---
title: "Wire & Ink — Cloisonné at the Factory That Saved It, and the Ink That Made Grinding Obsolete | LyrikTrip"
description: "A Beijing half-day across two national-heritage crafts: cloisonné, which was down to sixty craftsmen before Lin Huiyin's rescue group stepped in, and Yidege, the 1865 shop that turned solid ink into liquid ink."
type: "experience"
source: "film"
url: "https://www.lyriktrip.com/zh-TW/experience/beijing-cloisonne-and-ink"
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locale: "zh-TW"
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![Fine copper wire being laid onto a white design to form a cloisonné pattern](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/3b51e5b7cd34.webp)

Beijing · Half a day, booked on its own

# One craft you watch. *One you do.*

A Beijing half-day across two national-heritage crafts: copper wire being bent into a picture and flooded with enamel, then a brush, a sheet of paper, and ink from a shop that has been making it since 1865.

- Where: Two Beijing workshops · Cloisonné, then ink · addresses on booking
- How long: Half a day
- Shape of it: Watch, then write · Cloisonné is a demonstration · ink you use yourself
掐丝 点蓝

LyrikTrip · a standalone half-day experience

## Wire*& Ink*

- Half a day
- Two workshops
- Two national-heritage crafts
- You write, and keep it

## What you get

### Two workshops, *and what each one gives you*

### You'll see

- **掐丝** — flattened copper wire bent by hand and stood on edge to draw a dragon
- **点蓝** — wet enamel spooned into each cell, one colour at a time
- Vessels mid-process, between firings, with the colour still sunk below the wire
- A workshop floor stacked with blanks waiting for the kiln

### You'll handle

- A finished cloisonné piece, heavier than it looks
- A brush, properly loaded, which takes three attempts
- Paper that behaves completely differently depending on how fast you move

### You'll hear

- That in 1949 **sixty craftsmen** were left in the entire trade
- How Lin Huiyin's rescue group at Tsinghua put it back together
- Why a shop in 1865 selling **liquid** ink was a genuine invention

### You'll take home

- **The character you wrote**, on paper, in ink you understand the making of
- The difference between adding colour and subtracting it
- A working answer to why cloisonné costs what it costs

## Act I — Two rescues

![A finished cloisonné plate with flower pattern](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/af2ba3fc6f06.webp)

![Stacked cloisonné blanks in a workshop](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/701e7b442a0c.webp)

![A hand drawing a design on paper](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/3ba0e5f96a1e.webp)

Cloisonné came within sixty people of disappearing. *Lin Huiyin and Liang Sicheng set up a group at Tsinghua to save it.*

In 1956 forty-two private workshops and the old imperial workshop were merged into one factory. Guo Moruo wrote the sign over the door.

The other craft on today's list went the opposite way: it survived by *making itself easier to use*.

## 01 — The wire

![A craftsman working at a bench in the enamel factory](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/2d18eeb8cf91.webp)

09:20 Drawing in copper

### The drawing is made of metal

Flattened copper wire, bent and stood on edge

The pattern is not painted on — it is built. Flattened copper wire is bent to the line of each petal and stood on its edge against the body. Every closed shape it makes becomes a cell that will hold one colour and no other. This is the step that the rescue group had to document from scratch: until 1963 the trade had no written standard at all, only what was in people's hands.

## 02 — The enamel

![Enamel being spooned into the wire cells of a cloisonné plate](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/f724e14d03b6.webp)

10:00 Filling the cells

### Then the colour is fed in

Wet enamel, cell by cell · fired · filled again

Ground enamel goes into each cell wet, a spoonful at a time. Then the piece is fired, and the enamel sinks. So it is filled again, and fired again, until the colour finally sits level with the wire — and only then is it ground and polished. Watching someone do this at speed is the moment most guests stop thinking of cloisonné as decoration.

## 03 — The blue

![Enamel being applied to the curved blue body of a vessel](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/0f42432d1413.webp)

10:40 On a curved body

### Harder on a curve

The same work, with gravity against you

On a flat plate the enamel stays where it is put. On the shoulder of a vase it does not, and the whole operation becomes a negotiation with gravity. The factory's first chief designer, Qian Meihua, came here in 1958 in her early twenties as a member of Lin Huiyin's rescue group, and stayed sixty years.

## 04 — The ink

![A single white brush stroke on black](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/c82de34d4abc.webp)

11:40 The other workshop

### The shop that abolished grinding

Soot and bone glue · a recipe passed by word of mouth

For most of Chinese history ink meant a solid stick you ground with water before you could write a single character. In 1865 a scholar named Xie Songdai opened a shop in Liulichang selling ink already liquid — as dense as the stick, and ready. It was an immediate success and it is still open. The recipe, carbon black and bone glue plus a short list of additions, has never been written down; it is taught mouth to ear.

## 05 — Write one

![A hand writing characters with a brush on paper](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/3c2bab930d38.webp)

12:10 Your turn

### One black, and all the water

The same ink gives grey or black — you decide which

You get a brush and one character. There is only one colour in the bottle; wet grey and dry black are the same ink at different speeds. The shop's name means roughly *one skill is enough to serve the world* — which, after watching five firings' worth of cloisonné, lands differently than it would have this morning.

## Two ways with colour

### The same city, *two opposite theories of colour*

Cloisonné

- Colour is added, layer by layer
- Every colour needs a wall to hold it
- Fired repeatedly, then ground flat
- Weeks of work, and no way to undo a line
- Nearly extinct in 1949 — saved by committee and documentation

Ink

- There is one colour, and it is black
- Everything else is water — no walls at all
- A recipe never written down, taught mouth to ear
- The mark is made in a second and cannot be undone either
- Survived by becoming easier: liquid instead of a stick

## The bench, unrolled

### What the two benches hold

Copper · enamel · soot · paper

![Two craftsmen working on a large cloisonné piece](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/bc221c921588.webp)

**A large piece**大件 · two people, one vessel

![A Qing cloisonné jar, wire cells filled with blue enamel](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/5f8fc7940987.webp)

**The pattern**纹样 · every cell a wall

![A field of dense black ink](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/bc20581ada35.webp)

**The black**炭黑与骨胶 · that is the whole list

![An ink wash gradient](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/fb9a0a57c9a4.webp)

**The wash**浓淡 · same ink, more water

![Chinese characters written on paper](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/8eaaaf030987.webp)

**The page**落纸 · yours to take

## Practicalities

- Duration: Half a day
- Where: Two Beijing workshops — addresses on booking
- Cloisonné: Demonstration, not hands-on — the kiln decides
- Ink: Hands-on: brush and paper
- Heritage status: Both on the national list
- Guide: English-speaking, throughout
- You keep: What you wrote
## End card

![A Ming-marked cloisonné zun with taotie masks](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/79b6fce21dbd.webp)

### Book *the morning*

Half a day, on its own, hotel to hotel. Tell us a date.

[**Start planning](/contact)

## Sources

**资料与图片来源 · Sources**

文字依据：新华社《探访北京景泰蓝制作车间》、中国非物质文化遗产网（景泰蓝制作技艺 / 一得阁墨汁制作技艺）。1949 年从业者仅剩 60 人、梁思成林徽因抢救小组、钱美华 1958 年入厂、1956 年由 42 家私营珐琅厂与造办处合并建厂、1963 年首份文字标准；一得阁清同治四年（1865）由谢崧岱创于琉璃厂、店名取意、炭黑与骨胶配方口传心授、**墨汁而非墨锭**——均出自上述来源。

本页**掐丝、点蓝、器身与成品照片取自新华社车间探访报道**，是北京市珐琅厂的真实生产场景；水墨部分为 Unsplash 通用图。

已获授权使用：源站机构图（新华社、央视、各级政府网站及企业官网）的使用许可已由 LyrikTrip 取得。

原始出处

- [新华社｜探访北京景泰蓝制作车间](https://www.news.cn/culture/20240521/bb446c0901fa401aab8fd5599a9e010e/c.html)

图库占位

- A rectangular block of black ink with a textur — Gareth David · Unsplash
- a group of asian writing on a wall — Lu Neil · Unsplash
- a red vase sitting on top of a table — Amy Ozelo · Unsplash
- black vase — Tahereh Amin · Unsplash
- white and black abstract painting — Luca Nicoletti · Unsplash
- a black and white photo of a piece of fabric — FÍA YANG · Unsplash
- person holding black paint brush while paintin — Niketh Vellanki · Unsplash

2026-08 换图与授权

- 清景泰蓝罐（wi-pattern）—— Manchu Forbidden City Qing Cloisonne，Gary Lee Todd · CC0
- 大明景泰年款兽面纹尊（wi-end）—— Huanokinhejo · CC BY-SA 4.0

以上列表中若干图库条目已在 2026-08 的换图中被取代，保留仅作历史记录；当前实际使用的图片以本节列出的为准。