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Inkstick: Soot and Glue Pounded Thirty Thousand Times, Qimin Yaoshu
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Charlie

18. uMfumfu 2026DE
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Inkstick: Soot and Glue Pounded Thirty Thousand Times, Qimin Yaoshu

The inkstick recipe in Jia Sixie's Qimin Yaoshu (6th century): fine soot and glue, 16 to 5 by weight, the glue soaked in ash-bark water, with egg white, pounded in an iron mortar thirty thousand times and made into small sticks. Ground on an inkstone with a little water, a stick gives black ink. The picture: an Eastern Han dynasty inkstick (photo by Gary Todd, Wikimedia Commons, CC0).
Ophakathi
Weeks

Imiyalelo

1

Watch: soot to inkstick

Goldthread visits an Anhui inkstick maker: soot collected, pounded with glue, shaped into sticks (no talking).
2

Sieve the soot

Pound good pure soot and sift it through fine silk inside a jar. It is so light that sifted in the open it flies away.

Izinto zokwakha zalesi sinyathelo:

Umsizi wentuthuUmsizi wentuthu1 jin

Amathuluzi adingekayo:

Isigqulo NomgquloIsigqulo Nomgqulo
Indwangu KasilikaIndwangu Kasilika
Isitsha Sobumba EsinesivaloIsitsha Sobumba Esinesivalo
3

Soak the glue in ash-bark water

For each jin of soot take 5 liang of good glue and soak it in water with ash bark. The bark turns the water green, dissolves the glue and deepens the black.

Izinto zokwakha zalesi sinyathelo:

Uglu wezilwaneUglu wezilwane5 liang
Igobolondo le-AshIgobolondo le-Ash1 ucezu
AmanziAmanzi1 ucezu

Amathuluzi adingekayo:

Isitsha Sobumba EsinesivaloIsitsha Sobumba Esinesivalo
Isikali sesilinganisoIsikali sesilinganiso
4

Add egg white

Add the whites of 5 eggs, yolks removed, and mix everything together. (Jia also adds cinnabar and musk; they are left out here.)

Izinto zokwakha zalesi sinyathelo:

IqandaIqanda5 pcs

Amathuluzi adingekayo:

Isitsha Sobumba EsinesivaloIsitsha Sobumba Esinesivalo
5

Pound 30,000 times

Put it in an iron mortar, stiff rather than wet, and pound 30,000 strokes. The more, the better.

Amathuluzi adingekayo:

Isigqulo NomgquloIsigqulo Nomgqulo
6

Make small sticks

Shape sticks of no more than 2 to 3 liang: better small than big. Make ink only in the 2nd or 9th month. In warm weather it spoils and stinks; in the cold it dries badly and crumbles in the wind.

Amathuluzi adingekayo:

Isikali sesilinganisoIsikali sesilinganiso

Izinto

5

Amathuluzi Adingekayo

4

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