Well, dear friends, now we know how to deal with your brush, how to deal with ink, how to place the writing samples, what the traditional scroll and what the traditional book look like. But we are not putting the full stop and ending our story. We have some more things to speak about. And one of them is how to put this full stop, how to end the calligraphic work. We know that in Europe when you finish a picture, for instance, you sign it, of course you may not sign it. But traditionally when you finish something, when you finish a work of art ,you sign this picture and after that it is recognized as the completed work as the finished work. In China, it is a similar process but something is a bit different. You sign it, okay? But after that you also have to seal it to put a stamp. And this putting a stamp is a very special and a very long old and rich tradition. It dates back to, God knows when, since what time those seals started to be used, always the rulers had this heels to put the stamps on the documents but not only the rulers. Okay, the rulers, the top officials, they had big, really big seal, sometimes you had to use somebody's help to just lead, to just lit the seal. But normally common people, common persons also used seals to stamp their handwriting with. Those seals may work as the signature itself or it may add the signature. Well, here is the sample of such a seal. This is not an official seal, this is just a personal seal that everybody can do, that everybody can order from a special master to carve, and then you may use this seal whenever you want. The tradition of signing something is also very special in Chinese, in the big cities of China. Now when you just go along the street you may see special, well, shops that help you making a design of your signature so that you sign properly, not correctly, but interestingly that your signature may be very special. And then this special signature has to be stamped, it has to be sealed with this special seal. The seals traditionally, as far as I said, are ordered from a specialist who carves the name of a person here and carve it in a special script, in a special style. Most of the seals are done in grand style. And after that, when you carve it, you have to place it properly on the square of the seal basement. Traditionally it is square. But of course it may have different shapes, it can be oval, it can be some very special and strange, a strangely shaped. The more complicated the shape is the more labor is to be implied by the master because he has to put the characters very harmoniously on this stone. The seals are traditionally done of stone, different kinds of semi-precious stones, sometimes they're very expensive, sometimes they're not expensive at all, but nevertheless it's quite a work to do this kind of seal. So this is a personal seal. Besides this kind of seal you can have an ex libris seal indicating that this very item, this very book belongs to, well, somebody, and then goes the name. These seals are also very popular. Here we see these so-called twin seals. Twin seals because they go as a pair, because they go as this set of double seals with a little difference in design. What the difference in design is and what the usage of the seal is I'm going to demonstrate to you right now. So, you stamp with the seal using a special paint. This special paint can be a traditional one, like here. This traditional paint was done of some natural ingredients. And, so here we go. It is very dense and plastic mass, red. Hints of red can be different, it depends on your, actually mood on your choice. You can choose, it can be darker, it could be more orange. But normal color of this paste is like that. And then you keep this paste in a special box. This is a replica of the original traditional Imperial box, you see the dragon here and everything. So, you open it when you need and you cover it when you don't, so to keep it plastic as you need it. When it dries, you may use this sort of a wooden shovel to shovel it up and use it again. So, here is this special paint. And here we go. Well, let's start with this. This is a set of twins seals. And they, these twins seals, also go as yang and yin. Yang seal is the red set of characters on the white background. So it looks like that. Here we go. The read characters on the white background, the yang seal. And this is yin seal, the red background with white characters on them. The yang and yin seal. There is also one more difference except the color. Here on the yang seal there are three characters, actually only the name. On yin seal, because three is the number of yang. On yin seal there are four characters because four is the number of yin. The yin and yang seals. Normally you sign something with your name and then you stamp it with a seal, then you put the seal on. And actually the dimensions of the characters making your name are equal or maybe similar to the capacity, to the dimensions of the seal. Let me do it vice versa. You have to sign it first and then to seal. I will do, on the contrary I will, I have already sealed it, now I'll write my name, my Chinese name. Okay, so here is the name and the seal. That's how it's done. Traditionally, of course, those seals are used by individuals. But official seals also are done in red colors, not in black or green or blue colors as we are used to. And for those seals, this kind of color, this kind of paste is used. Actually, it's not the paste, it's sort of the office stamp color that you may use with normal, well, seals not that beautifully done. Of course you can stamp with this paste but it will be different, the result would be different. Because the normal, the traditional stamp, the traditional seal must be very intensely done and it has to have a bit of glee on the surface. So, it's a special thing. The seals, the stamps between seals, the seals must be decorated, of course they have to be not only carved properly, they must be decorated with something that makes it pleasant to work with. These two seals are decorated with a figure of the mythological animal that is called [FOREIGN] that brings happiness, luck, prosperity and wealth. So, the traditional seal,. But before seal up our stories and put a full stop, we have one another thing to speak about.
