Zhi Yong's True Script Thousand Characters. Collected Characters for Pergola Couplets -- New Concept Calligraphy Manuscript

Author: Xu Qinghua
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-01-01
Features: Beginners in calligraphy must start by copying ancient stele and inscriptions, striving for strokes, structures, and styles to resemble the originals. After mastering copying, they often wish to create their own works, but this creative passion usually ends in failure. The transition from copying to creation is not easy to cross—some may spend their entire lives unable to make the leap, or fail to do so properly, leading them astray. One effective method is to select characters from the copied steles and inscriptions to form works. However, the characters in such works may not all be found in the copied steles, even if they are found, piecing them together may not achieve harmony in size, weight, inclination, or mutual correspondence. For this reason, we decided to invite experienced calligraphers to edit and publish a series of couplets and poetic inscriptions composed of characters selected from famous steles and inscriptions across history, using computer image processing technology to strive for the most perfect presentation for readers. This collection of couplets uses characters from the Zhiyong’s True Script Thousand Characters. Zhiyong was the seventh-generation descendant of Wang Xizhi and once copied the Thousand Characters over 800 times, distributing them to temples in Zhejiang, becoming a celebrated story in calligraphy history. His calligraphy is deep and stable, elegant and smooth, round and vigorous, with sharp edges on all sides, revered by later calligraphers. The compilers spent months carefully selecting and comparing characters for each couplet, ensuring both faithfulness to the original and the use of strokes from the original steles, with no substitutions. At the same time, they avoided rigid adherence, appropriately using computer technology for coordination, ultimately completing this collection.