Calligraphy seal engraver Duan Jingliang: The art of writing with a knife is endless

"Although seal engraving and calligraphy are different categories, they are inseparable and complement each other." As the fourth generation of the art of calligraphy and seal engraving in CuiWenge, Duan Jingliang loved calligraphy since childhood, and at the age of 16, he entered the Capital Engraving Factory (later changed to Beijing Seal Art Company) to learn engraving and became a professional calligraphy seal engraver.

In his view, seal engraving is a knife instead of a pen, opening up the traditional Chinese art of calligraphy and carving. In the more than 40 years of calligraphy and seal engraving, he has successively ruled foreign dignitaries such as former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and Yukio Hatoyama, as well-known figures such as Pujie, QiGong, and Ouyang Shanzun.

"Seal engraving is an endless art. Like mountain climbing, as long as you like it, you will keep climbing. Looking back on the hardships of his first years of school, and the joy of deeply cultivating in art along the way, this spiritual abundance brought to him by the art of seal engraving has continued throughout his many years of career.

With a knife instead of writing, exquisitely crafted

In 1971, Duan Jingliang, who graduated from junior high school, was assigned to the Capital Letter factory, a secrecy unit that was then subordinate to the public security department. "At that time, everyone did not have the awareness of high school, and most people would be assigned to work after graduating from junior high school. Because I have some writing skills and like this work, it is natural to enter this field. Duan Jingliang said.

"At that time, I was relatively young and didn't know tired, especially when copying a certain seal of interest, sometimes my hands hurt, but when you saw the finished product engraved, the satisfaction was very strong, and bitterness and pleasure coexisted at the same time."

It's easy to get started with having a point of interest first, and then learning it. Duan Jingliang is like this, in his words, the more you go to the back, the more you will find its subtlety. "At that time, this industry was mainly based on practical seals, and before the reform and opening up, it was necessary to take salaries, and compared with now, the use of the face is more extensive." Therefore, the seal process involved is also very complicated, and the seals of various materials need to be completed with different techniques, and at the same time, the practical work of engraving seals is also of great help and improvement to the seal engraving skills. Duan Jingliang recalled.

"This industry was originally a model of masters with apprentices, it is not like the kind of colleges and universities that specialize in training, they all come from apprentices." Like when I first entered this unit, I had three years of apprenticeship, the salary for the first year was 16, the second year was 18, the third year was 21, I studied for three years, and then I was apprenticed. After becoming an apprentice, not everything can be done well, but it has reached an average level. If you want to have a better skill, you need to have a time run-in, you need experience to support, so it will be slower. Like the athletes we see now, it's not okay to practice without many years of hard work. Therefore, due to the nature of learning and the entire social environment, it is actually a bit difficult to recruit people in this industry. ”

For Duan Jingliang, who has been engaged in the art of seal engraving all his life, this is undoubtedly worrying and regretting him. Chinese seal culture and seal engraving art have a long history, with a history of more than 3,700 years and have not been interrupted. From the ancient seals of the pre-Qin Dynasty to the later Qin Seals, Han Seals, Yuan Zhu Wen, etc., they have experienced prosperity and depression in the long years.

Dankyo Ryo part work

"The writing before the Qin Dynasty belonged to the Great Seal, we called the seal at that time 'Ancient Seal', the time of the Qin Dynasty was very short, but it contributed very much to the development of the seal, first invented the small seal, and then there was the Qin Seal Seal, the Qin Seal actually played a transitional bridge role for the prosperity of the later Han Dynasty seals. This kind of writing in the Han seal was also formed on the basis of the Qin seal. Hanyin can be said to be the peak of the first seal in the entire history of Chinese seals, whether from the artistic level or the number of have reached a peak, so the Qin han seal is now the only way to learn seal engraving. In the period of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the Han seal began to decline, in a stage of decline, and in the Tang Dynasty, it was even more depressed, which had a lot to do with the fact that various dynasties at that time did not advocate seal writing. Until the Yuan Dynasty, the literati and inkers began to rise up to write their own seals, and then find craftsmen to engrave the seals, which also had the seal form of the Yuan Zhu wen. ”

These four types are also by far the most widely circulated and most used seal seals. With the change of time, the actual scope of use of seal seals has been decreasing, but it still has a high status in the field of art. It not only emphasizes the brushwork and artistic conception of Chinese calligraphy, but also requires the harmony and free expression of engraved chapters, and performs skills in every inch, which is favored by Chinese literati. In 2009, the seal carving was selected as a world intangible cultural heritage, which was further promoted and supported by the state.

"Seal engraving, as an art, will not die but will continue to undergo changes and developments. With the continuous improvement of people's appreciation level, the demand for it can only increase unabated. Duan Jingliang said.

Q - Beijing Youth Weekly

A - Duan Jingliang

QWhen you first learned, where did you start? Will you copy some of the works of the masters?

A must be copied! Seal engraving and calligraphy, although the objects copied are not the same, but the steps are the same. Calligraphy is a copy of the inscription, while seal engraving is a copy of the ancient seal. When it comes to ancient seals, it is divided into two distinct stages. Before the Yuan Dynasty, gold, silver, copper, iron, bamboo and wood were the main materials. Carved in stone, it is from the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty. The earliest was a painter named Wang Tian, who used stalactites to carve seals, and it was after that that the seals gradually changed qualitatively in material. Like the Chinese seal handed down to us today, the process is completely different. Ancient seals were cast, first engraved, and then copper or gold and silver were poured into the mold, not engraved.

Nevertheless, it still has a particularly high artistic value. Starting from the Qin and Han seals, this is the consensus of most seal engravers. On this basis, I learned a certain degree, and then learned these schools of seal carving in the Ming and Qing dynasties, all of which were engraved with stone chapters. At this time, the style is very different from the ancient seal, which pays more attention to the knife method and the penmanship of the seal book. Therefore, there is a fundamental difference compared with ancient seals, but when studying, these are all things to master.

QHow to identify the quality of a seal?

A This should be judged according to its artistic characteristics, and there are certain standards. The first is to recognize the seal, that is, the orthography, the seal method, the chapter method, and the knife method, these four basic characteristics are a standard for measuring the quality of the seal carving. The so-called orthography means that the words used in this seal must be correct, and the style of the book used in different seal forms is different.

Like the Han seal used miao seal, the boxy, the ancient seal used the big seal. On the basis of a good basis, the seal method is required to be beautiful, and then the chapter, whether it is a single word or multiple words, the whole should be balanced and coordinated in the seal, which is the effect of the chapter, and finally the engraving is the foundation. But sometimes, different stone materials, materials will also determine the style of the seal, such as one of the four famous stones in China, Qingtian stone, it is more brittle, carved more suitable for Qi Pai, Qi Baishi's favorite is Qingtian stone, the stone nature of this stone, suitable for the style of single knife engraving, like Bahrain stone is not suitable for this style, but it is no problem to carve Yuan Zhu Wen and Han Yin.

QWhat style is your seal engraving more inclined?

In the decades that I have worked, I still focus on tradition, because traditional things are enough for many people to learn for a lifetime, and it is difficult to say how much they have learned and how high they can reach. I think innovation is something that is naturally formed after technology, not deliberate.

QWhat is the current audience that loves seal engraving?

A I think there are people of all ages, but basically they are limited to the field of art, and there are more calligraphy and painting, and the audience is narrower than the original. For people who do not understand this industry, more actually need to explain and popularize him, now like many schools have added seal carving classes, but the original none, because they have not been in contact, so they are not interested in this.

Now it is also an intangible cultural heritage, and it has been performed on many occasions. At the Beijing Winter Olympics, Shougang organized two seal engraving performances for the foreign guests to watch, and they were very interested. Although they did not understand, they learned that there is calligraphy in China, and there are seal engravings, including paintings, which is particularly interesting for them. Therefore, the influence of Chinese culture will become more and more large.

Wen Liu Yilin

Edited by Han Haha

Photography by Li Yingwu