Hu Kaiwen (Hui Ink)

Hu Kaiwen was founded in 1765 by Hu Tianzhu of Jixi, who opened the ink shop in Xiu-ning under the house name "Cangpei Shi," carrying forward the Hui-ink craft whose lineage reaches back to the Tang-dynasty master ink-makers who settled in Huizhou, and became the leading name of the Xiu-ning school.

Hu Kaiwen ink is famed for being "black as lacquer, hard as jade, neither cloying the brush nor bleeding on paper"; its "Earth Ink" won gold at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition, and the house remains the largest name in the history of Chinese ink-making and the standard-bearer of Hui ink.

Its ink is made by collecting soot from tung oil, lacquer and pine, then blending it with bone glue, musk and borneol through dozens of steps—soot-refining, glue-mixing, dough-beating, mould-pressing, drying and gilding—the carved ink moulds themselves works of art that unite calligraphy, sculpture and pharmacology.

Hu Kaiwen is the representative bearer of the Hui-ink craft, which entered the first national ICH list in 2006.