Wish I was an English muffin
“Wish I was an English muffin
’Bout to make the most out of a toaster.
I’d ease myself down,
Comin’ up brown.”
—Punky’s Dilemma, words and music by Paul Simon, from the Simon & Garfunkel album Bookends, 1968.
Chinese paper
“The invention of paper is usually ascribed to Ts’ai Lun . . . a prominent official under Ho Ti (A.D. 89-106). . . . He is said to have made paper out of tree bark, hemp, or fish nets. . . . The oldest examples of Chinese paper known to us today . . . show that at a very early date paper was being made that was thin, white, and of good quality. Since then, paper has been made from bamboo, mulberry, hemp, corn and rice stalks, cotton, flax, silk cocoons, reeds, moss, and a kind of water fungus. . . . The quality of papers varies; surfaces are smooth or rough, weight is thin or thick, and tints range from white through yellow, blue, and gray to quite dark tones. . . . The most famous paper was the kind called Ch’eng Hsin T’ang Chih (paper made at the Pure Heart Hall), a fine, thin, smooth sheet of high quality, considered by some authorities to the best ever made in China. It was perfected in the Later T’ang period (A.D. 923-934) and used by the great painters of the Sung and Yuan periods. Between this fine, smooth paper and the coarse, absorbent kinds are papers of innumerable degrees of smoothness and roughness. . . . Some well-known kinds are Wild Goose White paper, Kuan Yin paper, Blue Cloud paper, White Jade paper, Cicada Wing paper, Ice and Snow paper, and Six Times Lucky sized paper.”
—Mai-mai Sze, from The Way of Chinese Painting: Its Ideas and Technique, 1956.
Chinese ink
“Chinese ink is made of carbon or soot, obtained by burning dry pine or fir wood in a kiln (sung yen mo: pine-soot ink), or by burning vegetable oils in an earthenware bowl (yu mo: oil or lampblack ink). The soot is then mixed with a little glue. . . . [T]he mixture is molded and dried into a stick or cake. For use, this is gently rubbed in a little water on an inkstone to produce the liquid ink. This procedure still yields the best ink, although liquid ink is now made and widely used. . . .
By T’ang times there were many ink makers, and the art of its manufacture was far advanced. Since those times, the best kind of ink by repute has been made from pine soot, a kind of sung yen mo that is also called chiao mo (glue ink). It is deep in tone and glossy, the degree of blackness and sheen depending on the species of pine and the method of preparation. . . . [I]t was used up to Yuan times and was easily distinguishable from the mat black ink made in the Ming period, which in use gave the same effect as lampblack ink (yu mo), lacking in depth as well as sheen. . . .
The process of making ink sticks . . . consist[s] of burning or cooking, mixing, pounding, stirring, sifting, shaping, setting in molds, and drying. Inscriptions or decorations are often engraved on the sticks. After the ink sticks are finished and completely dry, they are rubbed with a piece of rough cloth and polished with wax till clean and smooth, and then wrapped in paper for storage.
Among the experiments in inkmaking there were procedures to make it mat, an effect desireable for certain purposes. To dull the ink, pulverized oyster shells were sometimes added, or powdered jade, although jade was put in principally as a gesture of respect to the ink. So much care and skill were given to the production of ink that ink sticks became objects of art, prized for the variety of their shapes, their decoration, their inscriptions, and the names of their manufacturers and the places where they were made. They were collected and venerated. . . . Old sticks and cakes have a unique fragrance, which in the past was often heightened by adding musk, camphor, pomegranate bark, or the like, as the ink was being made. Besides giving the ink a fragrance, these ingredients were believed to improve its color and brightness and to help preserve the sticks. Old ink was and still is treated like vintage wine.”
–Mai-mai Sze, from The Way of Chinese Painting: Its Ideas and Technique, 1956.