I had a chance to realize an aesthetic sense of the Chinese character, one of the elements of Chinese culture, from the structures of China Pavilion at Shanghai World Expo 2010. And I thought of the Chinese characters’cultural expressions in Chinese culture, especially in seal- engraving from that experience. Since then, I started to study on the aesthetic relations between the Chinese characters and the seal-engraving. This study is titled as “The aesthetic expressions of Chinese characters in China’s traditional seal-engraving”, and deals with the beauty of character forms and the beauty of undertone of Chinese characters from the viewpoint of seal-engraving. The Chinese characters have changed into various character forms through thousands of year. For instance, there are the Inscription on Animal Bones and Tortoise Shells, the Bronze Inscription, the Small Seal Script, the Official Script, the Wei Script, the Regular Script, the Running Script and the Grass Script (Cursive style). Among them, the Small Seal Script has the most various forms. Furthermore, the Small Seal Script is in the position that none of the characters can replace in seal-engraving, the character forms changed constantly and showed various senses of beauty. This study tries to analyze the beauty of characters shown on the front and sides of the seal with the understanding of the character forms and the rules of change. Also, this study tries to show the value of Chinese characters in China’s traditional arts from the viewpoint of seal-engraving. The seal-engraving looks small but creates a big art using the beauty of character forms, the inner beauty of characters, the arrangement of characters, the implications of characters and supplementary contents of sides of the seal. On the whole, the aesthetic value of the Chinese characters in the field of seal-engraving is examined in this study through the examples of typical ancient seals and picture materials.

• 任立偉