In fact, since the Qing Dynasty, Chinese seal engraving has strictly only been two schools of "Hui School" and "Zhejiang School", and other so-called "Deng School", "Wu School", "Zhao School" and other statements are just branches of these two major schools with clear personalities. Therefore, we should pay great attention to the Kaipai sect masters of the Hui and Zhejiang sects, so we will then read the seal of Ding Jing, the kai sect master of the "Zhejiang sect", that is, this side's "family letter to ten thousand gold":
(Ding Jing's "Family Letter to Ten Thousand Gold")
Through this square seal, we can observe and experience these famous people and masters in history, and how much knowledge reserves they need when they engrave a party seal:
1. Knowledge reserves in poetry. Poetry is an art form that expresses people's thoughts and feelings, and seal engraving is also the same, and even seal engraving can also introduce poetry into seal engraving, such as the printed text "Family Letter to Ten Thousand Gold" in this square seal, which is a sentence in Du Fu's famous poem "Spring Hope", the original poem is as follows:
"The country is broken by mountains and rivers, and the city is deep in spring grass and trees. When I feel the flowers splash tears, I hate the birds and be frightened. The flames lasted for three months, and the family letter arrived at ten thousand gold. The white head scratches are shorter and more overwhelming. ”
During the Anshi Rebellion, Du Fu witnessed the scattered strands of Chang'an after the fall, experienced adversity, missed his family, and felt a lot of emotions. Because of this poem, the whole poem is calm and sincere, and fully expresses the poet's feelings of loving his home and country and cherishing his family. The sentence "Family letter to ten thousand gold" is the essence of the whole poem, so at the age of 68, the aging Ding Jing used this to express his nostalgia for his relatives.
A seal engraver, the higher his poetic literacy, the more he can fully and freely express his thoughts and feelings with seal engraving.
2. Knowledge reserves in philology. The word "home" in this square seal is folded into two characters, and the material for breaking the word is derived from the golden glyph of the word "home". The word "home" in the oracle bone and most of the gold glyphs, the upper part of a "宀" head, the lower part is the shape of a boar, later evolved into the shape of "豕", but if it is dismantled in this way, it is obviously impossible to meet the requirements of the chapter. Of course, ding jing of the oracle bone of the word "home" did not have the opportunity to see it, but because he loved the text and was very familiar with the DingYi script, he found the most suitable glyph that could be split in the golden text, so there would be such a word splitting arrangement.
("Home" character gold glyph one)
In addition, the "swastika" character here is derived from Buddhism, and is generally considered to be one of the different aspects of the Buddha, indicating great auspiciousness, and is used to symbolize that the Wisdom and Compassion of the Buddha are infinite and spread in all directions. Here the "swastika" is substituted for the "ten thousand" to promote the needs of the rules.
These two points require the seal engraver to have a deep knowledge of writing reserves. The seal engravers of the early Qing Dynasty did not have such good conditions as we have now, they had no dictionaries to check, no network to use, and their writing skills were all based on memory and pen, and such a philological "material" reserve was a real "hard kung fu".
In fact, a seal engraver, the more written material he masters, the higher his creative freedom.
3. Ancient mature Indian-style knowledge reserves. If we analyze this seal, we will find:
(1) The Indian characteristics of this square seal "wide-edged fine Zhu" are derived from the ancient seals of the Warring States, especially the Small Seals of the Three Jin Dynasties of the Warring States. The formation of its aesthetic characteristics comes from the visual contrast between the "thick border" and the "thin text" of the seal, thus forming a typical aesthetic style.
(Broad-sided fine Zhu in the Warring States Ancient Seal)
(2) The "equally printed face seal" feature of this square seal is derived from the Chinese seal. The equally divided printing surface will form a visual aesthetic effect of flat and stable, generous and condensed.
(Equalized printing surface of Chinese printing)
This square seal, due to the split of the word "home", the five-character seal was arranged into a six-character chapter law, thus achieving the characteristics of the chapter of the equally divided printing surface:
(Chapter characteristics of the equally divided printing surface)
(3) The "sudden appearance of the group point" of the printing surface is derived from both the Warring States Seal and the Ding Yi script. In this square seal, the words "book" and "gold" have the situation of "protruding cluster point", because its visual features are relatively different from other "long lines", naturally forming a visual contrast, thus achieving an aesthetic effect.
("Sudden Appearance Point" in the "Great Lu Ding" section)
4. It belongs to the unique knowledge reserve of seal carving. Seal engraving is also a special art category, which has its own knowledge, such as seal engraving unique seal law, chapter law, knife method knowledge. For example: echoes, reunions, rhythms...
(Echo Element)
The splitting and transformation of the word "home" has contributed to the echo of its lower part and the "swastika" glyph, which makes the left and right contact between the printing surface strengthen, the reunion is stronger, and the square inch attribute of the seal is enhanced, and the two points of the "gold" word and the point in the center of the "book" word also form a connection, which also plays the role of the reunion printing surface, this echo actually also allows the printing surface to form a corresponding rhythm, this rhythm, to provide the viewer with psychological comfort (for example, rhythmic music and rhythmic noise, the psychological impact on people is different).
In fact, there is also "breath" and "artistic conception", first of all, "breath", if this side seal with the thick edge of the Warring States Seal to strengthen the seal attributes, and then with the Han seal law to regulate the text, then the printing surface will have sluggish drawbacks, Ding Jing obliquely put the "hand" part of the word "resistance", in fact, the adjustment of the breath of the printing surface, the printing surface thus "vitality" greatly increased; and then "mood", the printing surface text of this square seal is "family letter to ten thousand gold", the reason for its production is of course "beacon fire for three months", the border of this square seal is broken into "water and fire become bad state", Like a battle flag or paper burned by a blazing fire, this artistic conception is achieved in line with the content of the printing surface.
([Pudding Reading] No. 98, some pictures from the Internet)