Juque Inkstone

The Juque inkstone, also known as golden sand inkstone, comes from the cliffs at Dalongtan Village in Renhe district, Panzhihua City, Sichuan Province. This area was called ‘Juque’, which is where the stone obtained its name. It is a sericite-chlorite-dolomite shale that also contains quartz, rutile and pyrite. Juque inkstone has many varieties, such as blue eye, cyan flower, frozen fish brain, banana leaf white, purple sand, chicken blood, gold line and silver line types. In particular, round or oval stone eyes can be distributed in the stone, which look like red and gold pupils and cat’s eyes. These features are unique characteristics of this stone. It is rather low in hardness and mainly has various colours such as bright green, earth yellow, purplish grey, purplish brown or purplish black. There are three major production sites. The first is the Pingdi (Flatland) pit, where the stones often have stone eyes and are bluish green with rounded stone blocks that are mainly greenish...