Vintage Chinese Calligraphy Set, Inkstone and Brushes, c. 1982–2000

The Piece

A Chinese calligraphy set, complete and fitted into a fan shaped presentation box, with nine pieces laid into red velvet.

The lid holds five brushes, splayed like the ribs of the fan the box is cut to imitate. Bamboo handles, each engraved down its length with characters cut into the surface, black ferrules at the head, gold thread bound at the collar, and a short red cord at the butt for hanging. Four of the five still wear the printed paper band they left the workshop with, red and white with the maker's name set in Latin letters, LUOQUAN. The hair is natural, laid to a fine point, the brushes graduating from a fine liner to a broad wash.

The base holds the rest. In the centre, the inkstone, an oval of grey stone with a broad flat grinding face falling away to a sunken well, and a band of cloud and dragon relief carved into the head. To its right, the ink stick, a black bar with gilt decoration, a dragon running its length between key fret bands at each end and characters gilded beside it.

Around them the desk furniture. A brush rest in white porcelain, modelled as a five peak mountain range and painted underglaze in cobalt. A lidded porcelain box with a dragon roundel on the cover, for seal paste. A small porcelain washer with a blue figure in the bottom, for rinsing a brush. And a seal blank in pale soapstone, cut square with a stepped top, an incised character on the side, waiting for a name to be carved into its face.

The box itself is the display. Cut as a quarter fan, covered in gold brocade woven with a roundel pattern, lined throughout in red velvet with a recess cut for every piece, a red ribbon stay holding the lid, and a pair of small clips at the head. Closed it is an object. Open it is a still life.

History & Provenance

What the set is descended from is the wenfang sibao, the Four Treasures of the Study, a grouping named as far back as the Southern and Northern Dynasties in the fifth and sixth centuries. Brush, ink, paper and inkstone. Everything else on a scholar's desk, the rests and the washers and the seal paste boxes, grew up around those four as the supporting cast.

This set carries three of the four. Brush, ink and inkstone are all here. Paper is the one treasure a boxed set never includes, because it is the one that gets used up, and a set sold with paper would be short of it inside a month.

The lettering sets the floor, and it sets it well. The brush labels carry the maker's name in Latin letters spelled in pinyin. Pinyin was adopted inside China in 1958 but the export trade went on printing Wade Giles and postal romanisations for another two decades. That changed after the normalisation of relations with the United States in 1979, with Western publishing moving to pinyin through the early eighties and the International Organization for Standardization adopting it as ISO 7098 in 1982. An export label romanised this way is a product of that changeover rather than anything before it.

The materials set the ceiling. Natural hair brushes on engraved bamboo with paper band labels, hand painted underglaze porcelain rather than transfer printing, a real stone inkstone with carved relief rather than a moulded resin one, and a brocade covered card box with a fitted velvet tray are the older gift format. What replaced it uses printed card, foam inserts and decal decoration.

On that evidence it is offered as c. 1982 to 2000. Four things would narrow it: whether a paper import or factory sticker survives on the box, whether the gilt characters on the ink stick name a house such as Hu Kaiwen, whether the inkstone is a named stone like Duan or She or a generic slate, and what the engraved characters on the brush handles say about the workshop that made them.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

It sells open. A closed box is a box, but this one opens into a fan of five brushes over a tray of stone and porcelain, and it will stop someone walking past a counter in a way that very little else at this price does. For a shop it works as a display piece that happens to be for sale.

It is also a complete gift, which is rare. Most calligraphy sets that reach the market have lost the ink stick, the seal or a brush, and what is left is a box with gaps in it. Everything here is present, including the uncarved seal blank, which means a buyer can have their own name cut into it and make the set theirs.

And it goes on a desk. Ten inches by twelve is a bookshelf and a console footprint, not a room footprint, and the red and gold against black stone and blue and white porcelain reads well against wood, brass and dark paint. Left open on a shelf it does more for a room than a closed box ever will.