Seal Carving in Shanghai

[woliveri]

Hi all,

I'm looking for a place that can do quality seal (Chop) carving at a local (non-tourist) price in Shanghai. I know there's places like YuYuan that can do names and such but the carving quality is poor.

Thanks for any help,

[gato]

I don't have any personal experience with getting seals made, but there is a seals shop on Danshui Road (淡水路) near Huaihai Road. I'm not sure if it's targeted towards tourists or not, but since it's near Xintiandi, it might be. It is, however, in a convenient location, and might be worth checking out.

You might also consider these recommendation posted on Baidu; however, be aware that there are lots of self-promotional posts on Baidu boards. I suppose if it's not too much money, there's no harm trying.

http://zhidao.baidu.com/question/36015390.html?si=1

请问刻章在哪刻呢？

http://zhidao.baidu.com/question/16299431.html?si=9

上海哪有刻章

[shibole]

Just buy the stuff and make one youself. It isn't as hard as you might think, and it makes them much more personal. Tools are probably 30元 or so and the cheap stones are cheap. I think you should be able to get a decent 篆刻字典 (seal dict) for about 30元 too. You can also skip the dict and just find seal characters using online fonts and tools.

I find that you don't really need the clamp/vise thing to hold the stone, unless maybe you're elderly.

There's a good book (well I think it's decent at least) called 看圖學篆刻 that shows you how to do it picture-by-picture, and what might be even cheaper and better is getting a DVD/VCD on the subject.

If you don't have any confidence in your calligraphy ability you can always design the seal on a computer, print the design on a laser printer, and use a solvent transfer to get it onto the stone.

It may sound like too much trouble, but if you have more time than money and want something more unique/personal, it's well worth it. You'll be surprised at what you can do.

[889]

It can be fun learning to carve your own seals, but practice -- and practice a lot -- on the cheap 5 RMB Qingtian 青田 seals first. Don't ruin a good stone with a lousy carving.

[woliveri]

shiluobote,

Thanks. Yes, I thought about doing it myself but didn't know about the tools and seal dicts. One other thought was about the orientation of the characters. They should be in a proper order, right? Do they follow a certain pattern when carving them into the stone, such as Horizontal, Vertical, or in a circular pattern?

[889]

Normally, you carve the seal so that the characters, when printed, run top-to-bottom, right-to-left, with a one-character surname on the right and a two-character given name on the left, when printed.

[shibole]

Here's some more information on character order. (I have an extremely cheap "book" that literally cost 4元 that details all this, so you can can some REALLY cheap howto books.)

Yea usually it's top-down the right-to-left. There's also a counter-clockwise order but I think it's much less common.

31 21

42 34

For three character names it's also common for one of the characters to be double height (usually the surname I think). So for example 1 and 2 might be the same vertically stretched character in a 3 character name.

You also see seals with "印" and "之印" added like this (I'll use the examples "石伯樂" and "伯樂"):

之伯

印樂

樂石

印伯

Extremely useful sites:

http://www.mebag.com/

http://www.sealbank.net/

These are searchable databases of seal prints. Unfortunately sealbank wants money to see larger images but the small ones are often good enough.

http://www.mebag.com/yin/

http://www.sealbank.net/m1MainFind.asp?LM=1&L1=4&L2=0&L3=0&LS=B

[shibole]

Oh regarding tools: I don't think you even need to spend 30 RMB on tools. At a minimum you just need:

• just one of the carving knives, preferably one with a square chisel tip on one end and an angled/pointed tip on the other. Knives come in different sizes but just get a medium sized one and you should be fine.
  
• sharpening stone for the knife (they get dull rather fast carving stone)
  
• some 220 or 400 grain, preferably waterproof, sandpaper.
  

Dictionary substitutes, in addition to the previously mentioned sites:

http://www.youmade.com/shufa/index.asp

http://www.chinese-tools.com/tools/calligraphy.html with the seal font

and probably others.

Practice: Yea, get a cheap-ass stone and carve it, THEN use the sandpaper to sand off your carving and do it again. You should probably be able to carve the same stone 10's of times this way. And even if you mess up a good stone you can just sand it down this way as well.

When sanding, try to use a perfectly flat surface to put the sandpaper on (such as glass, if possible) and use a clamp or something to keep the stone straight up with even pressure, otherwise you end up sanding it at an angle which is bad. Sanding is the only thing you might really want some sort of clamp for. (I actually use a wooden carpenter's clamp for this though. Not sure how much those traditional seal carving clamps cost... they might be cheap.) If you only sand a seal down once then you can probably get away without the clamp, but if you're sanding one like 50 times then eventually the surface will get very oblique without a clamp keeping it straight.

[woliveri]

wow, Great Stuff/Info guys. Thanks!!

[y051313]

Woliveri, have you tried the online Chinese seal generator? This is totally free.

Try this http://www.purpleculture.net/chineseseal.html to see if you'll like it:wink:

Admin Note: This user registered with an email address from purpleculture.net, so it would appear that they are connected to this website. The link is being let through as it is partly relevant to the OP's question.

[shibole]

Woliveri, have you tried the online Chinese seal generator? This is totally free.

That's kind of interesting, but none of your fonts are 小篆 or 印篆, and it looks like your fonts don't have traditional characters either. So while this is kind of cool it isn't a useful guide for how to carve a real traditional seal.

[y051313]

Good points, shibole. Try the last style, it's in traditional characters. 篆体looks beautiful on seals, I personally like that font very much. I believe it will be electronically available soon.