Gǔ Yìn Jí Cuì -- Qín Hàn Wèi Jìn Nán Běi Cháo Juàn (Yī): Qín Hàn Wèi Jìn Nán Běi Cháo Juàn

Author: Lai Yishi
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2000-11-01
Features: Early Han period seals followed the Qin dynasty's style, with characters often arranged in a grid-like manner, rarely displaying the bold and expansive forms of ancient seals. The calligraphy style had already specialized in truncating the beginnings and ends of characters, tending toward squareness. Occasionally, there were works executed with spontaneity, where Qin dynasty scripts or Qin dynasty cursive scripts were incorporated into seals, and their styles tended to follow a single trend. By the mid-Western Han period and the Wei and Jin dynasties, the use of negative space () became the norm for empty boundary lines, replacing the "standard boundary lines" () found in ancient seals and Qin dynasty seals. At the same time, two new modes emerged: the "characters follow the edges" () model for cast Han seals, and the "edges follow the characters" () model for carved Han seals.