China entered the Bronze Age in Xia Dynasty, and the technology of copper smelting and bronze ware manufacturing was very developed. Because the Zhou Dynasty called copper gold, the inscriptions on bronzes were called "inscriptions on bronzes" or "auspicious words"; This bronze ware was called "Zhong Dingwen" in the past because it had the largest number of characters on Zhong Ding.
The application period of bronze inscriptions is about 800 years, from the end of Shang Dynasty to the Qin Dynasty's destruction of the Six Kingdoms. According to Rong Geng's Jin Wen Bian, there are 3,722 inscriptions, of which 2,420 can be identified.
Calligraphy font:
The development of bronze inscriptions promoted the development of calligraphy art, and bronze inscriptions in the Western Zhou Dynasty were very mature calligraphy art, which was valued by calligraphy historians. It rewrote the traditional understanding that calligraphy can only be truly understood after the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, and pushed the history of calligraphy art in China back to more than 3,000 years ago.
The style of inscriptions on bronze is generally called Da Zhuan or Shu Shu, and some are also called Li Shu. The book is a historian in Zhou Xuanwang's time, and the book is his calligraphy. Bronze inscriptions are first carved with ceramic models of inscriptions according to the original ink book, and then turned over and cast. Due to the superb casting technology of bronzes in Shang and Zhou Dynasties, the inscriptions on bronzes can generally reflect ink calligraphy's brushwork to a certain extent. Therefore, the inscriptions on bronze in Shang and Zhou Dynasties are actually a kind of calligraphy art in ink calligraphy.