Gigantic Inkstone with Partial Inscription of Mount Hua Temple Stele by Ruan Yuan

Collected from the Ruan family in Nanhu Ancestral Temple, Gongdao town, Hanjiang county of Yangzhou city in 1975, this Duan inkstone with fine quality and a gigantic size ingeniously designed by the well-known scholar Ruan Yuan and his son Ruan Fu of the Qing dynasty (1644-1912 AD) is indeed an extremely rare and precious piece in the world. This cuboid inkslab is composed of a forehead, a square platform, and a pool and a groove that are linked. Its forehead features an inscribed copy of Prince Cheng’s Poem of Yijin Study and Ruan Yuan’s Poem of Wenxuan Tower, along with Ruan Fu’s notes, while its back is carved with a partial inscription, 101 characters in all, of the Mount Hua Temple Stele, together with Ruan Yuan’s notes in the lower section. On one side of the inkstone there is another inscription meaning “carved by a 76-year-old crafter Liang Zhenxin from Duanzhou”.