Historic meaning of seal:Seal is created by seal carving, a kind of art presenting the beauty of words and paintings in terms of the sculpture technique. Furthermore, the invention of printing, one of the Chinese four inventions (compass, gunpowder, paper making and printing) derives from the seal because it will show the same words and pictures no matter how many times it is used. So we can find seal plays a very important role in history.
Seal Making:At ancient times, people used to make seal by bronze. And the nobles would use jade. It is difficult for craftsmen to make seal out of jade or bronze because they are hard materials. So by the end of the Yuan Dynasty, Wang Mian, a painter, began to carve his own seal using stalactite. The calligrapher or the painter made the seal himself can not only fully express the beauty of handwriting but also produce special seals because they carve the seals by knife instead of grinding them. So the practice of making seals by oneself was soon accepted by the litterateurs at that time and was developed into engraving some beautiful poems in seals or engraving the names, hometown, and date of production in seals. Under the advocate of litterateurs of different generations, seal, handwriting, and painting became Chinese three arts.
The most important thing to produce seals is the carving of the surface of seal. To finish a seal, the first thing is to arrange the words, then carve out the words by means of proficient knife techniques. To produce a high quality seal, craftsmen must be good at both the arrangement of words and the knife skills. To perfect the seal, the specialists will carve elaborate seal button on the of seal stone and carve thin relief on the body of seal stone or sculpture superb patterns using natural colors of stones, so that the seal will be more appreciative. And the seal has profound artistic meaning due to its integration of surface and tridimensional carvings. In daily life of Chinese people, a seal stands for credence and promise.
Use of seal:Chinese seals are in special patterns. After accomplishment, people can stamp their seals after dipping the red ink paste. So we can find that ink paste is inseparable from seals. Ink paste is made of vermilion (a kind of mercury compound). High quality ink paste must have bright color and will not fade after a long time. And the ink paste containers are supposed to be made of magnetic materials. And we should concoct the ink paste by ivory ink paste chopsticks as often as we can in order that the ink paste will not harden or the ink oil will not overflow. If paid particular attention, the ink paste containers are supposed to put inside wood or silk boxes so as not to be collided or covered with dust.
Seal education:In China, people pay great attention to the art of seal script carving and greatly advocate learning seal carving, such as setting the seal project in various artistic works exhibition; offering the course of seal script carving at the Arts Department of colleges and universities; establishing "Republic of China Seal Carving Institute" and publishing journals, giving lectures, having seminars, and organizing exhibition. Sometimes, a specialist will lead some people who are also interested in carving of the seal script to study on seal carving. They will get together and discuss with each other regularly and print their works and send to others for appreciation. Seal carving greatly enriches people’s daily life.
Art of seal carving:In republic of China, people have always been attaching great importance to the art of seal carving. The carving of seal script is not only the expression of art, but also of great important in practical utility. In many seal shops, customers can find seals in different materials, such as wood seal, stone seal, ivory seal, horn seal, alloy seal, synthetic fiber and so on. Customers can choose any one of them according to their taste. The lettering types on the seal differ from each other, such as the traditional seal character, clerical script, and regular script, as well as the artistic lettering types in the shape of birds, insects, and phoenix which are designed particularly for seal carving. Recently, due to the increase of the number of tourists and overseas students to Taiwan, the traditional Chinese art of seal carving are more and more popular among the foreigners. Many foreigners will customize their own seals for collection so that we can find the art of seal carving will be popular for its special style any time anywhere.