Ji guyin zheng 集古印正

Ji guyin zheng 集古印正 is a seal catalogue of the late Ming period 明 (1368-1644) compiled by Gan Yang 甘暘 (fl. 1596), courtesy name Xu 旭 or Xufu 旭甫, style Yindong 寅東, from Moling 秣陵 (today part of Nanjing 南京), Jiangsu. The catalogue is also known with the names Ganshi ji guyin pu 甘氏集古印譜, Ganshi yinji 甘氏印集 or Yinzhang jishuo 印章集說 "Collected explanations on seals", which is actually the title of the appendix. An abbreviated edition of the catalogue, with 2 fascicles length, is called Ganshi yinzheng 甘氏印正.

The book, published in 1596, has a length of 5 juan and presents official and private seals, with between two and six seals per page. All seal-script inscriptions are translated into regular script. A comprehensive discussion, Yinzheng fushuo, builds an appendix to the catalogue. This index of 1 juan length is also separately included in the series Zhuanxue suozhu 篆學瑣著, Congshu jicheng chubian 叢書集成初編 and Meishu congshu 美術叢書.

Figure 1. Seal imprints from the Ji guyin zheng 集古印正

Seals (nos. 2 and 3) inscribed in the style of birds-and-worms script. The text is identical, but the realization of characters slightly different. From Guangming zhi men 光明之門.

The essay speaks about the right method of creating script inscriptions (zhuanfa 篆法), the distribution of characters over the surface (zhangfa 章法), and the skill of carving them into the material (daofa 刀法). Gan also applies the method of ranking artworks to the qualitative classification of seal inscriptions (yinpin 印品), with the three classes outstanding (miao 神), wonderful (miao 妙), and proficient (neng 能).

The catalogue imitates the style and techniques of Wang Houzhi's 王厚之 (1131-1204) Guyinpu 古印譜 (i.e., Han-Jin yinzhang tupu 漢晉印章圖譜) and Gu Congde's 顧從德 (1519-1587) Ji guyin pu 集古印譜. The main incentive for Gan to compile his catalogue was that the seal catalogue of Gu Congde was produced by the woodcut method which was not exact enough to create facsimiles of the original seal imprints. Gan therefore worked with metal to copy the original seals.