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Brand recommendations for Japanese/Chinese style brushes?


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Does anyone have any recommendations for Japanese/Chinese style brushes?  I had a go on Chinese calligraphy practise mat* and want to see what I can do on pots with oxides etc. 

There are many types on Amazon, so I'm not sure which to buy.  I don't mind cheap and good since I'm not hung up on paying more for a brand.  Thought I'd ask here because I'd be using it on pots, not paper.  I'm OK with synthetic brushes too, since there'll be no cruelty involved.

ideas?

These are the kind of brushes I'm talking about:

 

*You dip a brush into water and paint on the mat.  The water turns black like ink, but then dries out and disappears, at which point you can paint again.  I got one for 99p on eBay, but it arrived folded and crumpled.  If I was buying again I'd get one that rolled up, even if it was a little more expensive.

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13 hours ago, Rae Reich said:

How cruel is it to harvest brush hairs?

I'm wary of anything to do with fur, especially in countries like China.   We don't know how the animals are kept or treated; some brushes made with 'wolf hair' are actually made using weasel hair and my assumption is they'd be kept in very small cages.

Sputty -

Thanks for the links. I hadn't heard of those shops. I went with three goat hair brushes in small, medium and large from Jackson's.

 

 

 

 

 

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Good brushes cost Money.

I like them made from natural hairs-My favorite are skunk and deer and horsehair. I make my own skunk brushes that have laster 3 decades of heavy use. Grow my own bamboo handles as well.The best brushes are the ones you make.

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1 hour ago, Mark C. said:

Good brushes cost Money.

I like them made from natural hairs-My favorite are skunk and deer and horsehair. I make my own skunk brushes that have laster 3 decades of heavy use. Grow my own bamboo handles as well.The best brushes are the ones you make.

This makes sense.  But one doesn't want to spend a lot of money when one doesn't know what one's doing. 

I have ordered a broom head so I can try to make my own hakeme brush, based on this video:

 

 

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19 hours ago, Mark C. said:

Good brushes cost Money.

I like them made from natural hairs-My favorite are skunk and deer and horsehair. I make my own skunk brushes that have laster 3 decades of heavy use. Grow my own bamboo handles as well.The best brushes are the ones you make.

Do you bend the bamboo as it's growing, or steam it? I often save bamboo roots that have grown into a curved shape, they have lots of joints, but I've never tried bending my own. 

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No bending.I drill a hole in the end and glue a loop of string so they hang to dry

wrap the hairs with a nylon string tightly-use water proof glue on this end so hairs are saturated in butt end-you can dill the bamboo thru and continue this string thru handle or just glue the butt end into hollow end of bamboo.

I posted photos of my brushes a few years ago.

The key to long life is hanging them from the loop end to dry.

I use mine almost weekly and they are still good 30 plus years later.

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On 5/27/2018 at 8:39 AM, Rae Reich said:

Do you bend the bamboo as it's growing, or steam it? I often save bamboo roots that have grown into a curved shape, they have lots of joints, but I've never tried bending my own. 

Sorry that question sounded dumb - my brain flipped to teapots when you said you make your own handles :/

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