The breeze is clear, the clouds fall and willows are wandering around the West Lake, and walking along the lakeside. However, turn right on the Xiling Bridge, and walk on the right side of the gate of Gushan Park, you will enter a two-story building that combines Chinese and Western styles hidden in the shade of green trees: the Chinese Seal Museum.

The China Seal Museum is the first Seal Museum that integrates document collection, cultural relics display and academic exchanges, organized by the Xiling Seal Society. The rich academic atmosphere and pleasant natural scenery are integrated into a national garden-style museum.

When Yun Luo looked here, he thought of the bamboo tea seal made of blue water jadeite made of top-notch glass given by Qin Ren. Liu Xun was dedicated to practicing and did not understand the study of seals, but following Yun Luo was interesting.

At the corners of the double eaves, a giant white marble dragon button seal stands on the west side of the main entrance of the main hallway. The side is the seven-character "Huaguo Seal Museum" by the late Xiling Seal Society. It is known as "the world's No. 1 Seal" and is the hallmark of the Seal Museum.

The back of the museum is built along the mountain to connect the site of the Xiling Yinshe Gushan Club, which integrates with the original cultural landscape of the Yinshe and complements each other. It is one of the unique garden-style museums in China.

Liu Xun is currently pulling Yun Luo from the main entrance to the hall, and facing him is a granite relief porch with several delicate, exquisite, elegant and magnificent seals engraved on it, which condenses the three thousand years of history of sealing. This is the "Seal Hall of All Dynasties".

The exquisitely carved and ancient and powerful seals appear more mysterious and distant under the hazy light. The fine display cabinets and display windows are particularly bright, just like the "Bright Moon of Qin" set off by stars, making people in the space-time corridor for the development of Chinese seal science.

As the pace moved, history began to flow from the ancient Shang and Yin eras. Those precious objects told people about the emergence of seals with the appearance of words. From the process of the evolution of seals as texts to the artifacts based on the letters, with the changes in history, the seals showed different styles in terms of shape, printing materials, interest and casting and chiseling.

Yun Luo looked carefully and walked into the "Seal Seal Hall" on the second floor with Liu Xun. Here, famous artists gathered together and had many schools. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, due to the author's aesthetic pursuit, calligraphy cultivation, and knife skills, a seal school with different styles was formed, and each had its own advantages and abilities, and the seal art was thus developed greatly.

At the same time, the study and citation of ancient characters and the compilation of seal collections gradually became an artistic style of seal carving with rich connotations and excellent content. The history of seals that is in line with this has been continuously deepened and developed into a special discipline of seals.

The seal, which has developed from "the certificate of token" and "the symbol of authority" to seal carving art, has gone through a long evolution process of more than 3,700 years, and has now developed to its prosperous period, bringing people endless artistic enjoyment in a small amount.

The so-called seal carving art is the art of carving in seal characters on metal, ivory, rhinoceros horn, jade, stone and other materials. Because it is mainly used to make seals, it is also called seal art. As one of the national treasures, it has gone through a long process of development and formed a consistent and profound tradition.

The materials of seal carving technology include crystal, jade, metal, animal horns, ivory, bamboo, wood, stone, etc. Among them, the most widely used is stone. One of the important factors is the reason why the seal carving art in China is rich and colorful and has a variety of schools. It is the beauty of the body of the seal characters at work.

Due to the evolution and development over the past thousands of years, the Chinese characters have complex and changeable styles and are rich in artistic quality. From the perspective of style, they are divided into true, cursive, official, and seal script; from the perspective of art, various styles have different writing styles.

It is precisely because of these characteristics of Chinese characters that seal carving, a traditional art of expressing content, has an inexhaustible source of use in seal carving.

The use of seal characters is generally mainly large seal script, small seal script and Han seal script. After the Song and Yuan dynasties, the scope of characters used gradually expanded, such as clerical script, regular script, and even running regular script. Sometimes they were also introduced to seals. That is, as seal script is used in seals, after the rise of the school seals, the scope of selection became wider.

All the words on physical objects such as oracle bones, weapons, stone drums, edicts, springs, tiles, etc. are included in the texts created by seal carving. Especially during the Ming and Qing dynasties, several great generals among the writers of the genre were able to successfully use their own unique seal script to seal characters, making the acquisition of seal carvings unprecedentedly extensive, and this is also one of the genes that form the seal schools and schools.

In terms of a kind of seal script in Zhen, Cursive, Li, and seal script, there are many categories. Before the Qin Dynasty, it was collectively called Dazhan; after the Qin Dynasty, the characters were unified, called Xiaozhan. In the Han Dynasty, a type of calligraphy specifically used for copying seals was appeared, called Miaozhan. Among the categories of large seal script, there are bronze inscriptions, stone drum inscriptions, and Zhuan inscriptions; in the Qin Dynasty, there are also Han bricks and stele-blocked calligraphy.

Moreover, in seal script, there are many ways to write a character, some even more than a hundred. However, no matter how many categories and ways to write a seal script are, it ultimately "will be "always change."

Seal carving art is a arts and crafts that combine calligraphy and engraving, and is expressed in a specific form of seals. It combines the beauty of Chinese calligraphy with the beauty of composition, the beauty of knife skills and the natural beauty of gold and stone, and uses the expressive art of appreciation. Seal carving art has a history of five hundred years since the Ming and Qing dynasties.

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

The art of seal carving, the knife-carving technique of carving swords is the same as the art of calligraphy and brush strokes, and has experienced a historical process of transforming from practical art to pure expressive art. According to historical materials, the earliest ancient seals were ancient seals, most of which belonged to the Warring States Period.

Ancient seals were divided into two categories: official and private. At that time, they were called seals regardless of their rank. Ancient seals were made by specialized craftsmen, either chiseled or cast, with fine seal text and vivid layout.

The seal text is divided into two types: the sidebar of the Zhu Wenxi is wide, and the white seal has bounded grid. The content includes official positions, names, auspicious words and zodiac patterns. The shapes of ancient seals are of varying sizes, including rectangles, squares, rounds and other various special shapes.

Ancient seals were used as tokens of power and certificates when people interacted in ancient times, reflecting the practical social living customs and simple aesthetic values. Three similar objects were found in Yinxu. Based on this, some people inferred that the origin of the ancient seals was in the Shang Dynasty, but it still needs to be further explored. The first three parties only had pattern marks, and the fourth party was the ancient pottery text "Gan Situ" of the Warring States Period.

In the Qin Dynasty, the emperor's seal was called seal, and the general public's seal was called seal. The Qin seal text was one of the eight styles of Qin calligraphy, which was similar to the small Qin seal text, and the seal text was solemn and beautiful. Adding the "kou" grid and the "tian" grid to the square official seal, and adding the "ri" grid to the rectangular seal is a distinctive feature of the Qin seal.

In addition to official seals and private seals, Qin seals also included idioms. This form of expression was the forerunner of idle seals in later generations. The Han Dynasty was an unprecedentedly brilliant period when the development of seals was unprecedentedly brilliant. It was even clear that except for the emperor seals, the rest were called seals. Some were called seals or seals in official seals, and some were called seals or seals in private seals.

The Han seals are richer in content and form than before. They are used in the Miao seal style. This font is related to the rise of official script in the Han Dynasty. The structure is simplified and the strokes are flat and square. There are also bird and insect books in the Han seals, which are very decorative and are an ancient art font. Han seals are divided into casting and chiseling. Most of the seals in the Western Han Dynasty are cast, among which the seals from the Xinmang period are the most exquisitely made.

The seals of the Eastern Han Dynasty were the most distinctive. Due to social turmoil and constant wars, civil and military officials were often mobilized and sealed and worshipped frequently. Before the seal could be cast, they were chiseled on the seal blank temporarily without any modification, so they were urgently ordered. The seals of the Han Dynasty were solemn and majestic, and the chiseling was vigorous and strange. These two completely different styles had a great impact on the seal carvings of later generations.

In ancient times, a kind of seal mud appeared, also known as clay seal. When seal mud was first discovered, it was mistaken for seal model, but it was actually a seal mould left when the seal was used. Before paper was invented, ancient people often wrote official documents on bamboo slips, kept accounts, wrote letters, etc.

In the delivery and delivery of bamboo slips, in order to strictly keep the secret and prevent Du Fu, soft mud was added to the knots of bamboo slips and sealed them. This is the so-called seal. In ancient times, some items were also sealed.

Due to the squeeze of the seal on the mud, the sealing mud forms a wide edge and a sleeve. After the white seal is stamped on the mud, it will also have a special effect of turning "white" into "red" and does not deliberately express the ancient and profound artistic characteristics.

The seals of the Three Kingdoms, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties basically followed the shape of the Han seal. Paper was widely used, and cinnabar was used to make seals, and the method of sealing mud was abolished. Therefore, using new seals to stamp seals is the so-called "moist and red vermilion system".

During the Sui, Tang, Five Dynasties, and the seal surface increased in the Sui, Tang, and Yuan dynasties. The brothers also imitated Chinese calligraphy for official seals, and the seal text was flexed and reversed to fill the gaps on the seal surface. However, in the Song Dynasty, it developed into nine-fold seal script, but lost the beautiful rules of traditional seal script. During the Sui, Tang, Song and Yuan dynasties, calligraphy and painting made great progress.

For the purpose of collecting calligraphy and painting, calligraphers and painters stamp seals on their works, so as to collect seals. Zhaiguan seals and idle seals are popular. This is an important link in the development of practical seals into seal carving art.

Seals are organically integrated with calligraphy and painting, and seals become an appreciation art with literary meaning, and complement each other with poetry, literature, calligraphy and painting, and are called calligraphy and painting.

Many private seals from the Song and Yuan dynasties were written by literati and were very artistic. The Song Dynasty's Zhuji Seals and Yuan Dynasty's flower seals were very distinctive. They were written in official script and regular script, and were a seal model that later seal engravers generally valued. In ancient times, seals were made by special craftsmen, and the materials used were mostly metal and jade.

Although these seals have the advantages of extremely slow loss and long-lasting drooping, they are hard and hard to carve. As early as ancient seals, stone seals were found, and stone seals were also found in private seals in Tang and Song dynasties.
Chapter completed!