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Wen Peng
Wen Peng (, 1497–1573), also known as Shou Cheng and San Qiao, was a maker of personal seals during the Ming dynasty. He was born in Shanghai and raised in Suzhou, the son of painter Wen Zhengming. Employed as a lecturer by the Guozijian (in both Beijing and Nanjing), he was widely regarded as the founder of modern seal-carving. Wen founded the Sanqiao (Wumen) School of seal engraving. Wen worked originally in ivory, creating calligraphic designs that were incised into the material by his colleague Li Wenpu. However, after creating some experimental seals using soapstone, he switched to using stone for his work, and his later career focuses exclusively on this material. Prior to this, seals had been carved from ivory, bronze or pottery. Wen also developed the modern recipe for the red paste () used to create the seal's stamp; he recommended a mixture of ground cinnabar, castor oil and moxa. He Zhen, founder of the Huizhou (Xingyuang) school of seal-engraving, was Wen's stu ...
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Wen Peng
Wen Peng (, 1497–1573), also known as Shou Cheng and San Qiao, was a maker of personal seals during the Ming dynasty. He was born in Shanghai and raised in Suzhou, the son of painter Wen Zhengming. Employed as a lecturer by the Guozijian (in both Beijing and Nanjing), he was widely regarded as the founder of modern seal-carving. Wen founded the Sanqiao (Wumen) School of seal engraving. Wen worked originally in ivory, creating calligraphic designs that were incised into the material by his colleague Li Wenpu. However, after creating some experimental seals using soapstone, he switched to using stone for his work, and his later career focuses exclusively on this material. Prior to this, seals had been carved from ivory, bronze or pottery. Wen also developed the modern recipe for the red paste () used to create the seal's stamp; he recommended a mixture of ground cinnabar, castor oil and moxa. He Zhen, founder of the Huizhou (Xingyuang) school of seal-engraving, was Wen's stu ...
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Cinnabar
Cinnabar (), or cinnabarite (), from the grc, κιννάβαρι (), is the bright scarlet to brick-red form of Mercury sulfide, mercury(II) sulfide (HgS). It is the most common source ore for refining mercury (element), elemental mercury and is the historic source for the brilliant red or scarlet pigment termed vermilion and associated red mercury pigments. Cinnabar generally occurs as a vein-filling mineral associated with recent volcanic activity and alkaline hot springs. The mineral resembles quartz in symmetry and in its exhibiting birefringence. Cinnabar has a mean refractive index near 3.2, a mohs scale of mineral hardness, hardness between 2.0 and 2.5, and a specific gravity of approximately 8.1. The color and properties derive from a structure that is a hexagonal crystalline bravais lattice, lattice belonging to the trigonal crystal system, crystals that sometimes exhibit Crystal twinning, twinning. Cinnabar has been used for its color since antiquity in the Near East ...
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1497 Births
Year 1497 ( MCDXCVII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events January–December * February 7 (Shrove Tuesday) – Followers of Girolamo Savonarola burn thousands of "immoral" objects, at the ''Bonfire of the Vanities'' in Florence. * May – The Cornish Rebellion breaks out in England, incited by war taxes. * May 10 – Amerigo Vespucci allegedly leaves Cádiz, for his first voyage to the New World. * May 12 – Pope Alexander VI excommunicates Girolamo Savonarola. * May 20 – John Cabot sets sail from Bristol, on the ship ''Matthew'' (principally owned by Richard Amerike), looking for new lands to the west (some sources give a May 2 date). * June 13 – The Catholic Monarchs issue the ordinance of Medina del Campo, creating a money system based on the copper maravedí, creating the peso of 34 maravedis. In the next three centuries, this system will dominate international pay ...
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Ming Dynasty Artists
The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last orthodox dynasty of China ruled by the Han people, the majority ethnic group in China. Although the primary capital of Beijing fell in 1644 to a rebellion led by Li Zicheng (who established the short-lived Shun dynasty), numerous rump regimes ruled by remnants of the Ming imperial family—collectively called the Southern Ming—survived until 1662. The Ming dynasty's founder, the Hongwu Emperor (r. 1368–1398), attempted to create a society of self-sufficient rural communities ordered in a rigid, immobile system that would guarantee and support a permanent class of soldiers for his dynasty: the empire's standing army exceeded one million troops and the navy's dockyards in Nanjing were the largest in the world. He also took great care breaking the power of the court eunuchs and unr ...
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Metropolitan Museum Of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 Fifth Avenue, along the Museum Mile on the eastern edge of Central Park on Manhattan's Upper East Side, is by area one of the world's largest art museums. The first portion of the approximately building was built in 1880. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains an extensive collection of art, architecture, and artifacts from medieval Europe. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 with its mission to bring art and art education to the American people. The museum's permanent collection consists of works of art from classical antiquity and ancient Egypt, paintings, and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, and an extensive collection of American and modern ...
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He Zhen (artist)
He Zhen, also known as Zhou Cheng, Chang Qing, Xue Yu (1541 – 1606) was a Chinese artist during the Ming Dynasty, who specialised in carving personal seals. Along with his teacher Wen Peng, he was one of the first seal-engravers to use soapstone as a medium for his work. He Zhen was from Wuyuan County, but spent much of his time in Nanjing. He had a wide-ranging influence, and founded the Huizhou (Xingyuang) or Wan (Anhui) school of seal-carving. He's work aspired to an antique, ancient appearance, and he was known to chip or otherwise artificially weather his seals to create the impression of age. He created this effect by exploiting natural fracture lines in the stone, or by emphasising the knife-marks made whilst incising the inscription. His calligraphy attempted to echo that of the Han Dynasty The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dyna ...
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Moxa
Moxa may refer to: * Moxa, material used in moxibustion, a Chinese traditional medicine * Mihail Moxa (1550–1650), Romanian historiographer and translator * Moxa, Thuringia The municipality of Moxa forms part of the Saale-Orla district in Thuringia, Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russ ..., Germany, municipality * Moxa Technologies, Taiwanese company {{dab ...
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Castor Oil
Castor oil is a vegetable oil pressed from castor beans. It is a colourless or pale yellow liquid with a distinct taste and odor. Its boiling point is and its density is 0.961 g/cm3. It includes a mixture of triglycerides in which about 90% of fatty acids are ricinoleates. Oleic acid and linoleic acid are the other significant components. Castor oil and its derivatives are used in the manufacturing of soaps, lubricants, hydraulic and brake fluids, paints, dyes, coatings, inks, cold-resistant plastics, waxes and polishes, nylon, and perfumes. Etymology The name probably comes from a confusion between the ''Ricinus'' plant that produces it and another plant, the ''Vitex agnus-castus''. An alternative etymology, though, suggests that it was used as a replacement for castoreum. Composition Castor oil is well known as a source of ricinoleic acid, a monounsaturated, 18-carbon fatty acid. Among fatty acids, ricinoleic acid is unusual in that it has a hydroxyl functional gro ...
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Soapstone
Soapstone (also known as steatite or soaprock) is a talc-schist, which is a type of metamorphic rock. It is composed largely of the magnesium rich mineral talc. It is produced by dynamothermal metamorphism and metasomatism, which occur in the zones where tectonic plates are subducted, changing rocks by heat and pressure, with influx of fluids, but without melting. It has been a medium for carving for thousands of years. Terminology The definitions of the terms "steatite" and "soapstone" vary with the field of study. In geology, steatite is a rock that is to a very large extent composed of talc. The mining industry will define steatite as a high-purity talc rock that is suitable for manufacturing of, for example, insulators, the lesser grades of the mineral can be called simply "talc rock". Steatite can be used both in lumps ("block steatite", "lava steatite", "lava grade talc"), and in the ground form. While the geologists logically will use "steatite" to designate both forms, ...
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Seal (East Asia)
A seal, in an East and Southeast Asian context, is a general name for printing stamps and impressions thereof which are used in lieu of signatures in personal documents, office paperwork, contracts, art, or any item requiring acknowledgement or authorship. On documents they were usually used to print an impression using a pigmented paste or ink, unlike the wax impression commonly used in Europe. Of Chinese origin, the process soon spread beyond China and across East and Southeast Asia. Various countries in these regions currently use a mixture of seals and hand signatures, and, increasingly, electronic signatures. Chinese seals are typically made of stone, sometimes of metals, wood, bamboo, plastic, or ivory, and are typically used with red ink or cinnabar paste (). The word 印 ("yìn" in Mandarin, "in" in Japanese and Korean, "ấn" and "in" in Vietnamese) specifically refers to the imprint created by the seal, as well as appearing in combination with other morphemes in wo ...
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Nanjing
Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the second largest city in the East China region. The city has 11 districts, an administrative area of , and a total recorded population of 9,314,685 . Situated in the Yangtze River Delta region, Nanjing has a prominent place in Chinese history and culture, having served as the capital of various Chinese dynasties, kingdoms and republican governments dating from the 3rd century to 1949, and has thus long been a major center of culture, education, research, politics, economy, transport networks and tourism, being the home to one of the world's largest inland ports. The city is also one of the fifteen sub-provincial cities in the People's Republic of China's administrative structure, enjoying jurisdictional and economic autonomy only slightly less than that of a province. Nanjing has be ...
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Beijing
} Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 million residents. It has an administrative area of , the third in the country after Guangzhou and Shanghai. It is located in Northern China, and is governed as a municipality under the direct administration of the State Council with 16 urban, suburban, and rural districts.Figures based on 2006 statistics published in 2007 National Statistical Yearbook of China and available online at archive. Retrieved 21 April 2009. Beijing is mostly surrounded by Hebei Province with the exception of neighboring Tianjin to the southeast; together, the three divisions form the Jingjinji megalopolis and the national capital region of China. Beijing is a global city and one of the world's leading centres for culture, diplomacy, politics, finance, busi ...
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