1. Ancient seal of the Warring States Period
Ancient seal is a general term for seals in the pre-Qin period. Most of the earliest seals we can see now are the ancient seals of the Warring States Period. Many characters of these ancient seals are unknown to us now. Zhu Wen's ancient seals are mostly equipped with wide edges. The seal strokes are as fine as a scratch, all from casting. Most of the ancient seals in Bai language are added with side bars or a vertical grid in the middle, and the characters are cast and chiseled. Besides the names of Sima and Situ, the official seal has various irregular shapes, and the contents are also engraved with auspicious words and vivid objects.
2. Qin seal
Qin seal refers to the seal that was popular from the late Warring States Period to the early Western Han Dynasty, and the character used is Qin Zhuan. Look at its calligraphy style and Qin and Han dynasties, Qin stone carvings and other characters are very similar, all of which are easier to understand than the ancient warring States period. Qin seals are mostly carved in white, and there is often a square on the surface of the seal. The size of the official seal used by junior officials is about half that of the general square official seal, and it is rectangular, making the word "day", which is called "semi-pass seal". Private seals are generally rectangular, and there are also round and oval forms. In addition to official names, names and Kyrgyz, there are also aphorisms and idioms such as "respect for things", "think about success" and "harmony with the masses".
3. Han official seal
broadly speaking, it is the general name of official seal from Han to Wei and Jin dynasties. Compared with Qin Zhuan, the seal is more neat, straight and square, and the style is vigorous and heavy. At the end of the Western Han Dynasty, the handicraft industry was very developed, so in the New Mang era, (? The official seal of "Xin" is especially exquisite and vivid, and the seal art of Han Dynasty reached its peak. Therefore, it became a model for later seal engravers to learn.
The official seals of the two Han dynasties are mostly in white, all of which are cast. Only a few troops are in urgent need and chisel the official seal of the brotherly nation without casting it, which will be introduced later.
4. Chinese private seal
Chinese private seal is the private seal of the Han dynasty, which is the largest and richest type of ancient seal. Not only do they have different shapes, but they are all made of vermilion and white, or they are decorated with patterns such as four spirits, and then there are multi-sided printing, overprint (mother-child printing) and hook printing. In addition to the name, the printed words often include Ji language, native place, table characters, and auxiliary characters such as "seal", "private seal" and "letter seal". The button system is extremely diverse, which fully shows the ingenuity of craftsmen in the Han Dynasty. The private seal in the two Han dynasties is still mostly in white, while in the Western Han Dynasty, it is mainly engraved, while in the Eastern Han Dynasty, it is cast with chisels.
5. general print
general print is also a kind of Chinese official seal. These seals are often made in a hurry to be appointed temporarily during the March, and they are carved on the printing surface with a knife in a hurry, which is also called "urgent seal". General print's unique style is full of interest, which has a great influence on his later artistic style. In the Han Dynasty, generals used seals, which were generally called "seals" instead of "seals", which was a major feature of military seals.
6. Han jade seal
Two Han jade seals are very rare in ancient seals. "Wearing jade" was also an elegant fashion for famous officials and scholars in ancient times. Generally, jade seals are well-made, rigorous in composition, and round in strokes. At first glance, the strokes are square and upright, but they have no intention of stagnation. Because jade is hard and not easy to be cut by knives, a special seal cutting technique, the so-called "knife-cutting method", is produced. Because jade is not easy to corrode and damage, it has been handed down from generation to generation to better preserve its true colors.
7. Printing in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties
The official and private printing forms and button system in Wei, Jin followed the Han Dynasty, but the casting was not as beautiful as that in Han. The official seal handed down from generation to generation for the brothers has many characters, such as carving with a knife, and the calligraphy style is natural in Frank Shu, thus becoming the representative of seal cutting style in a period. There were not many seals handed down from ancient times in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and the official seal was slightly larger in size, and the words were hastily chiseled, but the official seal was not cast.
8. Zhu Bai Wen Yin
Zhu Bai Wen's alternate printing style is very ingenious in Chinese printing, and it is said that it originated in the Eastern Han Dynasty. Its ways are extremely diverse, and the position arrangement and number of words of Zhu Bai characters can be flexibly changed without limitation. The number of seals cited here can be seen. The principle of Zhu Bai depends on the number of strokes, and Zhu Wen mostly has the number of strokes, Zhu Wen mostly has fewer strokes, while Bai Wen is the opposite, thus achieving the harmonious effect of Zhu Rubai and Bai Ruzhu. Most of these seals are privately printed and have not been used for official seals.
9. Mother seal
Mother seal, also known as "Xi seal", originated in the Eastern Han Dynasty and prevailed in the Wei, Jin and Six Dynasties. It is a seal made by two or three seals. A person's stomach is empty, and one or two small seals can be properly inserted to form the shape of a mother's pocket. There are also sets of two seals on one side (such as the "Guo Yi" seal in the right column) into a group of three parties. In the volume of one seal, it has the use value of several seals, which shows the technological level of ancient printers.
1. Six-sided printing
Six-sided printing handed down from generation to generation is rare. This kind of "convex" seal has a hole in the nose, which can be worn, and a small seal on the nose, together with the other five printing surfaces, is called six-sided seal. A typical style of six-sided seal handed down from ancient times is white with edges, each word is a line, dense on the top and sparse on the bottom, and the vertical pen of the seal is long and drooping, and the end is tapering like a hanging needle, so it has the common name of "hanging needle seal". Although this style still has the advantages of stretching strokes and contrasting density, it is easy to become vulgar, far less than that of Chinese and Indian, so seal engravers have always done it only occasionally.
11. Miao Zhuan Seal (with Bird and Insect Book)
Six-sided seals handed down from generation to generation are few in kind. This kind of "convex" seal has a hole in the nose, which can be worn, and a small seal on the nose, together with the other five printing surfaces, is called six-sided seal. A typical style of six-sided seal handed down from ancient times is white with edges, each word is a line, dense on the top and sparse on the bottom, and the vertical pen of the seal is long and drooping, and the end is tapering like a hanging needle, so it has the common name of "hanging needle seal". Although this style still has the advantages of stretching strokes and contrasting density, it is easy to become vulgar, far less than that of Chinese and Indian, so seal engravers have always done it only occasionally.
12. miscellaneous seal
among the seals since the warring States period, miscellaneous seal is also a very unique type. Its style is not fixed, and its size ranges from several inches to several minutes, with extremely rich changes. Except for Fiona Fang's length and width, there are concave-convex prints, square, round and triangular prints, two-round and three-round beads, and three-leaf spreading shapes, and so on. Miscellaneous seals are only used for private printing because of their unique humor and different solemn and calm requirements from official seals.
13. Graphic printing
Pictures were printed from the Warring States to the Han and Wei Dynasties, with the Han Dynasty as the most. Also known as Xiao-shaped seal or pictographic seal. Various forms, concise and vivid, in addition to figures, birds and animals, riding cars, auspicious sheep, fish and geese and other patterns, the four spirits of auspicious sheep are common. Dragons, tigers, finches and (phoenixes and turtles) entered the seal, and this kind of seal is also called "Four Spirit Seal".
14. chengyu seal
chengyu seal has existed since the warring States period, and there are more than 1 kinds of proverbs and idioms used. For example, there are many idioms, such as "going straight", "honoring things", "benefiting from the day", "going in and out of good fortune" and so on. The number of words varies from one to two, up to twenty, which are used not only to express auspiciousness, but also to commemorate the dead.
15. Flower-printed
Flower-printed, also known as "Bet Word", flourished in Song Dynasty and flourished in Yuan Dynasty, so it is also called "Yuan Bet". Yuan bet is mostly rectangular, generally engraved with regular script surnames, and engraved with Ba Si Ba Wen or Hua bet. From a practical point of view, most of the seals of past dynasties have the function of preventing counterfeiting. As an individual's arbitrary writing, the changed "betting words" (some of which are no longer words, but only personal symbols) are naturally more difficult to imitate and achieve the anti-counterfeiting effect, so this kind of betting words has been used until the Ming and Qing Dynasties.
16. Mud sealing
Mud sealing, also known as "mud sealing", is not a seal, but a precious object preserved from the remains of ancient seals-dry and hard mud balls covered with ancient seals. Because the original seal is a negative script, the bell becomes a positive script on the mud, and its edge is a mud surface, so it forms a wide edge with different sides. The use of lute was from the Warring States to the Han and Wei Dynasties, and it was not until after the Jin Dynasty that paper, silk and silk gradually replaced the correspondence of bamboo and wood slips that lute could not be used. Later seal engravers learned from these precious seal rubbings and used them for printing, thus expanding the scope of seal cutting's methods. Basic training and creation
17. Button system
In ancient times, most of the seals had buttons, so that the holes punched on the buttons were tied to belts, which was the ancient method of "wearing seals". Since the Han Dynasty, emperors and officials have been distinguished by buttons such as tortoise, camel and horse. For example, the turtle button, camel button and snake button used by senior official history are the common button systems granted to brothers and other official seals in the Han, Wei and Jin Dynasties. There are many forms of buttons in the past dynasties, among which altar buttons, nose buttons and multi-bucket buttons are the most common. Now, some buttons are listed on the right.
18. Official seal since the Sui and Tang Dynasties
In the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the official seal began to increase. With the widespread application of paper, Zhu Wen gradually replaced Bai Wen. Many official seals began to have year numbers chiseled on their backs. In terms of characters, Sui seal was mostly used, and began to use the inflected "nine-fold text" to print (the number of "nine" in ancient times was the ultimate, so it didn't have to be nine-fold. Can vary with the complexity of strokes) in order to fill the printed surface. In the Tang and Song Dynasties, it began to be printed in official script, and in the Qing Dynasty, the official seal was in Manchu. Both Chinese and Chinese are used, and they are engraved in one seal. The official seals left by various generations of peasant regimes in the ignorant Qing Dynasty are also revolutionary cultural relics worthy of our cherish.
19. Song Yuanyuan Zhu Wenyin
Since the Wei and Jin Dynasties, paper and silk have gradually replaced bamboo slips. By the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the use of seals had been directly covered with printing color cymbals. By the Yuan Dynasty, when literati painting was in its heyday, it was written by literati seals. The seals engraved by the printers had been integrated with poetry and calligraphy, which played a bright role and were loved by calligraphy and painting. At this stage, first of all, Zhao Mengfu, a painter and calligrapher in the early Song Dynasty, advocated seal cutting's manpower. Because of the influence of Li Yangbing's seal script in calligraphy, the seal style was smooth and beautiful, resulting in a unique seal-the seal of "Round Zhuwen", which was adopted by later seal engravers.
2. Seal of Brothers' Characters
Under the influence of Han culture, brothers since the Song Dynasty have created their own characters based on Chinese calligraphy, and used their characters as official seals, with little spread. There are Jin Guo (Jurchen) books, Yuan Dynasty Basiba and Xixia seal scripts, many of which are still unknown.
21. Today's style seal
In Chinese calligraphy, seal script has become the main body of seal art because of its strong decoration. However, after the Qin and Han Dynasties, with the development of calligraphy, seal script is not the only calligraphy used for seals. In addition to the seal of Li Kai in the Tang and Song Dynasties and the inscription of characters in the Yuan Dynasty, there was a precedent for Li Kai to be printed in the Wei and Jin Dynasties. Since the Qing dynasty, seal engravers have also tried to print in modern style (official script, block script and cursive script), among which there are many excellent works. This makes us realize that the embodiment of seal art is not limited to the use of a certain style, but the key lies in the high application ability of composition, calligraphy and knife.
22. Collecting seals, Zhai Guan seals and leisure seals
The seals developed in the Tang and Song Dynasties, and developed day by day as an appreciation art. Special seals for collection, appreciation and revision began to appear. There are many kinds of Zhong in the collection of calligraphy and painting. "Zhai Guan Seal" is a seal carved with the elegant name of a scholar's study and living room, such as "building, pavilion, pavilion, nest, courtyard, Zhai, porch and hall", but in fact, many nominal ones (Wen Zhiming said that most of his bookstores are built on seals) are just expressions of intellectuals' ideological spirit. The idle chapter originated from the ancient auspicious seal. These works, which were printed with poems, idioms, famous sayings and common sayings, further developed seal cutting from a simple practical art of engraving official positions and names to an independent appreciation art with literary meaning, which complemented poetry, calligraphy and painting.