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 YuánMíng 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 YuánMíng, 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 SòngYuán 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 MíngQīng 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 MíngQīng 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
- 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.