京都 · 紙と墨の工房 Kyōto · est. 1873
SUMI
A paper & ink atelier on Teramachi-dōri. Five generations of pine soot, hide glue, winter goat hair and mountain kōzo — for calligraphers, conservators, and anyone who still writes slowly.
Shizukesa o suru — “to grind the silence.”
余白Yohaku — the margin
Most of a written page is not writing. When a customer unrolls a finished scroll in our front room, nine parts in ten of what they see is paper — the breath around the characters, the pause the eye rests in. We make materials for that pause.
So the ink must dry matte, not glossy, or it argues with the emptiness beside it. The paper must hold a fibre’s shadow. The brush must be able to end a line the way a bell stops ringing — gradually, and exactly once.
What the brush does not touch is still written.
製The making of an ink stick
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採煙 Saien · gathering soot
Old pine roots burn in clay kilns for nine nights each autumn. Two hundred porcelain cups sit in the smoke and are wiped by hand every half hour; a full night of fire yields sixty grams of soot fine enough to pass through silk.
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練り Neri · kneading
The soot is folded into warm nikawa — hide glue — with a few drops of clove water against the years. The master treads and palms each batch three hundred times, then presses it into pear-wood molds carved for the house in 1921.
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寝かせ Nekase · the long sleep
A fresh stick dried quickly will crack in a winter. Ours rest buried in paulownia ash for forty days, then hang in rice-straw braids under the north eaves for three more years. We sell nothing younger.
九夜 nights of fire 三百 folds of the paste 三年 years of rest
品Three objects
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墨 ink stick
Night Rain 夜雨
Blue-black rain, waiting for the stone to wake it.
日月 壱万八千五百円¥18,500 · aged three years
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筆 brush
Winter Coat 冬毛
One winter breath held inside smoked bamboo.
日月 弐万四千円¥24,000 · smoked bamboo haft
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紙 paper
Morning Mist 朝霧
Kōzo fibre bright enough to make ink speak softly.
日月 八千八百円¥8,800 · fifty sheets
Made to order · three to eight weeks · wrapped in yesterday’s practice sheets · ships from Kyōto.
署名A note from the fifth master
A customer once asked me for an ink that would not fade for four hundred years. I told him I could not promise the ink — only the soot, the glue, and the years we give a stick before it leaves the house. He thought about this and ordered twelve.
His letters will outlive us both. That is the whole ambition of this address.
杉本硯水
訪Visit the atelier
Address
SUMI 墨
487-2 Teramachi-dōri, Kamigyō-ku
Kyōto 602-0871, Japan
Hours
Thursday — Monday, 10:00–17:00
Closed Tuesdays, Wednesdays,
and the first week of August.
The grinding room
Four guests by appointment. One hour:
water, stone, one stick of ink.
tegami@sumi-kyoto.jp · 075-231-4708