Why the Famous Quarries Are All Closed Now
端石, Duan stone, has been mined since the early Tang dynasty, from a single source region around the Duanxi river outside what's now Zhaoqing. At its peak, more than 70 separate quarry pits were worked there. Today, fewer than a dozen are still active — and the famous ones, the names collectors actually know, are gone: 老坑 (Laokeng), 坑仔 (Kengzai), 麻子坑 (Mazikeng) have all been sealed for years, their remaining stone existing only in pieces already cut before the closures.
This inkstone copies a Song-dynasty form, 抄手砚 — "folding-hand," a rectangular shape with a deep recessed underside, simple and austere. The stone is old Kengzai material from the shop's own 1960s holdings, taken from a section of the pit positioned on the hillside just south of Laokeng itself — geographically close to the most prized source, stylistically similar in quality: fine-grained, dense, evenly colored blue-purple with a reddish cast. Ground against it, ink comes out glossy and layered rather than flat.
It closes this run of inkstones on the right note: every piece in this series exists because the shop happened to be holding good stone before the supply ran out. That's not really a design choice. It's a closing window.