Why do so many calligraphers and painters think that authentic rice paper is too expensive?

Rare things are expensive, rice paper is generally used for painting and writing calligraphy, too few people buy it, and there are few people who produce it. Naturally, it is expensive.

The manufacturing process of rice paper is complex, the production is more cumbersome, and the output is very low, so it is very expensive.

This shows that there are not many calligraphers and painters who can mix rice. This is a question of payment level, for example, the same piece of rice paper Fan Zeng and your payment standard are not on the same level. To put it bluntly, calligraphy and painting people who can really mix rice don't care about how much a piece of rice paper is, why should they use "authentic" rice paper if they can't mix rice?

In fact, the improvement of the level of calligraphy and painting is not in the paper, ink, and pen. Authentic rice paper is not for people who think it is expensive.

Most of the rice paper on the market is machine Xuan, a good rice paper knife must be more than 1,000 yuan, and there are good millennium ancient Xuan tens of thousands of yuan, and there are famous painters who made a special trip to Jing County to customize special rice paper with local manufacturers.

In the market, there are not only high-grade rice paper with tens of thousands of yuan, but also low-grade rice paper with a knife of about 100 yuan, but this is true or false, whether it is authentic hand-copied rice paper or mechanism improved rice paper, the huge disparity behind people see that the rice paper market is gradually charming.

High-end retro books should be printed on good rice paper, some key projects of ancient books in the country also indicate that they should be printed on a certain grade of rice paper, and famous painters made a special trip to Jing County, Anhui Province to customize rice paper for their own use, and even this year's newly picked Ming Qian tea should also use rice paper to make "retro tea bags".

Like Hangzhou's West Lake Longjing tea, the real rice paper production area is actually so "one acre and three points of land". How much good rice paper can be produced in a year, people in the industry know it. Therefore, scarcity is expensive, taking Xuanyuan rice paper as an example, now it is not only extremely high but also often out of stock.

In recent years, the value of high-end rice paper has changed from what it used to be, like luxury goods and collectibles, and has reached the so-called "saving paper is better than saving money". Recently, some publishers, printers, and binding designers who mainly make books and painting materials on rice paper told reporters that ordinary people can no longer afford to use rice paper.

According to the data, there are more than 250 manufacturers of rice paper, calligraphy and painting paper and processing art enterprises in Jing County, Anhui Province, as far as Xuan paper is concerned, the annual demand of the entire market is more than 1,200 tons, but the current output of Jing County is only 950 tons.

In fact, authentic rice paper is only used by real French painters, and relatively cheap mechanism rice paper and ordinary handmade rice paper are generally used by calligraphy and painting enthusiasts and students. Among them, the consumption of machine-made rice paper is the largest, and 90% of the processed rice paper on the market is evolved from machine-made rice paper. (I have been engaged in the rice paper industry for more than ten years, I think so).

There is no way, now many materials cannot be found, and many paper processes cannot be copied. In addition, the labor cost is too high, the paper industry is too tiring, and there are not many young people willing to do it.

Because they are high-imitators, the Ming and Qing dynasties are expensive.

The mechanism is cheaper, and the handmade one is more expensive.

It's not about selling words, it's about selling fame.

Calligraphy and painting paper and rice paper are not the same thing? The difference is so stark!

Although there are similarities between rice paper and calligraphy paper, there are essential differences between the two.

It is mainly reflected in four aspects:

1. Raw material composition;

The raw material structure of rice paper is green sandalwood bark and burnt grass, which has been followed for nearly a thousand years and has remained unchanged so far. At first, the raw materials of calligraphy and painting paper were varied, including dragon whisker grass pulp, wood pulp, bamboo pulp, waste paper pulp, etc., and the quality of calligraphy and painting paper was also uneven; Gradually, calligraphy and painting paper used dragon whisker grass pulp produced in Hubei and Henan as raw materials.

Second, the production process;

The process of making rice paper is divided into two stages: raw material making and paper making. After impregnation, cooking, picking, spreading, plus natural processing such as sun, rain, dew refining and bleaching, etc., every green sandalwood bark and every straw are as white as cotton, soft and tough, and the raw material production is over.

The next one alone takes 8-10 months. The production of calligraphy and painting paper is the same as wheat straw, which is crushed, pulped, bleached, dried, etc., and the machine is operated in an assembly line.

3. Effect of use;

Xuan paper is made of special technology and special raw materials, so it has the effect of adsorbing silent particles and diffusion ink. As for the ink wetting performance of calligraphy and painting paper, it lies entirely in its own soluble characteristics.

Fourth, the retention time.

Compared with the "ink rhyme" of rice paper, calligraphy and painting paper cannot be matched. It has a lifespan of only a few decades. If not stored properly, it will fade and be eaten by insects in even less time.

Xuan paper "began in the Tang Dynasty, and was produced in Jing County", because Jing County in the Tang Dynasty was under the jurisdiction of Xuanzhou Prefecture, so it was named Xuan Paper, which has a history of more than 1,500 years.

It is not brittle for a long time, and has a unique penetration, tough and moist, and becomes the calligraphy and painting paper that can best reflect the Chinese art style. In addition, it is resistant to aging, white and dense, and will not fade, while rice paper is easy to preserve, leather paper and silk, etc., does not change color, has pure texture, and has strong ink wetting. Writing is both bones and spirits, painting is vigorous, less moth-eaten, long life, good lubrication performance, so the rice paper has the reputation of "the king of paper, millennium paper".

Therefore, rice paper is often used when painting Chinese paintings.

The main production area of Xuan paper is Jing County, Xuancheng, Anhui Province, because Jing County is a county under the jurisdiction of Xuanzhou, and Xuanzhou is also the distribution center of the paper industry since ancient times, so the paper produced in this place is called "Xuan paper".

According to the degree of raw and cooked paper, rice paper is divided into raw and cooked Xuan. The so-called "raw" and "cooked" are the differences in the production process. Cooked Xuan has one more set of procedures than raw Xuan, that is, it is necessary to brush a layer of alum and peach gum (or bone glue) on the paper to make the paper no longer seepage.

So is it better to seep water or not to seep water in calligraphy and painting paper? It depends on different creative needs.

Shengxuan absorbs water, for painting,If you need to show the blending effect of rich layers of the picture, raw Xuan is better than cooked Xuan; Shuxuan is more suitable for the creation of delicate fine brush paintings.

For calligraphy, because Shengxuan is very easy to absorb water, it is easy to seep into the pen, and it is not suitable for the use of detailed brushes such as silk and ribbon (so if you want to learn Jin and Tang calligraphy such as "Lanting Preface", you can't use Shengxuan, and it is suitable to use familiar Xuan); Since the pen will produce greater resistance when it is crossed over the shengxuan, and the pen force will penetrate deeper into the paper, many calligraphers also like to use the shengxuan in order to express the heavy strength of the pen.

Summary: Xuan paper in the strict sense refers to the rice paper produced in Jing County, Anhui Province and the surrounding areas, with Shatian straw and sandalwood bark as the main raw materials, refined through a number of traditional processes. However, with the widespread use of the name "Xuan Paper", the calligraphy and painting paper of Yunliang produced in Sichuan, Zhejiang and other places has also been named "Xuan Paper".

For professional calligraphers and painters, they prefer to use not only rice paper in the strict sense, but also old paper with a considerable history. Today, we can still see a few cracks of rice paper produced a hundred years ago, and these old papers are very valuable and have become more and more collectibles.

First, the composition of raw materials is different.

The raw material structure of rice paper is sandalwood bark and burnt grass (sandalwood bark is long fiber, straw is short fiber), this raw material ratio has been followed for nearly a thousand years, and it has not changed so far. The raw materials of calligraphy and painting paper do not pay attention to the collocation of long and short fibers, and the raw materials are dragon's beard grass, tree bark, bamboo pulp and so on.

Second, the production process is different.

The process of making rice paper is divided into two stages: raw material making and paper making. The characteristics of raw material production are:

The production cycle is long, sandalwood bark and straw should be soaked in mountain spring water, impregnated, cooked, sorted, spread, etc., plus natural work such as sun, rain, dew refining and bleaching, etc., and the use of natural power to remove organic components such as protein and starch in raw materials, which alone takes 8-10 months. It can be said that the uniqueness of rice paper lies in the uniqueness of its raw materials.

The second stage is the process of making paper. Since human beings have plant fiber papermaking, they have maintained the bamboo curtain filtering method for paper fishing; The paper is dried by the drying method of baking on the fire wall and manually unwrapping and pasting, and the inspection is carried out by visual inspection and hand inspection one by one. When it comes to making oversized rice paper, it's a spectacular sight.

The calligraphy and painting paper is much simpler, first of all, the selection of materials is simple, and then the timetable at the time of manufacture is short, only two or three days, in which the strengthening of bleaching makes the paper still contain a large number of organic components, simply can not withstand the long-term test of the years.

Third, the use effect is different.

The appearance of rice paper is ordinary, but it has a rich connotation. It has the characteristics of strong ink wetting, no deformation when wet and wet, strong moth resistance, and long storage life; It is difficult to achieve this effect on calligraphy and painting paper. It is mainly reflected in whether it is rewriting or light drawing, it can show a clear level, several strokes intersect, all leave pen marks, the intersection of pen marks, the shade is sophisticated, can fully display the artistic conception of the painting, and produce a three-dimensional effect of the work.

The thick ink is dark and bright, and the light ink is light but not gray.

Not only that, after the rice paper is inked, due to its own sandalwood skin fiber evenly distributed, it does not contain impurities, so that it is not deformed, arched, and warped, and has stability. The durability of rice paper is also determined by the processing process of its own raw materials. The reason is that after repeated lime maceration, cooking and long-term sun, rain and dew bleaching, the chemical reaction tends to be stable, and the lignin, which is easy to produce deterioration and insect damage, has disappeared.

The tough fiber of the green sandalwood bark makes the paper strong and durable, and the well-preserved calligraphy and painting art treasures, ancient books, documents, and seals of the past dynasties have not rotted after thousands of years, which is the best verification of the "paper longevity of the millennium" of rice paper. Due to the difference in raw material structure and production, the ink effect of calligraphy and painting paper is far inferior to that of rice paper. For many years, the difference between rice paper and calligraphy and painting paper has attracted the attention of people from all walks of life, such as Liu Haisu, Yin Shoushi, Wu Zuoren, Li Keran and a large number of calligraphy and painting masters.

Summary. 1.If it is used as a collection or investment, it is best to have the whole knife unopened, so that the information such as ** and year is relatively clear and will not be ambiguous.

2.The more precious on the market are "wax paper", "powder paper", "powder wax paper", "color powder paper" or "color powder wax paper" and "wine gold", "gold painted powder wax paper" and other deep-processed products, more stable and appreciation space for collection, the selection of varieties should be based on the use preferences of people in the calligraphy and painting circles, and try to collect varieties of special specifications.

3.From the search for greater appreciation space, such as small batches, themed commemorative paper, such as"Red Star brand "50th anniversary paper of the founding of the People's Republic of China, at that time the price was 980 yuan per knife, only.

In five or six years, its current market has exceeded 3,000 yuan.

What specifications of rice paper have collectible value.

Hello, I have seen your question and am sorting out the answer, please wait a while

1.If it is used as a collection or investment, it is best to have the whole knife unopened, so that the information such as ** and year is relatively clear and will not be ambiguous. 2.

There are more precious springs on the market, such as "wax paper", "powder paper", "powder wax paper", "color powder paper" or "color powder wax paper" and "wine gold", "gold painted powder wax paper" and other deep-processed products. 3.From the search for greater appreciation space, such as small batches, themed commemorative paper, such as"Red Star brand "50th week of the founding of the People's Republic of China to commemorate the year of Bi Ye, the price at that time was 980 yuan per knife, only.

In five or six years, its current market has exceeded 3,000 yuan.

Anhui rice paper is more expensive than Sichuan rice paper for the following reasons:

1.The raw materials are different: the raw materials of Anhui Xuan paper are green sandalwood bark and burnt grass, while the raw materials of Sichuan rice paper are green sandalwood bark, straw and bamboo. The ** of green sandalwood skin is higher, so the cost of Anhui rice paper is higher.

2.The production process is different: the production process of Anhui Xuan paper is more complicated, and it needs to go through more than a dozen steps such as soaking, drifting, steaming, and drying, while the production process of Sichuan rice paper is relatively simple, so the cost of Anhui mu Li Xuan paper is higher.

3.Different quality: Anhui rice paper has high quality, with good ink absorption, good flexibility, high whiteness, strong durability and other characteristics, while Sichuan rice paper is relatively low quality, so it is also low.

4.The market demand is different: Anhui Xuan paper is mainly sold to the domestic market, while Sichuan Xuan paper is mainly sold to overseas markets, so the market demand for Anhui Xuan paper is more vigorous and higher.

To sum up, the reasons why Anhui Xuan paper is more expensive than Sichuan Xuan paper mainly include different raw materials, different production processes, different quality and different market demand.

Raw materials, production methods.

1. Raw material: Anhui Luqin rice paper.

The raw materials are more expensive than the raw materials of Sichuan Xuan Paper.

2. Production method: The production method of Anhui Xuanjiao rental paper is more detailed than that of Sichuan rice paper, which is time-consuming and laborious. Therefore, Anhui rice paper is more expensive than Sichuan rice paper. Xuan paper (one of the four treasures of the study), Xuancheng City, Anhui Province.

Jing County specialty, national geographical indication products.