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Ding Huan
Western Han craftsman of Chang'an who, according to the Miscellaneous Records of the Western Capital, made a self-levelling censer for bedding and a seven-wheel fan
In a workshop, a craftsman at a wooden vat lifts a bamboo-framed sheet from the pulp beside stacks of white paper and a tub of pulp, while others hang sheets to dry and work at a long table of carved printing blocks, and a water wheel turns outside the window.
Also known as Changan Qiaojiang
- Roles
- Inventor
Ding Huan was a craftsman in Western Han Chang'an known only from the Miscellaneous Records of the Western Capital (Xijing zaji); the official histories do not mention him. The book says he made an ever-full lamp decorated with seven dragons, five phoenixes and lotus motifs. He also made a censer for use among bedclothes, a device said to go back to a man named Fang Feng and long forgotten until Ding rebuilt it: the burner hung inside a set of pivoting rings so that it stayed level however it was turned. His nine-tier Boshan censer was carved with strange birds and beasts that moved of their own accord, and his seven-wheel fan linked seven wheels each ten feet across, so that one man turning it chilled a whole hall. The book is traditionally ascribed to Liu Xin and edited by Ge Hong, but its date is disputed and its stories cannot all be trusted.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; Western Han