Chinese Stamp Views
The Chinese Stamp Art (or seal carving) is one of the traditional four arts, i.e., Chinese painting, calligraphy, poetry and seal carving. A personal stamp in red color is an integrated part of a Chinese artwork of painting or calligraphy, which is not only the signature of the artist on the artwork, but also an essential touch to liven it up.
Traditional Chinese stamps are quite versatile. Typically there are name stamps, words or phrase stamps, official stamps, and picture stamps. The content of the stamps could be anything, such as a favorite word, a motto, a name of an object or a thing, etc. The carving style of the stamps varies greatly as well, which depends on mainly two factors, the script used and the expression of the artist. As we know, there are a range of Chinese scripts, even though zhuan or seal script is the most commonly used. The carving of the artist could be plain or abstract so the carving could be quite different even with the same script.
Today, seals are still playing an important role in the daily life of Chinese people. They are required for signing important documents, such as the documents for buying a house. Red stamps are seen in all official documents. Without the red stamps on the papers, not much you can do in China. If you have been in China, you have probably seen the red custom stamps in your passport.
Chinese seals are typically made of stone, sometimes of metals, wood, bamboo, plastic, or ivory, and are typically used with red ink or cinnabar paste (Chinese: 朱砂; pinyin: zhūshā). The word 印 ( yìn in Mandarin, in in Japanese and Korean, pronounced the same) specifically refers to the imprint created by the seal, as well as appearing in combination with other ideographs in words related to any printing, as in the Japanese word insatsu . The colloquial name chop, when referring to these kinds of seals, was adapted from the Malay word cap during the colonization of the Straits Settlements, and is still used to refer to rubber stamps.
Chinese Stamp Images
