Japanese Chinese Inkstone

Chinese Inkstone
Originally uploaded by littledevilworks.

When my grandmother passed away in 2000, my sister and I inherited a lifetime's supply of art supplies: knitting needles, yarn, knitting magazines, paint brushes, ink, canvases and many, many other things.

Recently we sorted through and kept the things that we cannot bear to part with, and are slowly finding good uses for the rest. My sister asked me last fall, when my parents were moving houses, to sell some of my grandmother's art supplies.

I normally don't post here for my own sales benefit, but if you're interested in Japanese or Chinese art supplies, visit my items at Ebay. Most of them are untouched and in their original packaging and may have even been purchased during her travels overseas.

Edited to add: Thanks to Shari, this is a Chinese inkstone. She read the paper!

Edited again to add: I've done a little researching and I've identified most of the supplies. The Suzuri (ink stone) is the stone used for grinding the ink (sumi), to which you add water, use a brush (fude) and paper (kami) to create Chinese and Japanese calligraphy. These are the four elements of first stationary. And the ink stone above has been sold to my friend's mother, who identified the paper above. It is a document certifying that the ink stone comes from a store in Beijing.