# Han Convict-Brick Rubbing

_Services / Case Studies_

The Han convict-brick rubbing is a rubbing digitized by miscLab using depth-of-field elimination and supersampling techniques.

In conventional scanning or copy photography, the relatively deep texture of a rubbing often causes detail inside the character recesses to be lost. Through depth-of-field elimination and supersampling, miscLab preserves these details. The resulting digital rubbing carries legible inscription information while retaining rubbing ink tone, paper relief, damaged edges and stroke-recess details.

## Rubbing Sample Captions
- Han convict-brick rubbing, focus-stacked scanning sample
- Zoomable for stroke recesses, rubbing ink, paper relief, damaged edges and character forms
- Digitized by miscLab and shown with the collector's permission

## Case Object

This rubbing is a Han dynasty convict-brick rubbing from a private collection.

Convict bricks, also known as convict tomb bricks, are inscribed bricks used in the Han dynasty to record the identities of prisoners serving sentences. They were usually buried together with the remains and functioned in a way similar to modern epitaphs, making them valuable physical evidence for the study of Han social history, legal institutions and calligraphic art.

After Han prisoners were sentenced to penal labor, they often worked in state-run workshops, mausoleum construction or frontier garrison labor. If they died while serving their sentence, because they belonged to the lower strata of society and died away from home, they were often buried hastily. Officials or relatives would inscribe basic information on broken bricks or discarded tiles and place them in the tomb for later identification. These inscriptions are usually highly specific, mainly including the deceased person's name, native place (commandery, kingdom and county), crime, sentence term or affiliated institution, and exact date of death. Convict bricks have been called “miniature legal archives.” They reflect the harsh penal system and strict household registration system of the Han dynasty, while their rough, spontaneous carved writing is also an important example of Han folk calligraphy, including the transition from clerical script toward regular script, with considerable artistic and historical value.

Artifacts of this type are mainly concentrated in the Central Plains. Among them, finds from Luoyang, Henan, including Han convict cemeteries in the western and southern suburbs of Luoyang, are especially dense and large in scale.

The inscription on this rubbing likely reads: “In the third year of Yuankang, tenth month, ninth day, at the wu hour, [he] died. Former clerk Zhang Bohua, aged sixty, lived in the north lane of Shiqiao li, Changping county.” Further research is still pending.

## Digitization Method

- Use multi-layer focus-stacked scanning to preserve paper relief and detail inside the character strokes.
- Present the result as a high-resolution tiled image so local structures can be inspected in the browser.
- Color management, flat-field correction, stitching and file-specification control keep web presentation, research inspection and long-term archiving tied to the same traceable dataset.