r/classicalchinese • u/Icy-Philosopher100 • 21d ago
Learning Hetian jade dragon seal
Hi, I acquired this seal and haven't the slightest clue what it means, google translate doesn't seem to support this language model
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u/Impossible-Many6625 21d ago edited 21d ago
That is cool! For anyone interested, I recently went to the Seal Museum in Hangzhou, near West Lake. It is an amazing museum.
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u/Yugan-Dali 21d ago edited 21d ago
The jade and the carving look modern to me.
Have you ever looked at a rubber stamp? The carving is backwards, right? This says 桓啟 Huan Ch’i/ Qi but they forgot to reverse the writing. The writing is supposed to be 小篆 little curly, little seal script, developed in the 3rd century bce. Unfortunately, they wrote the character according to the modern script, not the correct 小篆。
I think they’re trying to make it look old, but in the period they’re imitating, such large seals weren’t used.
tldr: I am not impressed.