Chinese calligraphy : an introduction to its aesthetic and technique : with 6 plates and 155 text illustratons

III THE STYLES

DO not propose to burden the reader with a detailed | description of the historical development of the various

styles in Chinese calligraphy ; I am anxious to avoid boring him with dates and unfamiliar names. What I wish him to understand are the aesthetic and technical matters essential to appreciation. But some general sketch of the principal styles in the order of their creation is necessary, and this I shall give in the fewest possible words.

Between the original invention of written characters, ascribed to Ts‘ang-Chieh (25th century B.c.), and the Shell-and-Bone characters of the Shang-Yin dynasty (18th century B.C.), variations and new forms were doubtless devised, but there exists no record of them. After Shell-and-Bone comes Ku-Wén, a style of character used for the inscriptions engraved on the bronze vessels and objects of the Chou (ji) dynasty (12th century B.C.). No standardization was achieved in this style, the different bronzes showing a great variety of forms of the same character. Later in the dynasty, Chou (/#), a Recorder at the Court of the Emperor Hsiian (#), invented a new style called Ta-Chiian, Great Seal, which he described in a book entitled ‘ Fifteen Essays on the Great Seal’. This new style seems to have been adopted and, with slight local variations, widely used

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