- 27
Master of the Water, Pine and Stone Retreat (B. 1943)
bidding is closed
Description
- Master of the Water, Pine and Stone Retreat
- The Eight Sainted Staves
- ink on cloud-dragon and xuan paper, in eight hanging scrolls
Each scroll is signed, dated May 2012, with one seal of the artist, and inscribed.
Staff 1: The Chisel-Immortal of Prunus Grotto was second to none as a carver. He had trained with a furniture-maker where his skills at carving soon had him making fancy beds for expensive brothels. After forty years he realized that his greatest achievement was to produce magic carvings that were of only secondary interest to those who ended up in a position to admire them. So he quit his job, set up a little stall in the marketplace, and began to carve walking staves, whose users would appreciate his work. His fame spread beyond the capital and the Brethren of the Staff began to beat a path to his doorway, so he left the capital and settled in the foothills near his ancestral home, where he built himself a little house in a grove of prunus trees. It had a finely carved door. He soon became friendly with Staff Masters from all over the empire, although never aspired to being one himself. ‘It am content to make them, others can test their inner powers.’ He said. Inscribed by the Master of the Water Pine and Stone Retreat, May 2012.
Staff 2: The Chisel-Immortal only ever worked from solid wood and generally from prunus wood, which he preferred and of which he had a plentiful supply in his Prunus Grotto home. He was such a master carver that he said he enjoyed the challenge of transforming a length of wood into a completely natural-looking walking staff. Aficionados of the staff marvelled at his skills and could never distinguish his finished works from those of Staff Masters who simply did a little editing of naturally shaped gnarled vines and branches. But there was a special magic to his staves as if by bringing such natural dignity to a block of undistinguished and indistinguishable wood, he had somehow infused it with a sagely inner power. It was uncanny how often his chosen design accorded with the special powers of his staves. Mountain Torrent, where the spaces he cut away were the water, was no exception. It was an unusually powerful Water Staff in the right hands. Inscribed by the Master of the Water Pine and Stone Retreat, May 2012.
Staff 3: I have no idea how many staves the Chisel-Immortal made in his final decades. He lived to be very old, never losing his skills or his devotion to the wood and, although his staves became a little simpler and less detailed in his very old age, they became more powerful. Each staff was lovingly crafted beyond the thrall of time so often he would work with utter focus on a single staff for months, once even for more than two years, to my certain knowledge for I visited him several times and finally ended up acquiring the staff he had taken so long to make. I could usually recognize his staves from certain artistic quirks. He loved the intricacies of Riven Reality staves, but usually the divided halves were joined and re-joined to give greater strength and more intriguing surface designs. I must have seen thirty or forty of his staves over the years and on my frequent visits to his home while he lived, but my guess is that he made closer to a hundred in all. Inscribed by the Master of the Water Pine and Stone Retreat, May 2012.
Staff 4: Other than me the Chisel-Immortal had many devoted friends among the Brethren of the Staff, among whom were those who commissioned several staves over the years. When he came to know a Staff Master well, he would make a staff as a gift for him. It would have all the power of his usual staves, but with some additional, discreet reference to the master he had in mind. He loved to work on gifts with a specific recipient in mind, he once told me. It inspired him to excel and kept his chisel singing into the night. It also encouraged playfulness. He once carved a gift-staff for The Wutong Madman, a friend of mine who lived in a wutong tree outside the gates of the Hidden Light Temple. At first glance it was a typically sturdy, Riven Reality staff with what appeared to be a natural surface, but at its head was a perfectly observed portrait of my friend in his tree smiling at would-be disciples and bidding them onwards to the temple where they would not bother him. Inscribed by the Master of the Water Pine and Stone Retreat, May 2012.
Staff 5: I always liked the Chisel-Immortal’s personalized staves. He had an innate sense of fun, and once he was released from the need to make a staff look more natural than one taken straight from nature, he was at his best. The Born-again Queller was a strange hermit but a considerable Staff Master. He roamed freely through the mountains of Jiangnan, rarely settling for long in one place claiming, with a twinkle in his eye, to be the reincarnated Zhong Kui, queller of demons. When it was pointed out to him that there were no demons in the Jiangnan area that bothered anyone, he simply replied that in that case, he was doing an excellent job. The Chisel-Immortal carved him a staff as a gift even though he had never bought one and never visited. He admired the eccentric old man’s sense of fun. It was I who delivered it. Into the butt-end of the staff the Chisel-Immortal had carved what he said was as close to a real image of a demon as he was willing to go. Inscribed by the Master of the Water Pine and Stone Retreat, May 2012.
Staff 6: I visited the Chisel-Immortal many times over several decades, often staying for quite extended periods, so we became firm friends. I was the beneficiary of his generosity on several occasions, and in return I found and mounted strange stones for him, which he also came to love, although he would never work on them himself. He explained to me that he was in tune with wood and could dance with its grain, while stone was too hard and cold for him.’ He carved one staff for me with, at its finial, a portrait of the two of us head to head, deep in conversation, as we so often were when he was not carving and lost in a Peach Blossom Spring of his own making, beyond my call. Such intensity can be sustained only for so long, however, so between staves, he would stop for a while and enjoy the other benefit of his prunus orchard: plum wine. Inscribed by the Master of the Water Pine and Stone Retreat, May 2012.
Staff 7: One of the most powerful of Staff-Masters active while the Chisel-Immortal lived was Hidden Dragon, a hermit of Golden Goose Mountain whose powers were legendary, although few had ever been able to find him. They did not know how. Looking for the hermit was a waste of time, he was famed for his ability to assume any form in order to disappear. The only way to find him was to set a powerful staff to find his staff while it was in use and pouring its energy into the universe, then he was easy to locate. That is how I first met him. Later, I commissioned the Chisel-Immortal to carve him a fine staff as a gift. It was splendid, with a dragon-head but as hard to find as the hermit himself. I put it to the test by seeing if it could locate its future master while he was away from his retreat high in the mountains. It took me straight to him as he was orchestrating the sunset. Inscribed by the Master of the Water Pine and Stone Retreat, May 2012.
Staff 8: The Chisel-Immortal only ever made one staff for himself, not that he ever expected to use it other than for support on mountain paths, and to look the part when stepping out. It was the least natural-looking of all his staves, and when I noticed the figure at its top feeling a tree trunk knowingly, I asked why he had carved so obvious a figure. He said it was a self-portrait. I\ pointed out that it looked not a bit like him, and he replied that that was precisely why it was not obvious, as I had thought. It looked exactly like him, he said, but not on the surface. He intended to give it away to whoever could first see his true self in it. Many people claimed to have done so, but he rejected them all. I knew that the true answer was that the portrait lay not in the figure, but in the carving of the rest of the staff, but I declined to claim the prize as he was having too much fun with it. Inscribed by the Master of the Water Pine and Stone Retreat, May 2012.
Staff 1: The Chisel-Immortal of Prunus Grotto was second to none as a carver. He had trained with a furniture-maker where his skills at carving soon had him making fancy beds for expensive brothels. After forty years he realized that his greatest achievement was to produce magic carvings that were of only secondary interest to those who ended up in a position to admire them. So he quit his job, set up a little stall in the marketplace, and began to carve walking staves, whose users would appreciate his work. His fame spread beyond the capital and the Brethren of the Staff began to beat a path to his doorway, so he left the capital and settled in the foothills near his ancestral home, where he built himself a little house in a grove of prunus trees. It had a finely carved door. He soon became friendly with Staff Masters from all over the empire, although never aspired to being one himself. ‘It am content to make them, others can test their inner powers.’ He said. Inscribed by the Master of the Water Pine and Stone Retreat, May 2012.
Staff 2: The Chisel-Immortal only ever worked from solid wood and generally from prunus wood, which he preferred and of which he had a plentiful supply in his Prunus Grotto home. He was such a master carver that he said he enjoyed the challenge of transforming a length of wood into a completely natural-looking walking staff. Aficionados of the staff marvelled at his skills and could never distinguish his finished works from those of Staff Masters who simply did a little editing of naturally shaped gnarled vines and branches. But there was a special magic to his staves as if by bringing such natural dignity to a block of undistinguished and indistinguishable wood, he had somehow infused it with a sagely inner power. It was uncanny how often his chosen design accorded with the special powers of his staves. Mountain Torrent, where the spaces he cut away were the water, was no exception. It was an unusually powerful Water Staff in the right hands. Inscribed by the Master of the Water Pine and Stone Retreat, May 2012.
Staff 3: I have no idea how many staves the Chisel-Immortal made in his final decades. He lived to be very old, never losing his skills or his devotion to the wood and, although his staves became a little simpler and less detailed in his very old age, they became more powerful. Each staff was lovingly crafted beyond the thrall of time so often he would work with utter focus on a single staff for months, once even for more than two years, to my certain knowledge for I visited him several times and finally ended up acquiring the staff he had taken so long to make. I could usually recognize his staves from certain artistic quirks. He loved the intricacies of Riven Reality staves, but usually the divided halves were joined and re-joined to give greater strength and more intriguing surface designs. I must have seen thirty or forty of his staves over the years and on my frequent visits to his home while he lived, but my guess is that he made closer to a hundred in all. Inscribed by the Master of the Water Pine and Stone Retreat, May 2012.
Staff 4: Other than me the Chisel-Immortal had many devoted friends among the Brethren of the Staff, among whom were those who commissioned several staves over the years. When he came to know a Staff Master well, he would make a staff as a gift for him. It would have all the power of his usual staves, but with some additional, discreet reference to the master he had in mind. He loved to work on gifts with a specific recipient in mind, he once told me. It inspired him to excel and kept his chisel singing into the night. It also encouraged playfulness. He once carved a gift-staff for The Wutong Madman, a friend of mine who lived in a wutong tree outside the gates of the Hidden Light Temple. At first glance it was a typically sturdy, Riven Reality staff with what appeared to be a natural surface, but at its head was a perfectly observed portrait of my friend in his tree smiling at would-be disciples and bidding them onwards to the temple where they would not bother him. Inscribed by the Master of the Water Pine and Stone Retreat, May 2012.
Staff 5: I always liked the Chisel-Immortal’s personalized staves. He had an innate sense of fun, and once he was released from the need to make a staff look more natural than one taken straight from nature, he was at his best. The Born-again Queller was a strange hermit but a considerable Staff Master. He roamed freely through the mountains of Jiangnan, rarely settling for long in one place claiming, with a twinkle in his eye, to be the reincarnated Zhong Kui, queller of demons. When it was pointed out to him that there were no demons in the Jiangnan area that bothered anyone, he simply replied that in that case, he was doing an excellent job. The Chisel-Immortal carved him a staff as a gift even though he had never bought one and never visited. He admired the eccentric old man’s sense of fun. It was I who delivered it. Into the butt-end of the staff the Chisel-Immortal had carved what he said was as close to a real image of a demon as he was willing to go. Inscribed by the Master of the Water Pine and Stone Retreat, May 2012.
Staff 6: I visited the Chisel-Immortal many times over several decades, often staying for quite extended periods, so we became firm friends. I was the beneficiary of his generosity on several occasions, and in return I found and mounted strange stones for him, which he also came to love, although he would never work on them himself. He explained to me that he was in tune with wood and could dance with its grain, while stone was too hard and cold for him.’ He carved one staff for me with, at its finial, a portrait of the two of us head to head, deep in conversation, as we so often were when he was not carving and lost in a Peach Blossom Spring of his own making, beyond my call. Such intensity can be sustained only for so long, however, so between staves, he would stop for a while and enjoy the other benefit of his prunus orchard: plum wine. Inscribed by the Master of the Water Pine and Stone Retreat, May 2012.
Staff 7: One of the most powerful of Staff-Masters active while the Chisel-Immortal lived was Hidden Dragon, a hermit of Golden Goose Mountain whose powers were legendary, although few had ever been able to find him. They did not know how. Looking for the hermit was a waste of time, he was famed for his ability to assume any form in order to disappear. The only way to find him was to set a powerful staff to find his staff while it was in use and pouring its energy into the universe, then he was easy to locate. That is how I first met him. Later, I commissioned the Chisel-Immortal to carve him a fine staff as a gift. It was splendid, with a dragon-head but as hard to find as the hermit himself. I put it to the test by seeing if it could locate its future master while he was away from his retreat high in the mountains. It took me straight to him as he was orchestrating the sunset. Inscribed by the Master of the Water Pine and Stone Retreat, May 2012.
Staff 8: The Chisel-Immortal only ever made one staff for himself, not that he ever expected to use it other than for support on mountain paths, and to look the part when stepping out. It was the least natural-looking of all his staves, and when I noticed the figure at its top feeling a tree trunk knowingly, I asked why he had carved so obvious a figure. He said it was a self-portrait. I\ pointed out that it looked not a bit like him, and he replied that that was precisely why it was not obvious, as I had thought. It looked exactly like him, he said, but not on the surface. He intended to give it away to whoever could first see his true self in it. Many people claimed to have done so, but he rejected them all. I knew that the true answer was that the portrait lay not in the figure, but in the carving of the rest of the staff, but I declined to claim the prize as he was having too much fun with it. Inscribed by the Master of the Water Pine and Stone Retreat, May 2012.