Ink Cake with Wang Ziqiao (c. 1600s): Art, History and Details

Ink Cake with Wang Ziqiao (c. 1600s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Fang Yulu (Chinese, active c. 1570–1619).

The work and its context

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

Ink cakes were dissolved with water to be used for writing and painting. This ink cake depicts the immortal Wang Ziqiao riding a crane and playing a sheng (wind instrument with reeds). Legend says that he was a prince who became a Daoist immortal. The design was likely borrowed from an illustrated Ming dynasty book on Daoist immortals printed in Anhui, the Liexian Quanzhuan. Ink cakes using Fang Yulu’s name, a famous ink maker in Huizhou, Anhui province, may just as well be products of followers who aspired to profit from his fame. His greatest local rival was his former mentor Cheng Dayue (1541–after 1610).

Object facts

• Title: Ink Cake with Wang Ziqiao
• Date: c. 1600s
• Creator attribution: Fang Yulu (Chinese, active c. 1570–1619)
• Culture: China, Ming dynasty (1368-1644) - Qing dynasty (1644-1911)
• Type: Miscellaneous
• Technique: Molded ink and gold pigment
• Dimensions: Diameter: 5.4 cm (2 1/8 in.)
• Collection: China - Ming Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1942.233

A detail from the museum

The front, back, and sides of this ink cake are partially gilded.

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): 3–5, 11.
• Little, Stephen. Realm of the Immortals: Daoism in the Arts of China: the Cleveland Museum of Art, February 10-April 10, 1988. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1988.
• Li, T. June, and Suzanne E. Wright. Garden, Art and Commerce in Chinese Woodblock Prints. San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, 2016.

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.