Meok - Artisan committed to inkstick making tradition

By Chung Ah-young

EUMSEONG, North Chungcheong Province — Any great calligraphy or painting begins with grinding a “meok” or inkstick against an inkstone with water. The process is more than preparing a material. It is a kind of ritual to calm down an artist’s mind for concentration before starting the artwork.

The sunny, tranquil studio filled with unique distinct soot smell seems to be a perfect place for a calligrapher or an artist to concentrate on work. Han Sang-mook makes his traditional inksticks in Eumseong, North Chungcheong Province, where they were once widely produced in ancient Korea.

Inksticks produced in a traditional way are becoming rare, as the production process is laborious. Nevertheless, Han remains committed to producing them this way, believing any great metal, wood and calligraphic masterpieces are not possible without inksticks.

“It is a pity that many people prefer to use ready-made liquid ink instead of grinding an inkstick just because it requires time and effort. But grinding an inkstick is a necessary procedure for one to really concentrate on writing or painting,” Han said in an interview with The Korea Times.

He said liquid inks lend a different quality and texture to artwork than inksticks.

“Making inksticks required highly advanced chemical knowledge in ancient times, as inksticks were used not only for calligraphy or paintings but also for printing,” he said.

To make an inkstick, a large amount of pine wood is burned, the soot of which is then collected and combined with animal glue, and put into a mold and then dried slowly. High-quality inksticks have a lower glue-to-soot ratio, which requires kneading and pounding 30,000 times to achieve the fine texture.

Han said inksticks are vulnerable to weather conditions, such as changes in humidity. “An artisan’s skill can control the thickness of the paste according to the weather condition and thus, is irreplaceable by a machine. Controlling the thickness can only be done by the touch of a hand,” he said.

Han reproduced an ancient kiln in his studio yard based on an original one that was unearthed in 2002 in Yeongyang, North Gyeongsang Province. The traditional kiln is a rare one and produces a very small amount of soot. So, he recently manufactured a kiln similar to it but one that produces more soot.

For a kiln to produce more soot, the angles of its chimney and the length of its flues are important, he said. Equally important is burning the pine wood at the right temperature — not too strongly and not too weakly.

“I burn the wood for 10 days. From 400 kilograms of burnt pine wood, I can obtain five kilograms of soot,” he said.

A battle from start to end

Although Han has been making traditional inksticks since his late 20s, meok making is still an everyday struggle for him.

“Making an inkstick has always been a battle. At first, I battled with acquiring a skill to make a good inkstick, and next, I battled to survive with the arrival of low-priced products from China. Today, I am battling to bring back tradition,” he said.

Preserving tradition has been the most challenging for him because there are few historical references for further developing skills. The master had to sift through many historical documents to find records related to inksticks. Unlike for brushes and papers, such references are hard to find.

Owing to the lack of historical references, Han went to China and Japan to study making their style of inksticks, as these countries have cultural and historical similarities with Korea.

According to Han, in ancient times, inkstick artisans were treated as the lowest class of people, like butchers or “baekjeong” and traveling entertainers or “namsadangpae.” He explained that they worked like slaves because meok making required one’s undivided attention.

“Inkstick makers’ hands, faces and clothes were always stained with ink, which was hard to wash off. Inkstick owners were rich, but inkstick makers led miserable lives. Although they possessed excellent skills, they did not create any record about them,” he said.

The artisan complained that even today, the perception of meok makers remains low. “In Korea, many scholars and government officials tend to rely on their judgments rather than accepting different opinions and theories of artisans,” he said.

There is little academic research on the history of meok, and existing research is similar to Chinese records. “I have tried to restore ancient inksticks and found out new things in the process. But it is hard to prove what I have discovered because of the lack of historical references. It is a battle for me,” he said.

The innovation behind inksticks

Korea boasts its possession of “Jikji,” the world’s oldest extant book printed with a movable metal type in 1377 in the Goryeo Kingdom. The book came 78 years earlier than Johannes Gutenberg’s Bible, which was printed in 1452-55. The book is included in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Program.

Han said although metal type had been developed in other countries around that time, few mastered how to use it to print on paper. It was hard to use metal movable type to print with water-based inks because such inks don’t stick to the letter blocks. In the Goryeo Kingdom, however, skillful inkstick makers were able to use such type with water-based inks successfully, Han said.

“That’s why meok making requires a high level of chemical knowledge to create one that can be used for printing,” he said.

He also said the different kinds of meok affected painting styles in China when oil-based inksticks were introduced. Painters used a scrubbing method when drawing a line owing to the oily ink. “It affected not only the artistic trend but also the development of printing technology.”

Who is Han Sang-mook?

Han was born in 1958 in Uljin, North Gyeongsang Province. He has been working as a meok maker since 1986. He enrolled at Hangkyong National University in 2003 to major in chemistry and learn how to make a better inkstick.

He made a traditional kiln based on a rare traditional one found in 2002 in Yeongyang, North Gyeongsang Province.

Han produces pine-wood-soot inksticks as well as oil-based ones. He continues to invent new inksticks to restore ancient relics and research the history of inksticks.

He runs a studio in Eumseong, North Chungcheong Province, which not only produces traditional inksticks but also offers cultural experience classes for visitors.

What is ‘meok’?

“Meok” is a solid inkstick that is made usable by grinding it against an inkstone with water. Traditional inksticks are made with soot from burned pine wood or from plant oils and combined with animal glue, put into a mold and dried slowly.

Inksticks made with pine wood soot are widely used for calligraphy and painting, while oil-based inksticks are considered appropriate for metal type and other printing.

High-quality inksticks have a lower glue-to-soot ratio, which requires kneading and pounding 30,000 times to achieve the fine texture.

Burning 400 kilograms of pine wood yields only five kilograms of soot. Along with the inkstone, brush and paper, the inkstick was considered as one of the Four Treasures of Study in traditional literary culture.