Box with Ink Cakes: Blue Ink Cake in Shape of a Gui Scepter (1795–1820): Art, History and Details

Box with Ink Cakes: Blue Ink Cake in Shape of a Gui Scepter (1795–1820) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Ink cakes (also called ink sticks) are dissolved with the addition of water and then ground on the surface of a flat square stone into liquid ink for painting and calligraphy. The precious ink cakes here, however, have never been used. The inscription on the side of the blue ink cake says that the set was commissioned by Chen Huai, Governor of Jiangxi Province.

Object facts

• Title: Box with Ink Cakes: Blue Ink Cake in Shape of a Gui Scepter
• Date: 1795–1820
• Culture: China, Qing dynasty (1644-1911), Jiaqing reign (1795-1820)
• Type: Miscellaneous
• Technique: Molded ink in blue
• Dimensions: Case: 26.4 x 19.1 cm (10 3/8 x 7 1/2 in.); Lid: 26.5 x 19.2 cm (10 7/16 x 7 9/16 in.)
• Collection: China - Qing Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1942.206.g

Collection credit

Gift of Henry W. Kent

Further reading listed by the museum

• Hollis, Howard. “A Gift of Chinese Inks.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 33, no. 1 (January 1946): 3–11.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.