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The Chinese Seal Carvers

Chinese seals carvers were Fujien, Chinese who made Chinese seals which were so essential in Chinese business transactions. The seals were used by Chinese merchants as a signature or an addition to a signature to certify the validity of a document. They were found throughout the island but were more specifically concentrated around the old Chinatown area.

History
Chinese seal carvers brought in their art form to Singapore when they arrived in Singapore before World War II. The seal carvers were mostly from Fujien province in China. The art of "seal carving" is called zhuan ke in Mandarin. It is sometimes referred to as yin. Yin also means a print, mark or chop. The seal was called chi in the Chinese language to signify that it meant "good conduct". In Singapore, seals were made of bronze, soft stones, horns, ivory, wood, stones from rocks and a variety of surfaces including plastic. The soft stones used were qing tian stones from Zhejiang province, shou shan stones from Fujian province, changhua ji xue stones or blood stones and ba ling stones from Mongolia. Special stones from rocks were found in the Hokkien province which was available in three colours -- black, green and red. Seals were also made from gold, porcelain, jade and stones of various fruits. Usually uncarved seals or blanks were made out of these surfaces in China and these blanks were imported into Singapore. The seal carvers in Singapore would then engrave the pattern onto the surface as specified by their customers. The size of the blanks varied from twelve millimetres square to twenty centimetres square and a few had pre-carved knobs.

Job Scope
Once the customer has selected a blank, the seal carver has to decide on the design of the seal. A Chinese seal can either be made in relief or in intaglio. When a seal is in relief, it has a carved out background which produces coloured characters when stamped on light coloured surfaces. In intaglio, white characters appear when stamped against a coloured background. Traditionally official seals in relief were referred to as yang style script and intaglio seals were referred to as yin style scripts. A seal maker often made seals in pairs; one in the yang style and one in the yin style. With time however, both the Western alphabet and Chinese characters began to be incorporated into a single seal and such seals combine both relief and intaglio styles of carving.

Upon deciding the design of the seal, the seal carver got to work by first levelling the ends of the seal through rubbing it on sand paper. The seal was next rubbed on emery paper and then clamped in a small vice. Since all the characters had to be drawn in reverse to print correctly, the seal maker first drew out the design on a thin, white paper. Then he turned the paper over and with a sharp pencil copied the design onto the seal from the reverse side of the drawing. The characters had to be spaced out correctly and the dark and light characters have to be evenly balanced.

The seal was then engraved using special knives. The knife was the seal makers' "brush" and he had to wield it correctly so as to get a finely designed seal. The carving was the most laborious process of seal making. On completing the carving, the seal maker checked to see if he got the characters right by first stamping it with ordinary ink. He then sanded and brushed the seal. The seal was then coloured using "seal paste" called zhusha. Zhusha, imported from China, was made using pulverised cinnabar or mercuric sulphide, dissolved in oil and soaked in a pad of dried moxa plant fibres. If kept tightly covered, it would last for years. Red ink was used as a cheaper alternative instead of zhusha. A seal could cost from S$15 to hundreds of dollars.

Development
As more and more people began seeing the value of a mere signature on documents, personalised seals became increasingly less necessary. Later, seals began to be associated more as an art and a past time and it lacked commercial value, particularly as seal making became mechanised. Today seals are bought by tourists as souvenir items with their names and those of their friends engraved on it. The traditional seal maker is a rarity in Singapore today, although older Chinese businessmen may still use a seal to mark their documents.



Author
Naidu Ratnala Thulaja



References
Sullivan, M. (1993). "Can survive, la" cottage industries in high-rise Singapore (pp. 161-166). Singapore: Graham Brash.
(Call no.: RSING 338.634095957 SUL)

Chinese seals. (1980). Goodwood Journal, 1st Qtr., 5-7.
(Call no.: RCLOS 052 GHCGJ)

Wong, T. (2002, March 29). Seals with a kiss. The Straits Times, Life!.


Further Readings
The evolution of printing. (1992, October 12). The Straits Times, Life!, p. 9. 

National Archives of Singapore. (n.d.). Archives & Artefacts Online, Singapore. Retrieved December 16, 2002, from http://www.a2o.com.sg/public/html/ 

The information in this article is valid as at 2002 and correct as far as we are able to ascertain from our sources. It is not intended to be an exhaustive or complete history of the subject. Please contact the Library for further reading materials on the topic.

Subject
Commerce and Industry>>Labour and Employment>>Vanishing Trades
Carvers (Decorative artists)--Singapore
Skilled labor--Singapore
Business, finance and industry>>Career
Arts>>Decorative arts>>Carving and carvings



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