Paper, writing
brush and ink
| Oracle bone inscriptions were first written and then
carved. This indicates that brushes and ink had already existed by the fourteenth century
B.C. By the time of the bamboo slips and silk books, brushes and ink had been in wide use
for a long time. During the Spring and Autumn and Warring states period (772---21 B.C.)
the quality of ink greatly improved. In the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. to A.D. 220), pine soot
was first used in ink-making. |
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A picture
showing ink-making |
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Writing brush
of the Han Dynasty |
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As to paper, historical records and unearthed artefacts
provide evidence that the Chinese people began to use paper as early as the third century
B.C., at the beginning of the Western Han. In A.D. 105, an Eastern Han man Cai Lun
improved the paper-making techniques by using an assortment of materials such as tree
bark, worn-out cloth and fishnets to produce a high quality paper. |
From then on, paper was used on an ever wider scale
and, by about A.D. 300, had replaced bamboo slips and silk as the major material for
writing books.
The great social demand for reproductions of words and
illus-trations created the social conditions for the invention of printing. So, paper
became the ideal material for mass printing.
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Bamboo
slips used for writing |
An
anciect book copied on silk |
Wooden
tablets |
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Printed
gauze with a golden flane design (unearthed form the Mawangdui tomb,Western Han Dynasty) |
Stencil-printed, hand-painted gauze (unearthed from the Mawangdui
tomb, Western Han Dynasty |
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Paper
with map drawn on it(western Han Dynasty) |
Paper
with characters written on it (Eastern Han Dynasty) |
A portrait of Cai Lun |
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Paper-making
process (Han Dynasty) |
กก |
