Books on Seal Script and Chops/Seal Carving

Roots of Seal Script, and Seals Scripts

常用漢字演變圖說, 吳頤人, 上海書店出版社, ISBN 7-80569-904-6, 1994年7月第一版, 1999年2月第三次印刷.
Pictures aids the textual explanations of the changes between ancient forms and zhuan forms of Chinese writing. It has an index by total simplified character stroke count, and by pinyin.

Contains 450 entries.

篆書入門, 古迪吉, 藝術圖書工司印行, ISBN 957-9045-66-6, 2000年元月30日.
This books details the art of XiaoZhuan 小篆 script. Illustrated by photographs of texts from artifacts such as engravings.

Character Dictionaries featuring Small Seal Script

說文解字 附檢字, [漢] 許慎 [宋] 徐鉉, 中華書局, ISBN 962-231-231-4, 1972年6月初版, 1998年9月再版.
Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字 was written by Xu Shen 許慎 between 100 and 121 AD in the Eastern Han Dynasty 東漢朝 and is now lost. It was expanded on by Song Dynasty 徐鉉 and survives in this and many other forms. See below.
Contains 9353 entries.

說文解字 注, [漢] 許慎 [清] 段玉裁, 上海古籍出版社, ISBN 7-5325-0487-5, 1981年10月第1版, 1988年2月弟2版, 200年2月第10次印刷.
The definitive version of Han xiaozhuan characters. Qing Dynasty scholar, Duan YuCai 段玉裁 (1735-1815) annotates the work with extracts from ancient works, and adds his terse insights. Differs from the Song version above, in that the zhuan scripts are sometimes quite different. Contains in excess of 1000 pages, including two indexes; by Shuowen radicals, and by Four Corner system. Weighs some 1.5 kilograms.
Contains 9353 entries.

康熙字典, 張玉書 等, 中華書局, ISBN 962-231-006-0, 1958年月1初版, 1997年3月再版.
Though there are 47035 character entries, not every single one has xiaozhuan forms.

六體印鑑字典 (六書通), 閔寓五, 廣智書局, ISBN 962-325-705-8.
The characters are listed by tone, then rhyme, then initial. Approx 6800 characters.

正草隸篆 四體字典, 上海書店出版社, ISBN 7-80569-229-7, 1980年11月第1版, 2000年7月第17次印刷.
Various forms of 正草隸篆 forms given, laid out in Kangxi radicals. One index of 'difficult to find' characters is included.
Contains about 7500 entries.

鋼筆毛筆 七體書法字典, 石雅山, ISBN 大孚書局印行, ISBN 957-765-099-6, 1992年初版, 二○○○年十月初版再刷.
After ming_type font, fountain pen forms are 行書, 草書, the five brush pen forms in 楷書, 行書, 草書, 隸書 and 篆書. Arranged by 214 Kangxi radicals.
Contains 1961 entries.

反字篆刻字典, [日本] 牛窪梧十, 天津人民美術出版社 / 二玄社, ISBN 7-5305-1004-5.
This dictionary was originally entitled 逆字篆刻字典 (GyakuJi TenKoku JiTen), published by 二玄社, ISBN 4544012309, in 1990.
After Mingcho 明朝 font, with kana reading that includes variants of the header character in small print, four styles are given, though not always populated in the latter ones. They are 小篆, 印篆, 金文 and 古鉥. Entries in Kangxi order, with two indexes, total stroke number with kangxi, and On-Kun readings.
Contains 3330 entries.

篆刻常用字字典, 劉江 李早 等, 西泠印社出版, ISBN 7-80517-330-3, 1998年11月第1版, 2000年7月第3次印刷.
Order by Kangxi radicals, with index arranged by Kangxi rads. All handwritten, traitional 楷書 followed by 小篆, 摹印, 簡文, 璽文, 金文 and 甲骨.
Contains 6050 entries

The Art of Seals and Seal Carving and Seal Imprints
The following books are all quite similar. They give an introduction to the art of seal/chop carving. Gives a history of the subject by illustrations from chop imprints. The final one in this list contains just seal imprints from private seals. Some of the books also give details about how to write Seal script, and go so far as to detail the changes in seal script for chops, often simplifying the characters stylistically.

Chinese Seals, T.C. Lai, University of Washington Press , ISBN 0-295-95517-1 (published 1976), The Swindon Book Company (1989).

The author describes the beauty of seals. Illustrated with many seal imprints from various schools of seal makers over the last two thousand years or more.

篆刻入門, 郭冰光, 明天出版社出版, ISBN 962-277-075-4, 1989年十二月.

篆刻入門, 莊伯和, 藝術圖書工司印行, ISBN 957-9045-73-9, 1993年3月23日.

篆刻啟蒙與技法, 劉振英, 北京體育學院出版社, ISBN 7-81003-196-1.

篆刻藝術淺談, 席繼忠, 中國廣播電視出版社, ISBN 7-5043-1696-2.

怎樣刻印章 修訂本, 陳壽榮, 上海人民類術出版社, BN 8081-5285 (1980).

中國篆刻, 徐銀森, 淑馨出版社, ISBN 957-531-3322, ISBN 957-531-012-8.

十鐘山房印舉粹編, 上海書畫出版社, ISBN 7-80635-362-3, 1999年5月第1版, 1999年5月第1次印刷.

The majority of the books mentioned above are mainland Chinese books, and may be hard to locate outside China. These are indicated by the prefix 7- to the ISBN numbers. Those with 957 are Taiwanese, 962 are Hong Kong publications. The book prefixed with 0- in its ISBN indicates it was published by an american publisher. Only one of the above does not have an ISBN, and this has a Chinese book number only.

The background to this page was taken from T.C. Lai's book, from page 57 by the artist Deng Shiru (Teng Shih Ju), b.1743 - d. 1805. It reads yi1 ri4 zhi1 ji4 in Mandarin Putonghua, meaning "the marks of a day", in the sense of the results of a day's work. It is read from the top right to bottom right, then top left to bottom left.

Another seal which has this in a more ornate fashion taken from the same book is by Wu XiZai (Wu Hsi Tsai) b. 1799 - d. 1870.

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© Dylan WH Sung.

This page was created on Sunday 25th of June 2001.
It was recently updated on Tuesday 27th June 2001.