Nowadays, everyone can't help but like the article they like when they see it. So how did ancient people like it? In many ancient paintings, in addition to the artist's inscription and payment, there are many traces left by later collectors, that is, the seals we see now.
Wang Xianzhi's "Mid-Autumn Festival Post" has received a lot of "likes"
The origin and evolution of the seal
When the Chinese seal originated is still inconclusive, but most researchers believe that it was roughly at the turn of the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States. Liu Xi of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Shi Ming, Volume 6 "Shishu Qi": "Seal, Yuye." The seal makes it transferable and unremittable. "Although the last must be the original meaning of the seal, it shows the role of the early seal in verifying the seal.
Three copper seals unearthed in the Yin ruins of Anyang
The ancient seals of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods are basically made of copper, and silver, jade, stone, etc. are relatively small. In terms of production process, it can be divided into two types: casting and chiseling. Casting, is cast with clay fan, called casting; Chiseling, that is, directly chiseling with a carving knife on the prefabricated blank.
Three Jin Ancient Seals Wang Fan Jianyin Mountain House Collection
The Qin seal used the small seal as the printing script, and at the same time tightened the seal system, stipulating that only the emperor's seal was called the seal, and the seals of princes and ministers and the common people could only be called seals. There have also been major changes in the shape of the seal. Qin official seals are all chiseled prints, generally about 2.5 centimeters square, and there are also about 2 centimeters square; there are also semi-tong seals, that is, half of the square seal, which are used by low-level officials.
Collection of the Palace Museum
Qin Bantongyin Jia Mu l Image source: Read Print
The Han Dynasty was the heyday of the history of mainland seals, and the Han Dynasty had strict regulations on the use of seals, which were different from the Qin Dynasty in terms of title and material. In addition to the emperor, the seal has been relaxed to empresses and princes; General's seal or seal. In terms of materials, the emperor used jade, the king and hou used gold, two thousand stones used silver, and copper below a thousand stones. In addition to jade, gold, silver, and copper, private printing also includes agate, amber, ivory and other materials.
YANG Bo. Appreciation of Tibetan and Han dynasty seals of Jinan Institute of Archaeology[J].Identification and appreciation of cultural relics
Han official seal
In the Sui and Tang dynasties, the official seal was slender in strokes, the arrangement of seals was not very exquisite, and there were few remains. The official seal of the Song and Yuan dynasties appeared in a completely different style from the previous generation, the size of the printing surface was getting larger and larger, the printing surface was about 4.5 cm to 5.5 cm long, and the "nine-stacked seal" appeared in a coiled and folded "nine-stacked seal", and the seal was full of printing surfaces, and the form tended to be stylized.
In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Daming Huidian and the Daqing Huidian stipulated the specifications and dimensions of the seal. The seals of emperors, empresses, empresses, crown princes, and princes are called "treasures" or "seals", made of jade and gold, and the seals are coiled dragons, jiaolong, squat dragons or turtles. The seals of officials of the first to ninth grades are cast in silver or copper, and the side length of the seal varies from three inches and four minutes to one inch and nine centimeters, and the thickness varies from one inch to two and two centimeters.
There are many types of official seals in the Qing Dynasty, and the number is huge. In the later period of Qianlong, there were more than 1,300 official seals, and the Qianlong Emperor himself was a "praiser", and now, when people admire these ancient paintings, they have to face the ubiquitous Qianlong ink and various seals, so that later generations jokingly call him the "originator of the barrage".
Zhao Mengfu's "Human Riding Map" that "won the heart of the emperor"
Seal standards for the continent
When the People's Republic of China was founded, a bronze official seal of the Central People's Government was made, which was personally determined by Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou as a pure copper seal with a Song body, square and a side length of 9 centimeters, which later generations called the "Great Seal of the Founding of the People's Republic".
Seal of the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China, made in October 1949, now in the National Museum
In 1955, the mainland promulgated the "Regulations of the State Council of the People's Republic of China on the Seals of State Organs", which stipulated that the official seals of state organs should be changed to a round shape, the central part of the official seals at the provincial and ministerial level and above should be the national emblem, and the central seal of the other organs should be a five-pointed star.
In 1999, the Provisions of the State Council on the Management of the Seals of State Administrative Organs and Enterprises and Institutions Social Groups were promulgated, which put forward specific requirements for the management of company seals: the shape is round; The diameter shall not be greater than 4.5 cm, the name of the five-pointed star in the central publication, and the name of the unit of the five-pointed star shall be circulating from left to right; the name of the publication shall be the legal name.
In 2000, the Ministry of Public Security of the mainland issued GA241.1-2000 "Standard for Seal Public Security Management Information System", which clearly stipulates the data format, data structure and data exchange of seal information coding, seal information code, seal image and so on, and promotes the networking of the national seal management system.
In recent years, the size standard of the official seal has been slightly adjusted, but in terms of size, it is basically a continuation of the relatively fixed standard, with the development of informatization, the physical seal is gradually replaced by the electronic seal, perhaps in the near future, the current official seal will also become history.