It is well known that, the seal is normally made of stone, jade, copper or iron etc, and that made of ceramic is scarce. But now people have the opportunity to know it. There is an exhibition display of ceramic seals made by dozens of creators going on in Foshan Cultural Center.

Zhu Guanghe, a foregoer in recovering the Shiwan ceramic seals. He is from northeast China , and lived in the south China for years. Inspired by the charm of ceramic seal, he is settled in Foshan to be specialized in making them.

Zhu Guanghe said that the ceramic had a long history in China. When it was in the period of Yangshao and Longshan, people carved symbols on painted pottery, which is believed to be Chinas earliest ceramic seals. It is hard to find out when the seal originated from, but it is believed that the emergence of pottery marked the beginning of ceramic seal. One of the pottery specimens collected by Foshan Museum has characters “Pan Zhai” (潘宅) carved on the position of its shoulder. And there could also be found “Da Ji”(大吉), “Pan Nan”(潘南) on other objects. These simple marks may be the marks of the shops, customers or the family name of the kiln workers. But it indicated that the ceramic seal was used as a form of contract, and later transferred into an independent art with the changes of history.

How to make ceramic seal? Zhu Guanghe introduced that the process of pottery seal making consists of mould-making, shaping, drying, cutting, glazing, and firing. Ceramic seal is not stable in terms of its shape and color, for its shape may be deformed and color changed in a high temperature, and the surface of the seal is possibly uneven, resulting a poorer practicality than stone seal. Hence, ceramic seal is always regarded as artwork.

There are few artists working in ceramic seal making now. “ maybe people thought the ceramic seal cutting is far away from our daily life. But in fact, it is Shiwan ceramics artists’ responsibility  to carry on the Shiwan Gongzai, and to do research for the development of Shiwan ceramic seal. It is because of that, we should spare no efforts to study Shiwan ceramic seal cutting, especially make innovations on the material.

Zhu Guanghe is followed by some students to study ceramics seal cutting: some of them are teachers , photographers or businessmen. “ Most of them transfer to ceramic seal cutting due to their love for Chinese traditional art.” said Zhu Guanghe.

Chenjin, from Maoming City, Guangdong province, has lived in Foshan for 26 years and work in Foshan Finance school as a finance teacher. She stumbled upon a chance to study making ceramic seal. This kind of art combining carving with ceramics makes her crazy. “ If one of my friend loves tea, I would make a ceramic seal carved the Chinese characters Chayun(茶韵), and I would make one carved sentence Look at each other with joyful eyes (相看两不厌) if he gets married. Last year, I carved the school’s motto on a ceramic seal as my son’s birthday gift and sent to him.”Chenjin added, the special handmade gifts are able to pass her affections to her family and friends, she felt so happy in that interactive process.