When we first formally started to introduce Hui Zhou art and inkstone to the western world, it was 1998. Because we do all the web development by ourselves and we always had the money needed to fund our venture, we were able to continue our offering for the last few years! None of the owners took a penny of pay and with over $20,000 of capital investment, we come to shape to provide all the wonderful services that we have been offering. We met a lot of wonderful wonderful friends on the net, something which is well worth for!

  At this point, on a new century, we would like to provide some valuable services to the artists and art teachers in the developed country. We as owners will continue to work as volunteers,, but we would like to hire a helper to take care of packaging, shipping, taking pictures, ..etc. to free us the time to do development, offering more products, web promoting services for artists, ..etc.

  For anyone who loves art, we are sure you have seen again and again, some of the most beautiful arts and crafts cannot afford the artist for a living, because the limited awareness about  them.  And you wish you have the time and ability to introduce them to the rest of the world. This is how AcornPlanet.com was born. The Acorn Planet meant to introducing a small seed to the world and wishing it will grow into small tree, to a big tree, then to a forest.

  Take an example of inkstone, after 1977 and before 1995, the inkstone industry in our hometown --- a small county village with 500, 000 people then, is the most prosperous government owned business, at that time, 99% of the companies are government owned. Since inkstone is the most significant representation of Chinese culture and art, the government sponsored a lot of the exhibitions around China, Hongkong, Taiwan, Singapore, ... By the late 1990's, China is in full swing of economic development and reform. Though it was the right move to take China out of poverty. But it was a huge set back for the regions and industries that did not have mass producing power. Very soon, the famous She inkstone factory went bankrupt. All the carvers are without job and the inkstone pieces in the factory's exhibition hall is merged to the old Hu Kai Wen Hui inkstick factory. Though some of the inktone carvers are already known to the collectors in East Asia, still each individual did not have the ability to promote and market their art. Not mentioning the not known carvers. After 1989, as the economy in Japan faulted, the big buyers from Japan disappeared, even the few private dealers also gradually closed their door. Because Huizhou is situated inland, the big economic boom along the coast of China did not have any effect to the area. At the same time, in neighboring province, electric cutting and carvings machines are introduced to inkstone making, a lot of mainly machine operated inkstones came to the market, on the tourist street in Huizhou China, not hand made inkstone were filled on the shelves. This turned off the interest of inkstone dealers in Singapore, Hongkong, and other Asia countries. The high price of hand carved inkstones from She county carvers were hardly able to sell in the region. Under these circumstances, we decided to use the internet media to revive this thousand year old culture. Besides the fact that we are introducing an art form that nowadays are hardly used anymore and 99% of the audience that we are going to talk to have never in their life heard about what an inkstone is, also the different nature of each stone and  the uniqueness of the carving of each inkstone by each artist, to present a stone to our viewer on the web, a lot of time and work are involved. For the past few years, the web site sure commanded a lot of our personal time. At the same time, learning the rope of importing and exporting business, it sure also commanded our personal funding to keep this project going.

  Almost 300 years ago, one of China's most learned scholar emperor Ch'ien-lung (1736-1795) who concentrated his energies on calligraphy and art feared of making the mistake of loosing the traditional art of inkstone, commended scholars compiled the Inkstone Catalogue "Hsi-ch'ing Yen-p'u", two hundred essential pieces of inkstone were selected from the Emperor's court collection through out the Chinese dynasty. Today living in the society of computers, our most fear the time of loosing this traditional art might coming. In 1999, we visited Singapore, considered an ultimate city for the shoppers of Chinese art and antique. To our surprise, every gift and antique store we visited are on their exit of exhibiting any inkstones. Furthermore, the university of Singapore is no longer requiring learning Chinese as a requirement for graduating from the school. Our impression was not just inkstones, Chinese inksticks, ... are a dying art and culture, ink brush calligraphy is also becoming a dying art. 

  All these observation further confirmed our commitment to advocate the ink brush art and inkstones. Our site was almost the only web page that described inkstone on the Yahoo search in 1998. But now when you search on Yahoo, pages and pages of indexes that link to web pages that talk about inkstones. National Palace Museum in Taiwan has a special exhibition of the fifty inkstones collected in the Catalogue "Hsi-ch'ing Yen-p'u". This sure is great encouragement for us and we hope may be the internet as an exceptional tool is exactly what we need to reserve this special form of art. Though not many people nowadays have the time to use the inkstone to grind ink for their calligraphy and art, but inkstone is the beauty of nature, the essence of Chinese and brush art, we call them sustainable art that survived 5000 years of war, turbulence, and economical change, with the help of the media of internet as a tool of education, with people who has a willingness to propagate, it will pass on not just to people who come from the same root, but also to the millions and millions of people who simply just loves natural beauty and art!

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