Writing brush (maobi)
Pincel de escritura de pelo animal
- Date
- c. 250 BCE · confidence low
- Place
- State of Qin (Shaanxi), China
- Credited to
- Tradition attributes it to General Meng Tian (c. 220 BCE); Chu precedents
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A bamboo handle tipped with rabbit, goat or weasel hair, allowing strokes of variable thickness with ink. A tool that shaped Chinese writing and its aesthetics.
Brushes from the tomb of Baoshan (Chu, 4th century BCE) predate Meng Tian; the attribution is legendary.
What it led to
- Fast cursive scripts (lishu, caoshu) suited to Han bureaucracy
- Calligraphy and painting as twin arts of the literate elite
- Writing on silk and paper instead of incision
- The material culture of the scholar's studio: the Four Treasures
Built on
- Carbon-black ink stick (India ink)c. 250 BCE
- Bamboo tablets (slips)
- Bronze stylus
Made possible
- Chinese clerical script (lishu)c. 200 BCE
- Paper (Cai Lun's process)105 CE
- Reservoir pen of Caliph al-Mu'izz953
- Chinese calligraphy
- Ink painting
- Cai Lun's paper