Nashville Shodo Club (Japanese Calligraphy and Sumi-e)
( ナッシュビル書道教室) Established in 2021.
Shodo Tools
If you would like to start learning Shodo for the first time, you need some basic Shodo tools. The four most basic tools are called the Four Treasures of the Study (文房四宝, bunbō shihō).
From Wikipedia "Japanese Calligraphy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_calligraphy
I don't recommend you to get one too inexpensive even if it looks beautiful.
Large and Small brushes (筆 - fude)
An inkstick (墨 - sumi)
A hardened mixture of vegetable or pine soot and glue in the shape of a stick. ※Premade liquid sumi (墨汁,bokuju) is more often used these days for practice.
An inkstone (硯 - suzuri)
ー 文 房 四 宝 ー
Mulberry paper (和紙 - washi)
It is called "Rice paper" in the US. We need ※Hanshi size paper
A heavy woolen cloth (下敷き - shitajiki)
to grind the inkstick against, mixed with water.
to hold the paper in place.
to place under the paper (often newsprint is used as well) to prevent ink from bleeding through.
A paper weight (文鎮 - bunchin)
★I strongly reccomend you to prepare the tools before the class starts.
The easiest way to collect the tools is to purchase
a Shodo Set, instead of buying individual items.
I recommend Kuretake Shodo Set from Amazon US.
呉竹(Kuretake) is one of the most famous drawing supply companies in Japan.
We need "Two fudes(large and small), Bokuju, Paper, Suzuri, Bunchin and Shitajiki" for our classses
(I have some tools for you to borrow but the number is very limited)
If you would like to know about tools better, here is the book you can learn it including the fundamental Shodo rules.
← Click the book, it will link to the Amazon website!
Shodo- Japanese Calligraphy for A Self-Leaner($19.50USD)