Sage's Calligraphy Brush

There is a unique tradition in Taiwan (and I am assuming China) where you cut your baby's newborn hair off at around 2-4 months (before it falls out naturally) and make the tip of a calligraphy brush out of the hair.

Jo and I had originally wanted to do this as a momento and since his hair would fall out anyway (supposedly) and he had a little bit of cradle cap (baby dandruff), we decided to shave him and get a cool brush out of it as well.

So we invited a guy over to discuss the procedure, price and whole situation and it was interesting. He had a large briefcase that he brought with him and looked very professional.

He opened it up and there were various cases of brushes and examples of his work (which were quite nice). One thing that I was interested in was his case of chops (or stamps that most Taiwanese use for important documents). Usually, they are stone and you carve out your (Chinese) name on the bottom to act as the 'signature' for your documents (yes, each one is unique, so like our handwriting, it is hard to duplicate). But these were transparent and had something in them - I thought they were insects or something. My first thought was: that is kinda cool -for boys - most boys do like insects, but it is a little bit weird.

Then I looked closer and could not for the life of me figure out what it was. It was definitely not an insect; it looked like a scab of some sort. So I asked, exposing my ignorance, and the answer was even weirder that I thought: it was the belly button that had fallen off! So I was half right, with it being a scab and all, but seriously thought it was not that. I then remembered I am in Asia, where weirdness often prevails.

So then the guy asked Jo if we wanted to make a chop with Sage's belly button and we both shook our heads and declined. Jo mentioned that she had thrown it away a long time ago and the guy looked shocked - how could another Taiwanese do that!? But Jo was put off by this almost as much as I was and we quickly changed the subject to our kid's hair calligraphy brush.

After the deal was made we were told to wait about a week and he would call.

He called tonight and delivered.

Here it is!

This is the final brush - with Sage's hair as the tip!

We prolly won't be using it for writing, but we could...

The Chinese is his name: Chi Hong Yi as well as his birthdate in Chinese.

Here's to many beautiful paintings and calligraphy!