prehistoric brush has not been unearthed at present, so it is reasonable to speculate on its shape: simply tie animal hair to the front end of bamboo tube or wooden stick.

The invention of the brush finally created China's unique calligraphy art, which had a far-reaching impact on China culture.

In Xia Dynasty, China archaeology corresponded to Erlitou culture. At this time, the bronze technology has matured, and there are some carved symbols, but no systematic words have been found.

In Shang Dynasty, the earliest mature characters appeared in China-Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Oracle Bone Inscriptions were generally carved on tortoise shells with knives, and the contents were the records of merchants' divination. However, a few Oracle bones were written with a brush and have not been carved yet. In addition, writing with a brush is also very useful in Shang pottery.

There is already the word "pen" in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, which is pictographic, that is, holding a brush in one hand.

In fact, in the Shang Dynasty, since China people began to use mature characters, they will definitely use a more convenient way of recording-writing on bamboo pieces with a brush, just because bamboo is perishable, so we haven't found the real thing in the Shang Dynasty.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions's "book" is a piece of bamboo and wood strung together with a rope, and "Dian" is a book held in both hands.

In the Zhou Dynasty, the writing brush developed further. The Book of Songs contains the earliest poems from the Western Zhou Dynasty to the mid-Spring and Autumn Period in China, among which "National Style?" "Jingnv" said: "Jingnv [luán], I am in charge." Tongguan is a red paint brush, which means that a quiet and beautiful girl gave me a red paint brush.

Two Chu tombs in Changsha, Hunan, unearthed silk paintings of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty and the Warring States Period, namely, Dragon and Phoenix Map and Dragon Map. They are the first two silk paintings in China. The thickness of the lines in the paintings changes naturally, and they are obviously painted in brush strokes.

Judging from the distribution of unearthed cultural relics, the writing brush was widely used in writing and painting during the Warring States period in China.

The earliest kind of brush was unearthed in Zuojiagong Mountain, Changsha, Hunan Province in 1954. This is a tomb of the State of Chu during the Warring States Period. The brush is placed in a bamboo basket and nested in a small bamboo tube, with a total length of 2 1 cm, a diameter of 0.4 cm and a nib of 2.5 cm. It is made of fine rabbit hair, and the pen container is a bamboo tube.

Different from the modern brush, the pen tip is not inserted into the hole of the bamboo tube, but the bristles are wrapped around one end of the rod, and then wrapped with fine thread to paint outside.

Along with the brush, there was a copper chisel, a bamboo chip and a small bamboo tube, which constituted a set of writing tools at that time. Bamboo was the paper at that time, and the typo was scraped off with a copper chisel, which is equivalent to the rubber now. This small bamboo tube should be filled with ink blocks.

1957 A writing brush was also unearthed from the Chu TombNo. Changtaiguan 1 in Xinyang, Henan Province, with the same time and shape as that of Changsha Chu pen, about the middle of the Warring States Period.

In the pre-Qin period, there was no unified name for writing brush. Xu Shen in the Eastern Han Dynasty said in Shuo Wen Jie Zi: "Chu means [Yu], Wu means irregular, Yan means brush", and Qin means pen. "It shows that there were many nicknames for writing brushes in the pre-Qin period, and it was not until Qin Shihuang unified the six countries that they were all called' pens'.