Preparation materials: castor oil, lotus root silk, vermilion, pearl powder, rhinoceros yellow, etc.
1, Longquan inkpad is very particular about the method of making oil. Although vegetable oil, sesame oil and pangolin oil can all be used as inkpad, Longquan inkpad mainly uses castor oil. Moreover, the freshly baked castor oil can't be used. It must be exposed to the sun for more than six years until the castor oil is as thick as paste and can follow the silk when touched by hand.
2, extract lotus root silk, lotus root silk is like finding the most suitable leaf from a big tree, which is rare and difficult to extract. Only about150g of lotus root silk can be extracted from 10,000kg of lotus root stem to make an inkpad. And this150g lotus root silk needs a person to work 8 hours a day, and it takes half a month to extract it. Extracting lotus root silk is time-consuming and laborious. No wonder a piece of inkpad is more expensive than gold.
3. Lotus root silk is mixed in the inkpad, which is equivalent to the beam and skeleton in the house. Lotus root silk plays a fixed role in inkpad. Without it, the inkpad would be scattered.
4. The last important process of Longquan inkpad production is dyeing. Although Longquan inkpad looks red, it will not only use cinnabar as dye. Except cinnabar, pearl powder and rhinoceros yellow, all these need to be extracted from minerals or plants. Longquan inkpad is not only beautiful in color, but also fragrant. This is because Longquan inkpad is dyed with precious Chinese herbal medicines such as musk and saffron, which gives full play to its medicinal properties.
Brief introduction of Longquan inkpad
The founder of Longquan Yin was a scholar named Liu more than 300 years ago. Liu is a painting and calligraphy lover. He saw a beloved painting in his collection, and the seal on it was very oily, which polluted the whole painting. This phenomenon made him very sad, so he had the idea of developing more reliable inkpad himself.
Coincidentally, Liu's uncle is a senior Chinese medicine practitioner and knows Chinese herbal medicine very well. So Liu improved the production of inkpad with Chinese herbal medicine, named it Longquan inkpad, and set up Jingyutang to sell this inkpad.
When Qianlong visited Jiangnan for the second time, he took a fancy to the Longquan stamp pad in Jingyutang. Since then, Liu's descendants have been paying tribute to Qianlong, and Longquan Indy has also become a royal product. Gan Long is a navy seal. It is said that he has 1800 private seals. Whether he collects calligraphy and painting, writes his own poems and paintings, or writes inscriptions and affixes, he always likes to stamp himself. This is how the signboard of Longquan Yintai began.
The advantages of Longquan inkpad not solidifying in winter and not producing oil in summer actually come from the production of Miao Degen, the sixth generation descendant of Longquan inkpad. Miao Degen is also an old Chinese doctor, studying under Liu Shunchang, the fifth generation descendant of Longquan Yin. Because Liu Shunchang's children felt that Longquan inkpad production was complicated and unwilling to take over the business, Miao Degen was worried that this craft would be lost, so he learned from Liu Shunchang.