Well, dear friends, while speaking about the character writing, we can't help avoiding this sphere connected with the writing materials, with the writing tools. Today, and in succeeding classes, we would be informing you about the traditions of making this writing materials, of using them if you like. Traditionally, in China, they speak about the four treasures of the studio, what four treasures of the studio are. The treasures of the studio are the writing brush, the paper, the ink, and the ink stone. But of course, the number of tools we're going to speak about is not restricted only to these four. There are a lot of other things that are very important and that play a significant show in the aesthetics of calligraphy and in, how do I say, bringing up the calligrapher in the right mood. It's a parallel with the musical instrument of a musician. Of course, if there is a good musician, he can use any kind of an instrument, in the case it is tuned, and result would be satisfactory. But to express oneself in the full way, to play something very special, to play something unique, to play it with your heart, you need to find a proper instrument. The same thing goes to calligraphy. You have to find brush that suits yourself. You have to find the ink stone to keep you up in mood and so on and so forth. These calligraphic things were results of a religion in the old China. So the officials would spare fortunes to buy rare ink stones, to buy rare brushes and things. Somehow the respect to these tools, the respect to the writing materials is a living tradition in the modern China as well. About some kinds of these tools, we're going to inform you. So firstly, we are going to speak about the writing brush. Here is the writing brush that we used at the classes at the beginning, you remember it. This writing brush is not a very special one. It's just a common brush made of bamboo and with a fur working parts. So the main distinguishing feature of a writing brush is the actual size and shape of the working part. It can be done of different kinds of fur. It can be having different proportions, the proportion of the length and the width of the brush. Thus, those brushes are actually formed, they are actually separated into classes. There are brushes for shorthand, there are brushes for Caoshu style. There are brushes for Caoshu of bigger dimensions, for the small Caoshu, for the Caoshu of this or that style. Brushes are also different. So a common brush is made of wood or a bamboo and the fur. The most popular fur for soft brushes is goat fur, not merely a goat fur, very significant thing is what kind of goats are used for these brushes and how this fur is worked at. The goat brushes can be very expensive ones or just common goat brushes that are not expensive at all, but they all are made of the goat fur. So this goat brushes are very good for writing very soft, very plastic strokes and the characters that use these strokes. On the contra, there are brushes with rather firm fur, with the fur that gives you an opportunity to draw very sharp, very concise strokes. Those materials are different. The most popular of these strict brushes, these firm brushes, are the so-called brushes made of wolf fur. But this fur, of course, doesn't have to do anything with a real wolf. The name wolf, the name of this brush, is it goes back to the tradition of naming the brushes with only one character. But [inaudible] , which means the brush made of the wolf fur, it's not a wolf, the fur I mean. It is the so-called yellow wolf, which in Chinese is meaning the whistle. So the whistle brush is very good for writing the very intense, very sharp strokes and the characters that are tending for those strokes. According to the size of a brush, this is the brush for the middle Caoshu or middle-sized characters. But there are brushes for big characters like this for instance. This is a brush made of the rabbit fur. Some brushes, you may find the inscription, the mouse brush, the brush made of a mouse fur, which is not, of course, correct. If you shave mouse bald, you won't get enough fur to make a brush. This name, the mouse brush, actually means the brush made of the rabbit fur, but also proceeded in a special way, worked out in a especially way. Those brushes, the mouse brushes are also rather stern, are also not that soft to write very plastic and very soft strokes, but they are also popular. The most popular kind of brush is the combinated brush, while the center of the brush is made of rather firm fur like rabbits, especially precised rabbit, and the outer parts of the brush is made of a very soft fur. So this combination gives you opportunity to work in any style you actually want. Many ways of these troops can be written with this combinated brush. Then there are even bigger brushes like this, for instance. But as far as you see here, the working part of the brush is not soft at all. It is glued in one, well, cocoon like that, why so? Because in many shops where you can buy brushes, the working parts of the brushes are glued, of course if those brushes are not professional. Professional brushes are always sold like that, nothing is glued. On the contra, there is a basin with water, and you can try a brush on a special cloth, on a special mate to see if this brush suits you okay. But common brushes, ordinary brushes, are always glued together, we just touched, first of all to preserve these working part of a brush and to make it possible to keep it as long as you want before you actually start using it. When you start using the brush glued like that, first of all of course, you have to put this in water and wait for long until it gets softened. There are big brushes for big characters, and there are very small brushes for little characters like these. Also, the glued working parts of a brush and the brush is made especially for little characters. So the common brushes are made in this fashion. But besides, there are a lot of brushes that are made of very rare species of wood, of silver or some precious materials and so on and so forth. Then these brushes mainly are used as the pieces of art, as the pieces of jewelry to be kept, not commonly used. But sometimes you can find very expensive brushes that are just made of common wood, but they are made deliberately. So the calligraphers, they order brushes from masters who can do individual brushes for their hand, for their writing skills, and so on and so forth. This art of making brushes, sometimes it goes from one generation to another, so it's a family business. On these traditional boxes that the brushes are packed in, so you can see the bone, this special button's to button it up. Here, there is a piece of paper with indications. Sometimes it shows the name of the master who did the brush. So here are the calligraphic brushes.
