Spiritual states and deep feelings can be expressed in Cai Lun’s process for making paper continued almost
per continued almost un-
All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law.
calligraphy. Thick, languid strokes become mournful, and po-
ems written in celebration of spring have a light exuberance. A
master calligrapher was once asked why he dug his ink-stained
fingers so deeply into the hairs of his brush. He replied that
only then could he feel the Tao (the cosmic spirit that operates
throughout the universe in animate and inanimate things) flow
from his arm, into the brush, and onto the paper.
Calligraphy was said to have bones (authority and size),
meat (the proportion of the characters), blood (the texture of
the fluid ink), and muscle (spirit and vital force). The Love of
Lotus landscape (Fig. 3–8), painted by Shi Tao (1630–c. 1707
ce), clearly demonstrates the connection between calligraphy
and Chinese painting. Shi Tao first used two different brush
techniques to draw the lotus and the stone on the shore. The
text in the upper left is Zhou Dunyi’s classical Song dynasty
poem extolling the lotus. Li-shu calligraphy expresses move-
ment and energy as an organic whole. Another Chinese mas-
ter calligrapher is Wang Xizhi. Chinese calligraphers consider
his Lantingji Xu (Fig. 3–9) the best example of xing-shu (a
further refined style of chen-shu).
The invention of paper
Dynastic records attribute the invention of paper to the
eunuch and high governmental official Cai Lun, who reported
his invention to Emperor Ho in 105 ce. Whether Cai Lun truly
invented paper, perfected an earlier invention, or patronized
its invention is not known. He was, however, deified as the
god of the papermakers.
In earlier times the Chinese wrote on bamboo slats or
wooden strips using a bamboo pen with a dense and durable
ink, the origins of which are obscure. Lampblack or soot was
deposited on a dome-shaped cover over a vessel of oil with
several burning wicks. The lampblack was collected, mixed thor-
oughly with a gum solution using a mortar and pestle, and then
molded into sticks or cubes. For writing, such a stick or cube
was returned to the liquid state by rubbing it in water on an
inking stone. The strips of wood were used for short messages;
23-centimeter pieces of bamboo tied together with leather
strips or silk string were used for longer communications.
Copyright 2016. Wiley.
Although these substrates were abundant and easy to prepare,
they were heavy. After the invention of woven silk cloth, it too
was used as a writing surface. However, it was very costly.
The discovery
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed of
onprinting
2/15/2024 4:30 PM via UNIVERSITY OF JOHANNESBURG
AN: 1222346 ; Philip B. Meggs, Alston W. Purvis.; Meggs' History of Graphic Design
Account: s6390179.main.ehost
changed until papermaking was mechanized in nineteenth-
century England. Natural fibers, including mulberry bark,
hemp fishnets, and rags, were soaked in a vat of water and
beaten into a pulp with pounding mortars. A vat-man dipped
a screen-bottomed, framelike mold into the pulp solution,
taking just enough onto the mold for the sheet of paper.
With skill and split-second judgment, the vat-man raised
the mold from the vat while oscillating and shaking it to
cross and mesh the fibers as the water drained through the
bottom. Then the paper was couched, or pressed onto a
woolen cloth, to which it adhered while it dried. The mold
was free for immediate reuse. The couched sheets were
stacked, pressed, and then hung to dry. The first major
improvement in the process was the use of starch sizing
or gelatin to stiffen and strengthen the paper and increase
its ability to absorb ink.
In paper’s early decades some ancient Chinese considered
it a cheap substitute for silk or bamboo, but as time went on,
its light weight, economical manufacture, and versatility over-
came all reservations. The coarse, long-fibered quality of early
paper caused no problems, because the hairbrush, invented
many centuries earlier, was the primary writing instrument.
Scrolls for writing were made by gluing together sheets of
paper, sometimes delicately stained slate blue, lemon yellow,
or a pale, warm yellow. These sheets were rolled onto dowels
of sandalwood or ivory, which were sometimes tipped with
jade or amber. In addition to writing on paper, the Chinese
used their new material as wrapping paper, wallpaper, toilet
paper, and napkins.
The discovery of printing
Printing, a major breakthrough in human history, was invented
by the Chinese. The first form was relief printing: the spaces
around an image on a flat surface are cut away, the remaining
raised surface is inked, and a sheet of paper is placed over the
surface and rubbed to transfer the inked image to the paper.
Two hypo­theses have been advanced about the invention of
printing. One is that the use of engraved seals to make iden-
tification imprints evolved into printing. As early as the third
century bce, seals or stamps were used to make impressions in
soft clay. Often, bamboo or wood strips bearing writing were
wrapped in silk, which was then sealed by clay stamped with
an impression.
39