China Unknown
Unknown: Stone - Back to the Garden and Fields Poem by Tao Yuanming

n.d.
soapstone
2015.95.c
Gift of Stephen and Sophie Mathonnet-VanderWell

Set of Three Seals with Poem by Tao Yuanming
Chinese seals were generally used as printing stamps for personal signatures on documents or on art works like paintings and calligraphy. These three seals are made of soapstone. Because of its texture and beautiful color, soapstone was widely used for seals. These seals are carved according to the natural forms of the soapstone. On the surface typical Chinese landscape paintings are engraved. The uncommonly long content of these three seals combined together is a poem from the poet Tao Yuanming (365 - 427 CE).  These seals are examples of Free seals which were made for scholars to play with in their leisure time. They had free formats and natural shapes, and their content is very extensive, ranging from lines of poetry to a simple word. Free seals are manifestations of the owner’s ideology and reflect the artist’s character.  The poem on these seals praises a eremitic lifestyle in nature and advocates a reclusive and self-sufficient life.

Meng Daihui
Carleton College
A Scholar’s Studio Exhibition
October 28 – December 18, 2016
Groot Gallery, Flaten Art Museum
Professor Kathleen Ryor
The students involved in curating this show come from two classes – Carleton Professor Kathleen Ryor’s Arts of China and St. Olaf Professor Karil Kucera’s Visual Culture in Modern China