Is Chen Keshu a seal engraver? In my opinion, count! At least he is a well-known industry insider, although he is not listed in the door school, but he can be regarded as a seal carving celebrity, because he also has his seal engraving theory work "Seal Engraving Needle Degree".
Chen Keshu (1741-1809), font line, number of mu cultivation, yinxiang, do not sign the head of the cultivator, Miaoguoshan people, the master of the ten sisters huazhai and so on, Zhejiang Haining people, good seal, can rule the seal, stable and elegant, quite worthy of the name of the times, according to the record, when Chen Shi was alive, "good deeds one after another to engrave crystal jade copper porcelain, Yue Ying several cases." He is the author of "Seal Engraving Needle Degree", "Seal Body Sutra Eye", "Indian Hui Examination", "Cun Ji Xi Zhai Yin Cun" and so on.
("Seal Carving Needle Degree" Jinshi Huaguan Edition Book Shadow)
Looking at the year of birth and death, he lived about the age after Ding Jing, before Huang Yi, and Deng Shiru, Jiang Renshu is the same age, his contribution to seal engraving is mainly due to the fact that he wrote a book of "Seal Engraving Needle Degree", which was published, known as the "Qing Dynasty Seal Engraving Encyclopedia", the influence is not small (probably because there are Weng Fanggang, Gui Fu, Zha Ying and other celebrities in front of the book to make a prologue), and has played a very important role in the development of seal engraving art in the Qing Dynasty, this book was specially published by Zhejiang People's Fine Arts Publishing House in 2016. At present, the version of one edition and one print can still be bought on the Internet, but there is a problem, most of the "printing theory" parts of the book are "plagiarized" from others, and the mother copy is the "Printing Law Reference" by xu Shangda, a Ming Dynasty printing theorist. After examination, Mr. Huang Huan pointed out that this was plagiarism, which was greatly disdainful (for details, see the "Foreword to the Compilation of Chinese Seal Theories").
("Seal Engraving Needle Degree" Zhejiang American Edition Book Shadow)
Careful review of the "Seal Engraving Needle Degree", although in the part of the seal theory mostly copied the "Seal Law Reference", but in the seal carving history part, as well as the selection of seal stones, tool introduction, printing etiquette and other parts, there are still his own things, so if it is a seal carving "insider", this book is still worthy of attention, at least it is a "seal engraving encyclopedia" type of reading. However, it should be noted that the examples and side paragraphs received in the Zhejiang and American editions of this book, as well as the works of Zhao Zhiqian and Wu Changshuo, are obviously not Chen Keshu's handwriting, because when he compiled this book, Zhao Zhiqian, Wu Changshuo and others had not yet been born, which was obviously added by subsequent editors.
This article focuses on introducing Chen Keshu's party seal "What am I humble":
(I'm clumsy)
The four characters on the face of this seal make sense if they are interpreted as "why am I clumsy", but since Chen belongs to the believers of Zhao, Wu, Wen, and He, he probably will not engrave the words as palindrome, so we believe that its word order should be "I am clumsy".
We can also be sure that this square seal is carved by punching knives, in addition to the smooth flow of lines, mainly because he criticized the Zhejiang school's cutting knives in the "Seal Engraving Needle Degree" ("I don't know the knife method, I spread false rumors, I don't notice it.") Desire to match the ancients, track down the Qin and Han, woo hoo! In vain, a stone plague can be overcome. "), he probably wouldn't have carved it with a knife himself.
This is a side of the Yuan Zhu Wenyin (the four characters on the printing surface are all small seals, the border thickness and the printed text are coarse or slightly thin, and the printing is connected), according to the development process of the history of seal engraving, in his era, although the Yuan Zhuwen is immature, but the "printing from the book" has gradually emerged.
1. Processing of line junction and turning point. In fact, starting from Wang Guan in the Ming Dynasty, the "solder joint" treatment at the junction of the Yuan Zhu Wen seal line has gradually become a technical habit, and many Indians have handled it this way when dealing with the Zhu Wen seal, and Chen Keshu has left not many seals, which is a representative party. As shown in the figure:
(Processing of line junctions and turns)
The problem is how to control the bolding of these turns, such as to what extent, to which direction to bold, what kind of posture the line maintains when it is bolded, and the details of it, only if there is a certain accumulation in calligraphy, for the posture of the seal line, the person who has accumulated it knows how to deal with it. In order to handle these details well, it is important to strengthen calligraphy practice and improve your calligraphy cultivation.
2. The dependence of text on borders. The biggest feature of Yuan Zhuwen is that its printing surface text is a small seal, a small seal is different from miao seal, although its lines are flowing, but in order to maintain the characteristics of flowing beauty and smoothness, the lines cannot be vertical and horizontal, so they cannot maintain the corresponding balance, stability, without balance and stability, the square inch stability of the seal will be lost, in order to seek stability and stability, the soft lines of the yuan Zhuwen often need to rely on the border to find balance and stability (because the border of the square seal is naturally horizontal and vertical). As shown in the figure:
(Handling of seams)
We see that all the text parts of the full curve, the author has all carried out the "edge" processing, and relatively speaking, the text parts with horizontal strokes, the author chooses to let it find balance alone, such as the "can" part of the word "He" and the "square" part of the word "obstruction". Therefore, although there are a lot of curves and arcs in this square seal, each text is still very stable, and the printing surface does not have the slightest sense of "side".
3. Interspersed and concession of words. This is the basic principle of the Yuan Zhu Wenyin, that is, the part of the Seal Engraving Needle Degree and Chapter Law says: "One word has a one-word chapter, and the whole chapter has a whole chapter." The chapter law within the "one word" is strictly speaking "seal law", but it fully shows that even if the Yuan Zhu Wenyin is a single word, it needs to be carefully controlled.
(Interspersed and concession of text)
4. Fully printed "radioactive" design. The visual center of this square print is in the center of the print surface. How it is formed, is that each of the four words has a line leading to the center of the printing surface, and the center is a clearing, which visually seems to emit spiral rays "radioactively" from this open space.
(Center outward "radioactive" rule)
To say something off-topic: admiring the work of one seal engraving, often everyone has a different opinion, and even some people will say that the author did not think so much when creating this seal! In fact, appreciating seal engraving works and literary works is the same truth, we can paraphrase a sentence of literary criticism: "When a work is created, it no longer belongs to the author, but belongs to the reader", once the seal engraving work is presented in front of the viewer, its beauty and ugliness no longer belong to the author, but to the appreciator. Therefore, in the face of the same seal engraving, it is normal for everyone to have different appreciation results.
([Pudding Reading] No. 90, some pictures from the Internet)