Chinese Seals - Silk Road Enterprises

Chinese Chop Seals

Have your name, organization, school or slogan hand carved into a beautiful Chinese Chop – Chinese Signature Seal (Japanese call these Japanese Chop or inkan and hanko and in Korea they are known as dojong).

Our Chinese Chop Seals are hand carved, by a professional artist, in your choice of jade, agate, or steatite stone. The stones come in a variety of sizes and shapes including round, square, oblong and rectangular.

Traditionally, Chinese chops were engraved with traditional Chinese "Seal Script" but in modern time seals can also be created using hanz (kanji), Katakana or hangul. Your Chinese Seal can be carved either ” Zhuwen” carved raised and appearing red when the seal is pressed onto paper or “Baiwen” characters incised into a surface and appearing white when the seal is pressed onto paper.

About Name Translation

In China, use of Chinese characters for transliteration of foreign names is the most usual method. Chinese use phonetic sounds for foreign names, and as such one person's translation may be different from that of the other person, although certain commonly used words have fixed translations. In Japan a phonetic translation is done using katakana. Katakana is a syllabary that only represent sounds and so the characters themselves have no meaning. For aesthetic reasons one may choose to use a phonetic translation to to kanji (Chinese characters) - all which can be suitable for non-legal uses such as artwork.

Types of Chinese and Japanese Seal

Private seals

Private seals are unregulated; therefore they show the largest variety in content, shape, size, material and calligraphy.

Personal Seals (Chinese - yin zhang/Japanese Mitome-In)

The yin zhang/mitome is usually the size of an American penny or smaller. A male's is usually slightly larger than a female's. The yin zhang/mitome in always has the person's family name, and usually does not have the person's given name. In China and Japan they are often round (symbolizing money) or oval, but square ones are not uncommon, and rectangular ones are not unheard-of. The stonecan be carved raised and appearing red when the seal is pressed onto paper or the opposite. Borderlines around their edges are optional.

Society and Company Seal (Chinese – Zhaiguan Yin/Japanese - Yin Daihyoushain)

This is the familiar large seal of a society or company, regularly seen stamped on the right side of the document. There are no regulations with regard to size or inscription, although almost all such seals have the official name of the society or company. In China, Society and Company Seal are traditionally round whereas in Japan they are customarily square. In both countries the stone is carved raised and appearing red when the seal is pressed onto paper. Borderlines around their edges are optional.

Bridging Seal (Chinese - Feng Ni /Japanese – Wariin)

This is a seal that is usually affixed between two pages of a document so that the impression straddles them, either at the point at which they are bound together or at which the edge of one page is folded over another page. It is commonly seen on contracts, and on such official documents as a company charter or application for company registration. These are usually oblong. Borderlines around their edges are optional.

Leisure seal (Chinese - Jiyu Yin /Japanese - Gago in)

It is more a decorating seal and usually it is your nickname, favorite word or a slogan. The Gago in is many size and many shape. Borderlines around their edges are optional.

A word about Seal Paste

The seal paste used is generally one of two options. The first is made with silk; finely pulverized cinnabar, an ore of mercury, is mixed with castor oil and silk strands. With the silk strands to bind the mixture together, a thick mixture results, with a dark, oily appearance. Seal paste may also be made with plants. In this case, finely pulverized cinnabar and castor oil are mixed with moxa punk, a substance created from crushing moxibustion. Moxibustion is an herb indigenous to China.

How to Use Your Chop

Dip your signature stone into a pan of red ink, ensuring that the seal is covered, but not drenched. Orient the signature stone so that the top of the stone is aligned with the top of the document, and press evenly to make an imprint on your paper or canvas. If your ink is traditional silk based ink instead of plant based, you will need to rock the signature stone gently from side to side, being careful not to slide the stone so as not to smear the image.

If you are using plant based ink, you will remove your signature stone by drawing down and angling the signature stone away from the paper. If your ink is silk based, you must remove the signature stone by lifting the stone vertically off the paper without moving at all from side to side. Allow the ink to dry thoroughly, which will usually take ten to fifteen minutes.