Mòfǎ jíyào 墨法集要
Essentials of Ink-Making by 沈繼孫 (Shěn Jìsūn, 撰)
About the work
A one-juàn late-Yuán / early-Míng technical monograph on Chinese ink-making — specifically the oil-soot (yóuyān 油煙) tradition that, after the Sòng innovation of Lǐ Tíngguī, became dominant in the Yuán-Míng period and displaced the older pine-soot (sōngyān 松煙) industry. Composed in Hóngwǔwùyín (1398) by Shěn Jìsūn 沈繼孫, an ink-maker of Sūzhōu who had learned the craft from a Sānqú master and from a Buddhist monk. The work is organized as twenty-one illustrated procedures: oil-soaking, water-basin, oil-cup, soot-bowl, lamp-wick, soot-burning, soot-sifting, glue-melting, drug-application, soot-gathering, steam-mixing, pounding, weighing, hammering, ball-rolling, form-shaping, mould-stamping, ash-burying, ash-removal, water-pool, trial-grinding.
Tiyao
We submit that the Mòfǎ jíyào is in one juàn by Shěn Jìsūn of the Míng. Jìsūn was a man of the Hóngwǔ period; he gives his native-place only as Gūsū, the rest cannot be investigated. Only Ní Zàn’s 倪瓚 Yúnlín jí contains a “Gift to Mr Shěn, the Ink-Seller” poem with a preface that says: “Mr Shěn, zì Xuéwēng, secluded in the Wú market and burning ink for his living — what is called ‘not eagerly pursuing wealth-or-rank, not sorrowfully resenting poverty-or-meanness’. The smoke is fine, the glue clear, the blackness like a drop of lacquer — in this age hard to come by — and so I wrote this present-poem.” The period, surname, and native-place agree at all points — so Xuéwēng is most likely Jìsūn’s zì.
Jìsūn himself says he first received teaching from an ink-master of Sānqú, and later from a Buddhist monk got an ink-formula — and so combined the two and recorded the resulting book. In all, there are twenty-one illustrations, each with its explanation. This is in fact the ancestor of recent-age ink-makers. Old ink was all pine-soot. The Southern Tang Lǐ Tíngguī first combined-with paulownia-oil; later Yáng Zhēn 楊振, Chén Dàozhēn 陳道真, and other masters all narrated his methods. Since the Yuán-Míng, pine-soot manufacture has gradually disappeared, and only this method alone is transmitted. What Jìsūn made is no longer transmitted; his skill cannot be assessed. But this book — from oil-soaking through trial-of-ink — narrates with detail-and-accuracy, each with its own order. The old methods are entirely preserved within. One can call him deeply-versed in this matter. As to the world-transmitted Mòjīng of Cháoshì (KR3i0011), its discussions are too brief; and the Míng-era treatises of the Fāng family and the Chéng family are concerned only with pattern-decoration and form. None equals this book’s careful-analysis of manufacturing methods, which is suited for actual use. To record-and-transmit it is one branch of useful-application — not of the type of those miscellaneous-school techniques which are mere amusements. Submitted Qiánlóng 46 month 9 (1781).
Abstract
The work is the most detailed surviving treatment of the oil-soot ink-making technique that, beginning with Lǐ Tíngguī in the Southern Tang and developed by the Sòng-Yuán Huīzhōu industry, became dominant from the late Yuán onwards. The procedures are simultaneously illustrated and explained — establishing the work as the technical successor to Lǐ Xiàoměi’s KR3i0010 Mòpǔ fǎshì of c. 1095, three hundred years earlier.
The author’s two-stage acquisition of the methods — from a Sānqú ink-master (the master refused payment but warned Shěn not to publish his name lest his fellow Sānqú ink-makers think him a traitor); and from a wandering Buddhist monk — is itself a useful historical document. It demonstrates the closed-guild nature of late-Yuán ink-making and the geographical concentration of the industry in Zhèjiāng (Sānqú) and Ānhuī (Huīzhōu, the later Míng-Qīng center).
The self-preface dated Hóngwǔwùyín lìchūn (1398) gives the firm date. The work was preserved in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn and re-emerged via the Sìkù. The Míng-Qīng Fāngshì mòpǔ 方氏墨譜 (by Fāng Yúlú 方于魯) and Chéngshì mòyuàn 程氏墨苑 (by Chéng Jūnfáng 程君房), both Wàn-lì-period commercial-ink showcase-treatises, focus on decorative-form rather than manufacturing-technique — the Sìkù editors note this and rate Shěn’s treatise as more technically valuable.
Translations and research
Reminder: AI generated list - beware of hallucinations. Corrections and additions welcome
- Franke, Herbert. 1962. “Ein chinesischer Beitrag zur Tuschebereitung im 12. Jahrhundert”. Oriens Extremus 9. (Compares Lǐ Xiàoměi and Shěn Jìsūn.)
- Tsien Tsuen-hsuin 錢存訓. 1985. Paper and Printing. Vol. V part 1 of Needham’s Science and Civilisation in China. Cambridge UP.
- Mèng Fànjūn 孟繁君. 2008. Zhōng-guó gǔ-dài mò-shǐ 中國古代墨史. Běijīng: Wén-wù chū-bǎn-shè.
Other points of interest
The work is in effect the terminus of the Chinese ink-making textual tradition: no comparable technical-procedural monograph appears after it. The Wànlì commercial showcase-treatises (Fāng Yúlú’s Fāngshì mòpǔ 1588, Chéng Jūnfáng’s Chéngshì mòyuàn 1606) are sales catalogues with elaborate decorative illustrations, not technical-procedural manuals; they belong to a different genre. Mòfǎ jíyào therefore remains the indispensable witness for late-Yuán / early-Míng ink-making technology.