Amid the rumble of machinery at the Ta-yu ink stick factory, a refreshing scent fills one’s nostrils upon entering. Founded by Chen Chia-te in 1974, the company is now being run by his son Chen Chun-tien. At its peak the factory employed six master ink-stick craftsmen and another five workers who applied finishing touches in gold paint. When the industry fell on hard times and other factories closed up, Ta-yu managed to stay in operation with Chen Chia-te as its sole artisan. Ta-yu is Taiwan’s only remaining manufacturer of handmade ink sticks.

These shiny ink sticks are the harvest of a master artisan’s blood, sweat and tears.

Tempered, black and shiny

There are many kinds of ink sticks, including various types of oil-soot ink sticks, but Ta-yu makes pine-soot ink sticks, which are the highest quality of all. The sticks are created by combining pine soot, oxhide gelatin, and water, which bind together with heat. The proportions have to be just right or the produced ink sticks will easily break. An edge-runner mill is run across the mix repeatedly to apply pressure, as musk or borneol camphor is added. The rollers produce heat, which evaporates the water content, hardening the ink-stick material and giving it a fine texture.

A heavy hammer is then used to pound the lump flat, before the master artisan uses all his strength to repeatedly work the lump as if kneading dough. By this point he is covered in sweat, but he has to be vigilant not to let the lump be exposed to the air for too long, lest it become too hard. He then quickly splits the lump into several smaller pieces, packs them into plastic bags, and places them in a heated compartment under the counter.

Chen Chun-tien took over Ta-yu from his father Chen Chia-te. It is Taiwan’s only remaining producer of handmade ink sticks.

Passing down the old ways

Chen insists on following the traditional methods, using charcoal stoves to keep the working counter warm, so the material remains workable for longer. As the air is removed from the ink stick material thanks to the artisan’s kneading action, the material gradually takes on a sheen. Only then can it be placed into a mold. The pomegranate-wood molds, which are delicately carved with landscapes and beautiful ladies, were brought to Taiwan from Fu­zhou by the master who taught Chen’s father his craft and are around 100 years old. Molds like these are no longer produced in Taiwan.

Once the material is placed in the molds, it is set aside to cool before being removed the next day. At that point the ink sticks should be kept away from heat and moisture. They shouldn’t be exposed to direct sunlight or wind. Instead, they need to be placed somewhere inside as one patiently waits 25 days for them to dry. Ta-yu insists on making these sticks painstakingly by hand, so that consumers can smell their sweet aromas and gain a sense of the beauty of traditional Asian culture.

Chen Chun-tien took over Ta-yu from his father Chen Chia-te. It is Taiwan’s only remaining producer of handmade ink sticks.

A spiritual home of written Chinese

With the rise of digital publishing, the Chinese invention of moveable type has nearly vanished from Taiwan. ­Chang ­Chieh-kuan, the current owner of Ri­xing Typography, is conscious of how moveable-type printing of traditional Chinese characters has been disappearing as type foundries have been going out of business. To preserve this precious cultural inheritance for future generations, he has decided to stick it out through these hard times. Ri­xing is the only type foundry of traditional Chinese characters remaining anywhere in the world.

Located in an alley off of Tai­pei City’s Tai­yuan Road, Ri­xing was founded in 1969 by ­Chang ­Chieh-kuan’s ­father, ­Chang Hsi-ling. On the wooden shelves there are three typefaces: Kai (“regular script”), Song (modeled on the style of Song-Dynasty publications) and Hei (gothic/sans-serif). They come in seven different sizes. Ri­­xing has some 120‡150,000 characters of lead type and copper molds in stock. Visitors can purchase these as chops to give as gifts. Some visitors ask staff to find what they are looking for, while others prefer to search for themselves, finding joy in the treasure hunt. But be aware that once you remove a lead character from a rack, you can’t put it back—because Ri­xing can’t be certain that it hasn’t been damaged or that you won’t put it back in the wrong place: If a wrong character is used in a printed text, or even just a single stroke is missing, it can be a major error.

Ta-yu insists on following the traditional methods, making each ink stick by hand so that users can fully experience the tranquil beauty of grinding ink sticks of the highest quality on their inkstones.

A plan to revive the written word

In the type foundry are historical wooden boxes full of copper molds of Kai script that the owner jokingly describes as family heirlooms. Originating from 1920s Shanghai, these handmade copper molds are by now full of defects and have become hazy and hard to read. Ri­xing could find no one to repair them. Consequently, ­Chang ­Chieh-kuan in 2008 launched a plan to harness the power of volunteers to revive these examples of hand-carved moveable type. They have scanned images of them onto a computer, made corrections to the images, and saved the corrections. Yet every stroke of the Kai script characters shows the personality of the original carver. Challenges such as how to ensure that all the characters in the set retain the same visual rhythm and style despite being restored by many different people; or again, how to maintain the changing balance between the thick vertical and thin horizontal strokes at different sizes of Song typeface, make this an arduous endeavor.

Chang learned to use a lathe when he was young, and with his technical knowledge and experience, he alone knows how to repair Ri­xing’s typecasting machines. Let’s hope that Ri­xing’s machines can long remain in operation, so that the bookshelves of ethnic Chinese may forever hold beautiful printed characters that are an important part of the Chinese cultural legacy!

At the Rixing type foundry, Chang Chieh-kuan is shouldering the heavy duty of keeping alive an important legacy of Chinese literary culture.

Classical cultural revival

In the ­Xinyi District of Tai­pei City, a space open to the general public displays artifacts of earlier literary eras: styluses for cutting duplicator stencils, old maps, and other items redolent of their time.

When you open the big red door to this house in an alley off Zhuang­jing Road, you enter a store in which World-War-II-era dip pens, paperclips, and fountain pens are displayed on large wooden tables. Old maps and typewriters are arranged on wooden shelves. Here objects imparting a sense of history come to life. “Seeing these writing implements and stationery supplies that today’s senior citizens used when they were in elementary school provides glimpses of the tracks of time,” explains owner Sander Jean about his motivation for opening the shop, Da­ren­xiao­xue, which means “when grownups were in elementary school.”

Back before there were pencil sharpeners, a pocket knife was found in every pencil box. Dip pens, which work by capillary action, need to be constantly recharged with ink in order to write. In the era of ballpoint pens one rarely sees handwritten documents where there is a repeated pattern of thickly applied ink fading to faintly applied ink…. These items all tell meaningful stories about their eras.

Sander, who works in design, gained an appreciation for these items from his architect father, who had a soft spot for objects like pens, rulers and maps. The objects on show in the shop are artifacts he collected ten-some years ago. With a spirit of sharing these beautiful objects of design with like-minded people, he decided to display his collection and tell the stories behind it. These old writing implements and stationery supplies are all “new old stock.” He sells his excess at a fair price. “Old stationery supplies are high quality, practical and durable,” he says. “We hope people who appreciate them will bring them back home to use and thereby extend their value.”

From time to time it behooves us to put aside the objects of the digital age! Amid the busyness of modern life, let us turn to artifacts that once played vibrant roles within the culture. They still convey the handcrafted warmth of a simpler era.

The use of moveable type created by copper molds imparts a sense of life to the written word. Rixing invites everyone to gain an appreciation for the beauty of moveable-type printing.

The designer Sander Jean has created a display that takes people back in time. For more than a decade he has been collecting old writing tools and “new old stock” stationery supplies. These tell stories belonging to their eras.

Before the advent of photocopiers, teachers would use a metal stylus to etch characters through a wax-paper stencil. The perforated stencil would then be placed on a stencil duplicator, and ink would be rolled through the holes. That’s how schools used to print their tests, one copy at a time.

Compass drawing leads, packaged in wooden cylinders and displayed in test tubes; dip pens from the World-War-II era; and cardboard boxes full of brass paper fasteners. Entering Darenxiaoxue is like taking a trip in a time machine: The old stationery supplies that were once commonplace in office or study seem to have acquired new life.

Compass drawing leads, packaged in wooden cylinders and displayed in test tubes; dip pens from the World-War-II era; and cardboard boxes full of brass paper fasteners. Entering Darenxiaoxue is like taking a trip in a time machine: The old stationery supplies that were once commonplace in office or study seem to have acquired new life.

Compass drawing leads, packaged in wooden cylinders and displayed in test tubes; dip pens from the World-War-II era; and cardboard boxes full of brass paper fasteners. Entering Darenxiaoxue is like taking a trip in a time machine: The old stationery supplies that were once commonplace in office or study seem to have acquired new life.