Book seal, also called book cover. Seal script appeared in China in the Western Han Dynasty. In order to identify the ownership of books, ancient bibliophiles often put seals on books. The seal is generally engraved with name, person, serial number, hometown, ancestral home, library, official position, logo, giving and receiving, warning, notes, statement, etc.
Book stamps are mostly square and rectangular in shape, and there are other irregular shapes. The stamps collected in modern libraries have various shapes, including rectangles and squares, circles, triangles, prisms and ellipses. There are many kinds of materials for book stamps, such as wood, stone, metal, animal bones, ivory, plastic, plexiglass and so on.
The historical origin of book collection printing;
Gu has the seal of "The Thirty-fifth Generation Sun of Assistant Minister Chen Huangmen" and the seal of "The Thirty-seventh Generation Sun of Zhong Xuan". During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, women's books were covered with Twenty-two Women of Wei Guo written by Gui Youguang's wife Wang, Que Li Ruan Kong written by Ruan Yuanji and Granddaughter of Confucius Seventy-three.
Some books and seals try their best to show the glory of the family, such as Yuan Zhongche's seal of "Yuan's Father and Son's Passion" and "Loyalty and Filial Piety", and Ma Sizan's seal of "Yu Yin's Filial Piety is in the Family, and Friendship is in the Rural Party". Some book seals warn future generations not to lose books. For example, they are often engraved with the words "future generations will protect them". In Chen Zhan in the Qing Dynasty, there was a seal "Whoever won this book will learn from me".
Some book collectors are very cautious about borrowing books for fear of losing them. For example, in the Ming Dynasty, in Qiangu, there was a saying, "We should make every effort to find books and care for the Sui and Hou Dynasties. If there is a fake, it will be punished by heaven, and future generations will not cherish it. It is really stupid." There is "Protecting God Everywhere", and Zhang also stamped the book with the seal of "Protecting God Everywhere".
Catalogists hate future generations selling their books. For example, Wang Chang's book in the Qing Dynasty was printed with the words "If you don't have materials, you dare to sell them; Is a dog and a wolf, screening out the family, whipping the whip ",all printed with 64 words, is by far the most printed book. There is only one word with the least number of words, such as the word "beard" written by He Chaoyin in Qing Dynasty. Ancient book collectors usually printed more than one book, some as many as ten or even dozens.