In the gentle breeze, Yunluo and Liuxun wandered around the West Lake. They walked along the lakeside, turned right after passing the Xiling Bridge, and walked into a two-story building that combined Chinese and Western styles and was hidden in the shade of green trees on the right side of the gate of Gushan Park: the China Seal Museum.

The China Seal Museum is the first professional seal museum planned and built by the Xiling Seal Society, integrating document collection, cultural relics display and academic exchange. The rich academic atmosphere and pleasant natural scenery make it a national garden-style museum.

When Yunluo looked at this, he thought of the bamboo tea seal made of top-grade glass-type blue water jadeite that Qin Ren gave him. Liu Xun was devoted to spiritual practice and did not understand the study of seals, but it was interesting to follow Yunluo.

On the west side of the main entrance of the double-eaved corners and the terraced corridor stands a huge white marble dragon-shaped seal, with the seven characters "Huaguo Seal Museum" written by the late president of the Xiling Seal Society on the side. It is known as "the best seal in the world" and is the logo of the Seal Museum.

A corridor was built behind the museum following the mountain terrain, connecting to the Gushan site of the Xiling Seal Society. It blends in with the original cultural landscape of the society and brings out the best in each other. It is one of the unique garden-style museums in China.

Liu Xun then pulled Yun Luo into the hall through the main entrance. Facing them was a granite relief entrance hall, on which were engraved several delicate, exquisite, elegant and gorgeous seals, which condensed the 3,000-year history of seal carving. This was the "Hall of Seals of All Dynasties".

The exquisitely carved, simple and powerful seals appear more mysterious and distant under the dim light. The boutique display cabinets and display windows are exceptionally bright, just like the "Qin Dynasty Moon" set off by the stars, making people feel like they are in the time and space corridor of the development of Chinese seal carving.

As we move forward, history begins to flow from the ancient Shang and Yin dynasties. Each of these precious objects tells us about the emergence of seals along with words. From the process of seal patterns to the evolution of seals as tokens, with the changes in history, seals have shown different styles in terms of shape, materials, taste, and casting and chiseling techniques.

Yunluo looked carefully and walked into the "School Seal Hall" on the second floor with Liuxun. This is where famous artists gathered and various schools of seal art were formed. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, due to the different aesthetic pursuits, calligraphy cultivation, and knife skills of the authors, different styles of seal art schools were formed, each with its own merits and leadership, and the seal art has thus made great progress.

At the same time, the study and citation of ancient characters, and the collection and compilation of seal albums, gradually became an independent art style with rich connotations - seal carving. The corresponding in-depth research on seal history and seal theory developed into a specialized discipline - seal studies.

Seals, which have evolved from "credentials" and "symbols of authority" to seal carving art, have undergone a long evolution process of more than 3,700 years. Now they have developed into a prosperous period, bringing people endless artistic enjoyment in a small space.

The so-called seal carving art is the art of carving characters in seal script on materials such as metal, ivory, rhino horn, jade, and stone. Because it is mainly used to make seals, it is also called seal art. As one of the quintessence of Chinese culture, it has gone through a long process of development and formed a consistent and profound long-standing tradition.

The materials used in seal carving include crystal, jade, metal, animal horns, ivory, bamboo, wood, stone, etc. Among them, stone is the most widely used. One of the important factors that makes China's seal carving art rich and colorful and has various schools is the beauty of the shape of the characters in the seal.

Due to thousands of years of evolution and development, the Chinese characters have become complex and varied, with rich artistic qualities. From the perspective of style, they are divided into regular script, cursive script, official script, and seal script; from an artistic perspective, each style has a different writing style.

It is precisely because Chinese characters have these characteristics that seal carving, a traditional art that uses written characters to express content, has an inexhaustible source.

The characters used in seals are generally large seal script, small seal script and Han seal script. After the Song and Yuan Dynasties, the range of characters used was gradually broadened to include official script, regular script, and even running regular script. Sometimes they were also introduced into seals. In terms of seal script, after the rise of school seals, the range of characters used became increasingly wide.

The characters on real objects such as oracle bones, weapons, stone drums, imperial edicts, coins, tiles, etc., are all sources of characters for seal carving. In particular, during the Ming and Qing dynasties, several great masters of the school were able to successfully use their own unique seal scripts in seals, making the borrowing of characters for seal carving unprecedentedly broad, which is also one of the genes that formed the various schools of seal carving.

Take the seal script, one of the three scripts, regular script, cursive script, official script and seal script, for example. There are many categories. The general category before the Qin Dynasty was called Dazhuan; the characters after the Qin Dynasty unified China were called Xiaozhuan. In the Han Dynasty, a special type of script for copying seals appeared, called Miaozhuan. The Dazhuan category includes bronze inscriptions, stone drum inscriptions and Zhuanwen; the Qin seal script includes edicts and weights; the Han seal script also includes Han bricks and stele inscriptions.

Moreover, in seal script, a character often appears in many ways, sometimes even more than a hundred. However, no matter how many categories and writing methods there are in seal script, in the final analysis, "all changes remain the same".

Seal cutting art is a kind of arts and crafts that combines calligraphy and engraving, and is expressed in a specific form of seals. It is an art form that combines the beauty of Chinese calligraphy, the beauty of composition, the beauty of knife skills, and the natural beauty of stone and metal, and is appreciated independently. Seal cutting art has a history of 500 years since the Ming and Qing dynasties.

The seal carving of the Ming and Qing dynasties was developed from ancient seals. Ancient seals, with their unique style and practical artistic expression, laid a solid foundation for seal carving art. Therefore, the history of seal carving art can be traced back to the "Zhou seal" era, which was mainly made of bronze, more than 3,700 years ago. The art of engraving was popular in the Shang Dynasty.

The art of seal cutting, the knife technique of the carving knife, and the art of calligraphy, the brush technique, have undergone a historical process of transformation from a practical art to a purely expressive art. According to historical data, the earliest ancient seals are ancient seals, most of which belong to the Warring States Period.

Ancient seals were divided into official and private categories. At that time, regardless of status, they were all called seals. Ancient seals were made by specialized craftsmen, either chiseled or cast, with fine inscriptions and vivid composition.

There are two types of seal characters: red seal characters and white seal characters. The characteristics are: red seal characters have wide borders, while white seal characters have grids. The contents include official titles, names, auspicious words, and portraits. The shapes of ancient seals vary in size, including rectangular, square, round, and other special shapes.

Ancient seals were used by ancient people as tokens of power and credentials when communicating with each other, reflecting the practical living customs and simple aesthetic values ​​of society. Three similar objects were found in Yinxu, and some people inferred that the origin of ancient seals should be in the Shang Dynasty, but further research is needed. The first three have only pattern marks, and the fourth has the ancient pottery inscription "Gan Situ" from the Warring States Period.

In the Qin Dynasty, the emperor's seal was called a "xi", while the seals of ordinary people were called "yin". The characters on Qin seals were Moyinzhuan, one of the eight styles of Qin script, which was similar to Qin Xiaozhuan. The characters on the seals were solemn and beautiful. The addition of "kou" and "tian" grids on square official seals and "ri" grid on rectangular seals were the distinctive features of Qin seals.

In addition to official seals and private seals, Qin seals also included idioms, which was the forerunner of later casual seals. The Han Dynasty was an unprecedentedly glorious period for the development of seals, and it was clearly agreed that except for the emperor's seal, all other seals were called seals. Some official seals were called chapters or seals, and some private seals were called letter seals or seals.

Han Dynasty seals are richer in content and form than before. They are in Miaozhuan style, which is related to the rise of official script in the Han Dynasty. The characters are simplified and the strokes are straight and flat. There are also bird and insect scripts in Han Dynasty seals, which are very decorative and are an ancient art font. Han Dynasty seals are divided into cast and chiseled. Most seals in the Western Han Dynasty were cast, and the seals in the Xinmang period were the most exquisite.

The most distinctive seals of the Eastern Han Dynasty were chiseled seals. Due to social unrest and constant wars, civil and military officials were often transferred and appointed frequently. There was no time to cast seals, so they were temporarily chiseled on the seal blanks without any modification. This was called a quick seal. The cast seals of the Han Dynasty were solemn and majestic, while the chiseled seals were vigorous and unrestrained. These two completely different styles had a great influence on seal carving in later generations.

In ancient times, seals were used and a kind of sealing mud, also known as mud seal, appeared. When the sealing mud was first discovered, it was mistaken for a seal mold, but it was actually a seal impression left when the seal was used. Before the invention of paper, ancient people mostly wrote official documents, account books, and letters on bamboo slips.

There is no mistake in the poem, post, content, and read the book on 6, 9, and bar!

In order to keep secrets and prevent forgeries during the delivery of bamboo slips, soft mud was added to the knot of the bamboo slips, and then the seal was stamped on them. This is the so-called sealing. This method was also used to seal some items in ancient times.

Due to the squeezing of the seal on the mud, the seal forms wide edges and overlapping edges. After the white seal is stamped on the mud, a special effect of turning "white" into "red" will appear, which unintentionally expresses the ancient and heavy artistic characteristics.

During the Three Kingdoms, Jin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties, seals basically followed the shape of Han seals. Paper was widely used, and cinnabar was used to make ink, and the method of sealing with ink was abolished. Therefore, new ink was used to seal seals, which is the so-called "wet cinnabar system".

During the Sui, Tang, Five Dynasties, Song and Yuan Dynasties, the official seals were enlarged. The fraternal ethnic groups also imitated Chinese calligraphy and used it on official seals, with the characters twisting and winding to fill the gaps on the seal surface. However, in the Song Dynasty, it developed into Jiudie Zhuan, but lost the graceful rules of traditional seal script. During the Sui, Tang, Song and Yuan Dynasties, calligraphy and painting made great progress.

For the purpose of appreciating and collecting calligraphy and paintings, and for calligraphers and painters to stamp their seals on their works, collection seals, studio seals and casual writing seals became popular. This was an important link in the development of practical seals into seal cutting art.

Seals are organically integrated with calligraphy and painting, and seals become an art form with literary significance, which complements poetry, prose, calligraphy and painting, and is called epigraphy and calligraphy.

Many private seals of the Song and Yuan dynasties were made by scholars and are very artistic. The Zhuji seals of the Song Dynasty and the Huaya seals of the Yuan Dynasty are very distinctive. They use official script and regular script in the seals, and are the seal models that later seal carvers generally value. In ancient times, seals had to be made by specialized craftsmen, and the materials used were mostly metals and jade.

Although these materials have the advantages of being very slow to wear out and lasting for a long time, they are very hard and difficult to carve. As early as in ancient times, stone seals were found, and there were also stone seals in private seals of the Tang and Song dynasties.

The blue jade seal that Yun Luo carried with him was the size of a ring, but it was more expensive than more than 90% of the seals here. The bamboo tea seal was expensive not because of the three oracle bone characters, and Qin Ren's calligraphy was just average, but it was expensive because of the blue jade. (To be continued...)