Ink stick in seal form

This ink cake, molded in the form of a large official seal, is decorated on its face with a pair of dragons cavorting among the waves. The reverse side, shown here, displays a Ming-style imperial seal-script legend in four large characters, tianfu yongcang (天府永藏), meaning “eternal collection of the heavenly palace.” This cake conforms in shape and design to ink cakes made by the mid-eighteenth-century ink maker Wang Weigao.