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Chops: Calligraphic
Seals
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Chop used by
Jack Wise
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The brush work of
some calligraphers is marked with a seal or chop, called tuzhang
or t'u-chang in China. These seals are small pieces of glass,
bone, horn or ivory, jade, wood, metal, stone or porcelain, sometimes
with a decorative top, with an inscription carved in intaglio or relief
on the bottom. When this small oval, square or round end is dipped into
a red past and pressed onto paper, the image is left behind. Seal scripts
are calligraphy, but they have a distinctive form, and the characters
must be carefully balanced within the design of the chop.
Chops date to
1100 B.C.E., and were adopted by Chinese government officials for
documents. They began to be used by artists in the late 1200s, as
painters applied their personal or artistic name to the corner of
a work with a seal. The name of a studio, a message or a poem can
also be incorporated into an artist's seal. It also became popular
for owners to mark paintings with their chop, and the seal of the
Emperor would be placed right in the centre of calligraphy in his
collection.
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Chop used by
Jack Wise
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Jack Wise's friend
Lin Chien-Shih was a calligrapher and a seal carver. He made a dozen
different chops for Jack. These were placed on Jack's own works and
on the special art works of his students. It was a great honour to
have one of Jack's chops on your work, like a "seal of approval"!
They indicated many things, such as "No use to use", meaning
that the art was for an aesthetic purpose and "Teaching without
words", referring to both visual communication and Jack's often
wordless teaching style.
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Look
at the two examples above. See how the calligraphic characters
fit together within the shape of the chop.
*What would your chop say?
*Would you use a poem, a name, a sign of the Zodiac or some
other inscription on your chop?
*How is a chop different from a signature?
*What would people studying calligraphy be able to learn from
the seals placed on a piece of calligraphy?
*Create your own chop. Create a design on paper and transfer
it onto something easy to carve, like a carrot or a piece of
potato, or create your chop out of clay or wood.
Remember that when it is stamped, the design will reverse, so
carve it as an opposite.
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