We learned how they make paper and brushes for painting and calligraphy in China. Now it's time to talk about ink, because according to the treatises on painting it is the blood of images.

The main ingredient of Chinese ink is soot. To get 10 pounds of wood soot one have to burn 400 pounds of pine wood, it takes about 10 days.

Wood is burnt under inverted clay vessels and soot settles on the walls. Soot can also be produced from burning of mineral oil.

It is mixed many times with bone glue, in several steps, poached like dough, beat with hammers and rolled out so that the mass becomes plastic and homogeneous.

It takes up to a month to prepare the mass for one ink. This work is usually done in cold winter months, when the adhesive does not get spoilt by the heat. Then the ink is placed in a wooden press, often of intricate shapes, with a three-dimensional pattern, and dried.

After that, the ink needs to mature up for a year, large bars are dried for up to five years. Matured ink has higher quality, it is better mixed with water and is valued higher.

Then the whole pattern or its elements on the ink stick are painted. Today there is concentrated liquid ink, but many still prefer to use dry ink.

As thousands of years ago, before starting the master rubs a stick of solid ink with a small amount of water on a special hard stone ink slab to get a thick, oily liquid ink.

The ink is spread on a flat surface and it flows into a recess in which you can put a brush. It's a long, meditative process, when a calligrapher or a painter inhales the scent of the ink, frees his mind, entering a state of calm and tuning in his work.

An ink pot can be made of porcelain, ceramic, bronze, iron, but the vast majority of ink pots are carved from natural stone, so another name for an ink pot is an ink stone. Stones must be dense, non-porous and shouldn't absorb water. It must have an interesting color and shape. The master carefully selects raw materials, tapping the stone with a wooden hammer to determine its density. A good ink stone has different degrees of granularity and does not allow the water to dry too quickly. The recessions are often made with a lid. An ink pot is decorated with fancy carving. The plots are the same as in traditional Chinese painting: landscapes, flowers, birds.

An ink-pot can serve its owners for centuries. The earliest survived ink pots dated 4-5 century BC and from the 3d century they become a common attribute of officials, masters, poets, calligraphers. Old antique pots retain all their functionality. Not surprisingly, the ink stone is the first among the four jewels. Ink pots with history are especially appreciated, as they participated in the birth of many poems, paintings and calligraphic works.

Ink sticks and ink pots are works of art, objects for collecting. Look at some examples of old and modern masters.