Intangible Cultural Heritage China Seal Carving

Intangible cultural heritage China seal cutting.

China seal cutting: It is the art of combining calligraphy (mainly seal script) with carving (including chiseling and casting) to make seals. It is a unique carving art, with stone as the main material, carving knife as the tool and Chinese characters as the expression form, which developed from the ancient seal making technique in China.

It has a history of nearly 500 years since the school seal cutting in Ming and Qing Dynasties. However, seal cutting in Ming and Qing Dynasties developed from ancient seals, which laid a good foundation for seal cutting with its unique style and high artistry. Therefore, the artistic history of seal cutting can be traced back to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period more than 2,000 years ago (770 BC ~ 22 BC1year).

The earliest ancient seal is the ancient seal, which mostly belongs to the Warring States period and also has relics from the Spring and Autumn Period. Ancient seals are divided into official seals and private seals. At that time, they were called seals regardless of rank.

There are two kinds of seals: Zhu Wen (raised character, also called Yang Wen) and Bai Wen (concave character, also called Yin Wen). Ancient seals vary in shape and size, with special shapes such as rectangle, square and circle. The content includes official position, name, Kyrgyz language and Xiao pattern. Ancient seals were made by seiko, chiseled or cast; The seal is fine and the composition is vivid. Zhu Wenxi's sidebar is a little wide, and Bai Wenxi has many bounded squares. There is also an ancient seal with Zhu, which is also very unique. It can be seen that the production of seals was mature at that time.

The Qin and Han Dynasties were an unprecedented glorious period for the development of Yin Xi. In the Han dynasty, except for the emperor's seal, all the others were called seals. In official seal, some are called seal or seal, while in private seal, some are called letter seal or envelope, hence the word seal.

The seals of the Three Kingdoms, the Jin Dynasty and the Southern and Northern Dynasties basically followed the shape of Han and India. During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, paper was widely used, so a new seal printing method appeared, and the method of seal printing mud began to be abolished. Instead, it uses inkpad made of cinnabar to seal the seal, which is called Zhu-absorbing system.

The official seals of the Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties, up to the Song and Yuan Dynasties, were enlarged to compete with Zhu Wenyi. The printing Wen Qu bends back and forth to fill the gap on the printing surface. In the Song Dynasty, it developed into a ten-fold seal script, losing the graceful statutes of the traditional seal script.

With the prevalence of epigraphy in Qing Dynasty and a large number of epigraphy cultural relics unearthed in past dynasties, many scholars devoted themselves to the collection, research, writing and dissemination of these cultural relics and ancient characters, thus expanding the vision of seal engravers. There are more schools of seal cutting in Qing Dynasty than ever before.

The cutting methods of seal cutting include basic cutting methods and auxiliary cutting methods. The basic knife cutting methods are punching knife method and cutting knife method, and the auxiliary knife cutting method is used to help fill the shortcomings of punching knife method. There are many kinds and names.

The significance of its inheritance lies in that China's seal cutting not only emphasizes the brushwork and structure of China's calligraphy, but also highlights the free and hearty artistic expression in the one-inch square seal cutting, showing skills and expressing emotions, which is deeply loved by China literati and ordinary people. Seal cutting works can be appreciated independently and widely used in calligraphy and painting.

In 2009, China seal cutting was listed in the representative list of intangible cultural heritage of mankind.