So dear friends, today we continue to tell you about the four treasures of the Chinese studio. The four tools that were used for calligraphy for centuries. Today we are going to speak about the ink stone. Ink stones, as far as you know already, were used for preparing ink for writing. So several drops of water, the ink cake, the ink stone, and the long process of dissolving the needed amount of ink in those drops. So if we have a look at this very simple ink stone, of course this kind of ink stone is very good for the liquid ink that we were using during the classes and that we spoke about. But the traditional way of dissolving this ink in water will be very difficult if we use this kind of an ink stone. Why? Well, I don't think it is obvious there on the screen, but believe me, when you touch the bottom of this ink stone in the manner I do, you can feel that it is not very smooth, that there are some grooves in it, that there are some out coming parts, that it is a bit rough. But of course, if it is rough and you are using the ink cake, the ink cake may also go up and down and the ink may spill. Of course this is bad and you don't have to admit this situation in your studio. On the contra, if there were grooves and something of the kind at the bottom of the ink stone, some tiny parts of the ink cake can stick there inside those grooves and they can get on your brush. So when you write, those tiny parts of this ink cake, may appear on the paper and just ruin your calligraphy. That's why this kind of an ink stone, I cannot say it is very bad it's usable. But of course, if you prefer using the traditional way of dissolving ink, you will need the traditional ink stones. This is one of the old ink. It's a museum item. Here, when you touch at the bottom of the ink stone, you feel that it is absolutely 100 percent smooth. So here, nothing will spoil your writing process, nothing will spill, nothing will stick inside those tiny grooves on the bottom of the ink stone. So here it can be done perfectly. But then, the ink stone here in this part where you actually dissolve ink, it is very, very shallow. So if you dissolve it here, it will be quite a problem to get enough ink on your brush. So how can it be done? You see it here, that there is a basin at the top of this ink stone. So when you dissolve a needed amount of ink, you just make it go here in this basin and preserve there. Then you dissolve another portion, then one after another, those portions go here inside this small basin. Why don't we use big ink stones with very deep, this lower part, and just prepare a lot of ink at once? Well, because preparing a lot of ink at once will take you very long time. It will be far longer than preparing a small portion one after another and just collecting them in this special collecting basin. But you've done it. You have dissolved as much ink as you wanted. What then? Then if you want to use this ink for long, for several hours, you are going to think of the way of preserving it from drying. That's why a lot of traditional ink stones used special covers. So you dissolve this ink, you're using it, and for example, you need to go for a rest or you are not writing for a certain period of time, maybe for an hour, you just put this cover above the ink stone and the ink is preserved there so that you can continue your studies after a while. The ink stones of course, mainly were made of stone, as far as it comes from the name, the ink stone. But besides, there were ink stones made of special pottery, there were ink stones made of other materials including even metal though the metal ink stones were very rare. Of course those ink stones differed a lot in their shape. There were ink stones like this for instance, but this is not a very expensive and a rare sample. Here it resembles a melon, and is decorated with some engravings. But if you ever go to China and if you visit the Forbidden City, in the Forbidden City, you can see the samples of those ink stones that the emperor used, or in older museums, you can see the ink stones of the top officials. Those ink stones are quite masterpieces of sculpture of this engraving art. They are huge. Sometimes they're as big as half of this table made with different levels and things, with different things engraved and absolutely perfectly looking. Why so? Well, because these things are inseparably connected with the idea of literature, and literature in Chinese means culture. Culture and literature are the same. It is when? If this thing is connected with, when? It must be when itself, and when in the Chinese language also means exquisite. It must be exquisitely done. It must be beautiful. It must be inspiring a person to write something absolutely wonderful. So the ink stones. Today the ink stones are also used by calligraphers in China, and there are masters there, there are professionals who are doing these ink stones of different shapes and different manners and used for different kinds of brushes and things. Some of these ink stones of course, are very, very expensive and are absolutely beautifully done and are masterpieces themselves. So the third treasure of the Chinese studio, the ink stone.
