Deng Shiru is now recognized as the founder of "printing from the book", this is because he was the first to introduce the "handwritten style" seal book into the seal carving, before him, the text materials that people used to enter the seal were derived from the ancient seal seal, and even mainly from the Qin and Han seal seals, Deng Shiru creatively put his handwritten seal book into the printing surface, thus creating a new school of seal style of Huizong "Deng Pai" and becoming a generation of masters.
(Deng Shiru statue)
But this does not mean that Deng Shiru was born a grandmaster, his grandmaster is by no means achieved overnight, I wrote an article "Deng Shiru's 10,000 Hours", introduced his seal carving learning experience: he initially studied under his grandfather and father, in fact, because of the influence of He Zhen and others, the entire Anhui literati can be able to engrave the seal, that is to say, Deng Shiru's seal carving actually stems from the study of He Zhen and others, of course, also from the study of the popular printing style of the folk at that time, so his early seal carving and early calligraphy have the atmosphere of the mountains and rivers , not clever.
The noble man in his life was the calligrapher Liang Wei, who introduced Deng Shiru to the Meijia family in Nanjing, which allowed him to see a large number of Qin and Han seals and learn various gold and stone rubbings, and he embarked on the right path and embarked on the authentic path of "Yinzong Qinhan".
(Source of Deng Shiru's seal)
This article introduces the two parties to the "same text seal" and discusses the slow evolution of Deng Shiru's "Yinzong Qinhan". The contents of the two sides of the "same text" printing surface are the same, both are "ishido farmers", as shown in the picture:
(Deng Shiru's two-sided "Ishito's Farmer" seal)
"Ishido No Nong" has an allusion, derived from "Zhuangzi Jean Wang":
Shun let his friend Ishido's farmer in the world. Ishito no No no Nobuki said, "Carry on! After the people, the soldiers of Baoli also! "The virtue of Shun did not come, so the husband took his wife and wore it, and took his son with him, so that he could enter the sea, and he would not rebel for life."
"Ishito No nong" is a personal name, and legend has it that Ishito No No Nong was Shun's friend who farmed together in the poor period, and Da Shun wanted to cede the world to him, but Ishito No Nong said: "The king's man is too industrious!" You are such a person who keeps your energy! He thought that Da Shun's virtue was not broad enough, so the husband and wife carried the family and led their son to the sea and clouds, and never returned for a lifetime. Ishito No nong is a person who does not covet power, which is similar to Deng Shiru's character and personality, so Deng Shiru has carved the four words "Ishito No Nong" more than once, which is an expression of his own interest.
First of all, the first party, this is the "grafting" of the Hanbai wenyin and the Qinjie geyin, the seal book of the four words of "Shihu No nong", is a typical "three sparse and one dense", this kind of dense pattern of the printing surface chapter method is more difficult to deal with ("three dense and one sparse" is much easier to deal with), because the three strokes "sparse" words, it is very easy to form irregular blanks on the printing surface, even if the more square "Miao Seal" is used to enter the printing, this "irregular blank" still exists, with these irregular blanks, the unstable factors of the printing surface are too many, unstable, Under normal circumstances, indians encounter this pattern will change the seal method of the word, so that it can avoid the irregularity of "three sparse and one dense" as much as possible, for example, change the diagonal characters with the "dense" word to make it "dense" to form a diagonal echo; for example, change the same side of the word, use the principle of "counting white as black" to achieve the balance of the printing surface (more commonly used for white printing), Deng Shiru's method is: add a boundary grid, so that the printing surface is completely settled.
Of course, such a printed surface is indeed quiet, and with it is dull and lack of vitality. The reason why we look at this square seal now and do not feel dull is that the lower right corner of the word "household" is mutilated, and the upper part of the word "zigzag" also has a corresponding "residue". Coupled with the help of the "nong" character, the effect of "full white" formed by the word "nong" is formed together with the thick and heavy strokes of other three characters to form a magnificent printing atmosphere.
(Heavy "farming" with diagonal remnants)
To sum up: 1, in order to ensure the stability of the printing surface, the "Qinyin" style tianzi boundary grid was added (otherwise, the weight of the other three characters can not be added up to the weight of the word "nong"); 2, in order to avoid the sluggishness of the printing surface, the printing surface has two "diagonal echoes" of the broken (the obvious boundary grid can both distinguish the text and reunite the text, but it may also lead to the sluggishness of the printing surface, and the Qin seal often has a bounded grid, because its printing text is often a "copy seal" with a small seal meaning, and there are flexible curved pens and arcs from time to time).
Speaking of the second party, the pattern of the chapter of this square seal comes from the Qin private seal, and the texture of the lines comes from the fine white text of the two Jin, and we focus on the chapter law. This is one of the ways to crack the pattern of "three sparse and one dense", that is, to put the three-character "sparse" word on the side of the printing surface, and put the word of the "dense" glyph on the other side, thus forming the reciprocity of the weight and promoting the stability of the printing surface. This is actually the simplest and most straightforward method, and it is also the easiest way to understand. Look at its printing surface layout, the use of the method of equally divided printing surface, but the right side of the printing surface is divided equally by three words, the left side is monopolized by one word, Han private printing has such an example, as shown in the figure:
(Reference to the Chinese Seal)
Different from the Han seal, Deng Shiru used his own chapter design principle to transform the "nong" character, and under the word "nong", a large area of blank space was left (the "hanging needle seal" in the Han seal also did this), which formed a chapter pattern of "sparse places can go to horses, and secret places do not make the wind breathe", the head and upper part of the "nong" character are extremely dense, the lower part of the "nong" character is extremely "sparse", the Han seal does not do this, and the Han seal is a chapter arrangement of "ren shu ren secret".
To sum up: 1, the four-character balanced arrangement, with one to three to form a balance of left and right; 2, added their own "big dense" chapter design ideas, this is the most important, this is Deng Shiru's innovation.
Inheritance and innovation together are important, inheritance can become a master, and innovation can become a guru. The prints of the masters often integrate inheritance and innovation, but the "innovation" here must conform to the aesthetics of seal carving, so the seal carving is ultimately spelled out the aesthetics of the seal engraver.
([Pudding Reading] No. 103-104, some pictures from the Internet)