Four hundred and twenty phrases
On re-designing the Classic in bronze script, and what a seal is for.
Bronze script is the writing cast into ritual vessels of the Zhou. It was the first Chinese script that was drawn before it was made — designed, composed, given a form that had to survive a mould and a pour. It is, in other words, the first script that belonged to makers.
The atelier has re-drawn 420 phrases from the Classic of Mountains and Seas in this script. Each begins as research — oracle-bone forms, bronze inscriptions, the large seal script — and ends as a single living character that can be cast, carved, engraved or written with a brush at the size of a wall.
What a seal is for
A seal is the oldest personal symbol in China: a name given a body, pressed into red so that it can stand for the person in their absence. The atelier's seals and rings come from the lexicon — a family name, a founding date, a beast one was born under — and each is delivered with its impression on paper, so the mark exists before the owner has ever used it.
Related works
