Author: Apricot and Pear

Eastern Xia culture and art attach great importance to the four words "spiritual spirit and wonderful energy". It is believed that the spirit, charm and soul of a person's life will be placed on the objects they carry with them.

So from ancient times to the present,

Nobles like to keep jade pendants, tea ceremony masters like to keep purple clay teapots, and even the old men in the alleys like to play with beeswax, bracelets, walnuts, etc.

The writing brush is where a painter's spirit and energy rest.

A bamboo pen is passed down from father to son, and from son to grandson. It lasts forever and has a long history.

Like famous inks, writing brushes can have a service life of hundreds or even thousands of years. Some well-preserved antique writing brushes from the Song and Yuan dynasties that have been unearthed can be used directly for writing and painting without the need for maintenance.

Even if the nib of a wolf-hair or sheep-hair pen is easy to wear, you can just ask a skilled craftsman to repair it. It is not troublesome.

"When my father handed this mahogany box to me, he told me that there are three types of Chinese painting brushes: the jade pen with suet white jade or jade as the body, and the bamboo pen with wood or bamboo as the body.

brush."

"Which one do you think is the best?" Gu Tongxiang raised his eyebrows and asked.

Gu Weijing knew that there was a deep knowledge in Chinese painting brushes.

However, children don’t need very good pens.

The brushes he usually uses are the kind of modern brushes that cost 20,000 kyats each and throw them into the trash can after using them. They are not so particular.

At this time, he glanced at the bamboo tube brush in the box in front of him, hesitated for a moment, and tentatively guessed: "Maybe it's a bamboo brush?"

"Huh, dishonest, trying to be clever."

The old man saw the look in his grandson's eyes, patted Gu Weijing on the back of his head, and blew his beard: "This is really unconscionable. How can a bamboo pen be more valuable than a jade pen? A small piece of famous jade can be exchanged for a large bamboo forest. Back then you

When great-grandfather asked me, I was much more honest than you, and I thought jade pens were the best."

"Then what?" Gu Weijing was curious.

"Then..."

The old man recalled the past and slowly laughed to himself.

Gu Tongxiang looked at the painting box in front of him and said softly: "Then I was shocked by your great-grandfather, sighing that his family was unlucky and his body was full of copper stench. Alas, at that time, the poor people in the family were almost begging for food, and the old man was sick in bed.

He is dying, but he still has the sourness of the old literati, and he deserves to be poor for the rest of his life."

The old man was obviously saying something sarcastic about his elders, but his expression was full of nostalgia and tenderness, and there were even tears flashing in his eyes.

The scene when that old-fashioned and square father handed this mahogany painting box into the hands of Gu Tongxiang, who was still a young boy, is still vivid in my mind now, as if it was yesterday.

But in the blink of an eye, half a century has passed.

The elders have long been transformed into a bunch of small loess tombstones, and even my own grandson is as big as them.

The old man shook his head gently and looked at Gu Weijing.

"Actually, your answer is very good. I just want to slap you to make you remember and know how precious this set of brushes is."

"Remember, when you hand the mahogany box to your child in the future, you must also tell him that among the brushes for Chinese painting, jade brushes are the most expensive, but bamboo brushes are the best."

Gu Tongxiang recalled the scene when his father handed the set of brushes to him, and said: "Most of the jade brushes are made by yamen such as the Royal Household Department of the Interior. The specially made imperial brushes are hard in nature and have a smooth surface."

It has uneven patterns, which is very beautiful, but it’s actually not comfortable to hold.”

Jade pens are usually the most expensive category in the antique brush auction market.

You can often hear stories about storytelling, such as "Yu Bi personally mentions" or "Yu Bi personally seals". Most of the imperial brushes are made of jade.

In the trading market in the past two years, royal jade brushes engraved with dragon patterns from the Yongzheng or Qianlong periods can easily reach millions of dollars.

But the jade penholder has no elasticity.

When writing with this type of brush, there is a lack of communication with the paper, and its ceremonial symbolic properties are greater than its practical properties. Emperor Qianlong rarely used jade brushes when composing poems and poems.

It is completely a collection of cultural relics,

When buyers buy this kind of pen, they keep it locked in a safe and wait for it to increase in value. I have never heard of a collector taking it home to write and draw.

The rest are wooden pens and bamboo pens.

"Some calligraphers like to use wooden brushes, but court painters believe that wooden brushes are dry and not as expressive as bamboo brushes. The material of bamboo brushes is the Fugong dragon bamboo from the old Wudi.

Every pen is made from this."

Gu Tongxiang stared at the set of brushes in the painting box, as if looking at some peerless beauty.

"Weijing, do you know the most precious part of this set of pens?"

Mr. Gu gently picked up a medium-sized brush the thickness of an adult's index finger and showed it to his grandson.

"This is called Qinyu Color. According to our jargon, this set of pens has been cultivated and has a spirit."

This writing brush is straight all over.

The first half of the pen body, which is in contact with the artist's fingers more often, turns out to be green. It is obviously a bamboo pen, but it has a bright luster like emerald, and it has completely turned into jade.

"This is the tip of an old brush, which is very rare. When the Fugong dragon bamboo was cut down, it was originally ginger-yellow, but it is said that the painter used this kind of brush to draw with painstaking efforts. Over time, it will have a touch like this

The green color emerges from the pen barrel, and the longer the time passes, the darker the green color becomes."

Gu Tongxiang smiled.

Scientifically, this phenomenon is explained as the chemical effect produced by the plant fibers of old bamboo over a long period of time between the moisturizing of human skin oils and the oxidation of air.

but,

Court painters were more romantic.

"My father told me that this jade color is where the essence of ancestors from generation to generation resides. Every time they draw a picture, the dark ink and paint will slowly flow up along the pen holder, dizzying the yellow bamboo pen holder.

It's dyed jade, so 'qin jade color' is often called 'mo jade color' or 'hardwork color' in the mouth of old painters."

Gu Weijing glanced at the mahogany painting box.

In the box, a delicate outline pen as thick as a baby's little finger and two small brushes have been completely turned into a bright green color. The medium-sized paintbrush in the old man's hand is almost entirely green.

Only the largest brush used for freehand splash-ink landscape paintings still showed an obvious yellow earth color, but one third of it also showed the characteristics of jade.

"A painter can only develop spots as big as a grain of rice in spring, summer, autumn and winter all year round. A piece of jade color the size of a fingernail will take ten years. There are no two ways to develop the look you see.

I kept writing for three decades without even thinking about it."

"In the past there was an old bamboo pen, which was called a hundred taels of snowflake silver."

When talking about the brushes passed down from his family, the old man sounded a little proud.

"I don't want to say how expensive things are, but antique pens are common in the market now, but these old used pens are almost extinct. It is true that Mr. Cao Xuan is the leading master of Taishan Beidou painting, but he is probably also very

It’s rare to have such a set of old pens passed down from family.”

"Mr. Cao is probably jealous."

Gu Weijing knew that although his grandfather's words contained the elements of Wang Po selling melons and bragging about herself, they were at least 70% true.

People can support pens, and pens can also support people.

In fact, a paintbrush is very much like a musical instrument.

There may not be much difference in timbre between an antique violin made by the legendary violin maker Stradivarius worth $10 million and a handmade violin made by the top contemporary violin maker worth $100,000.

At least it's not as exaggerated as the price difference of $9.9 million.

But any world-class violinist will always choose antique violins to play. Some symphony orchestra chief violins can be passed down from generation to generation from 1750 to the present.

When you hold a famous piano in your hand, your mentality is different.

The same goes for paintbrushes.

Both Chinese and foreign, with a purchasing power of about one hundred dollars, you can easily buy a very easy-to-use paintbrush in a stationery store whose craftsmanship is definitely above the average.

The reason why painters buy painting tools that are more than ten times or even hundreds of times the price is not because there is any essential difference between the paintings, but because the emotional state of holding a $100 pen and a $10,000 pen is different.

Just like there was once a Japanese oil painter who used to only use a certain brand of expensive natural mineral pigments, there was also a well-known illustrator who claimed that he only used German Pelikan to create customized platinum pen illustrations for him.

This is either because they have a private agency agreement with the painting equipment dealer, or else this is the feeling and tone they are pursuing.

You can even understand it as vanity, but positive vanity.

Expensive paintings have an emotional bonus brought by wealth. Holding the pen makes you feel even more awesome.

The selling point of all luxury painting equipment dealers is often not craftsmanship, but stories.

For example, the master painting tools manufacturer Lukes that Lao Yang gave to Gu Weijing, the slogan on their official website is always that Van Gogh liked to use our painting tools the most.

The company's main focus is the emotional value of "if you buy our painting equipment, you will be closer to a great artist" to attract art students who are not short of money to buy.

Make a rational judgment and determine what good painting tools Van Gogh could afford given his financial status at the time.

For traditional Chinese painting painters,

Holding a set of old pens in his hands can naturally bring calmness and stability to his heart, as if he has received some kind of blessing buff.

Masters of traditional Chinese painting who grew up in Eastern culture may regard money as dirt and gold, silver and jewelry as nothing.

There are many masters who have three light meals a day and wear coarse linen and linen clothes, but I have never heard of anyone willing to take the initiative to use pens, inks, paper and inkstones of poor quality.
To be continued...