Opening the door of a particular office in San­chong, New Taipei City, you would be greeted by a waiting room filled with antique furniture, curios, ink and wash paintings, and calligraphy. The hallway was crammed with large crystals, stalactites, sculptures, jade, and other handicrafts, as well as a large Thai gong. If the name of the company (now relocated to Tu­cheng) weren’t printed beside the entrance, you might have thought you’d stumbled into a private museum.

Company founder Li Wenshou is a well known collector of seal stones and has been named one of the top 10 collectors in Taiwan. His selection focuses in particular on the “three treasures” of seal stones. “There’s a saying among collectors: tianhuang stone is intimate, jixue [‘chicken blood’] stone is brilliant, and rose quartz is pleasing,” says Li. “None of us like to let go of any of the three.”

Chicken-blood stone often contains patterns that resemble the indistinct landscapes of Chinese painting.

Li has an amazing number of pieces in his collection, so many that Li himself doesn’t know their exact number. He once told a friend who wanted to view every one of them that if he looked at one a day, it would take him more than three years.

Li enjoys the way that collecting art transports you through time, allowing you to engage with figures from the past. “I imagine the Emperor Qian­long derived the same pleasure from collecting,” he says. Picking up a seal stone reputed to have been part of Emperor Qian­long’s collection, he points out the five-clawed dragon that typically represents the emperor. Though the characters originally carved on the chop have been worn away, making it impossible to positively identify the original owner, the presence of the five-clawed design is highly suggestive. After all, persons other than the emperor were only permitted to use images of three- and four-clawed dragons.

Li, who’s been in business for more than 30 years, became an exclusive distributor of Nan Ya Plastics ­products 29 years ago. The first person in Taiwan to sell Nan Ya plastic wrap, he was much beloved by Wang Yung-ching, the late founder of the Formosa Plastics Group.

“When Nan Ya introduced its plastic wrap, the old mom-and-pop grocery stores that were selling it complained that it took up space and collected dust,” recalls Li. “In those days, consumers were only just beginning to grasp food hygiene and used to leave their leftovers uncovered in the fridge.” On the first and fifth days of the lunar month, Li and a colleague impersonating a health department expert would proselytize food hygiene to shop owners who had placed offerings to the hearth god by the roadside. By explaining how to protect food with plastic wrap, they sparked interest in the product.

As a distributor, Li came to know many businesspeople descended from post-war immigrants from the mainland. Owing to their background, many of these were very interested in and knowledgeable about traditional Chinese arts. They introduced Li to ink and wash painting, calligraphy and handicrafts.

After taking his first steps into collecting art, Li became interested in seal stones. A senior citizen had mentioned to him that those of them fleeing the mainland hadn’t carried gold, which was a magnet for thieves, but tian­huang stone seal stones. The seal stone collector community has a saying that reflects the same idea: “One tael of tian­huang stone equals three taels of gold.”

Tian­huang stone is valuable because it is exceedingly rare. Though mined in fields, it is formed when tectonic movements press upon and fracture a mineral vein, and the fragments are washed down into the plains and buried in sediment.

Tian­huang stone was being used to make imperial seals as early as the Ming Dynasty. During the Qing Dynasty, Emperor Qian­long not only had it carved for seals, but also placed it among the Lunar New Year’s offerings seeking the blessings of Heaven. For this reason, tian­huang stone is associated with good fortune, long life, and abundance.

“The imperial connection makes tian­huang stone exceptionally valuable and has led to it being known as ‘the king of stones,’” says Li.

Li’s collecting began with a piece of tian­huang stone, but he’s also very fond of rose quartz. Though not very translucent, rose quartz stone is known to collectors as “the gentleman of stones” for its warmth, slickness, fineness, rich hues, and elegance, and is typically priced in the NT$1.6–1.8-million range.

“Rose quartz is both like and unlike jade,” says Li. “The ancients believed that uncut, unpolished jade was no match for rose quartz, which was perfect right out of the ground. Some even preferred rose quartz to jade.”

In classical times, chops were carved by skilled craftsmen using metals, jade, or similarly hard materials. In the Six Dynasties period, seal carving merged with painting to become an art form in its own right. In the late Yuan and early Ming Dynasties, literati such as Wang Mian and Wen Peng began making them from softer stones like ophicalcite and lamplight steatite, which enabled a trend to literati carving their own seal stones.

“Thereafter,” explains Li, “literati ceased to accessorize their persons with jade and instead carried seal stones, making it easier for them to place their personal seals on paintings of which they approved.”

This nested set of Shoushan stones (5.1 cm on a side) dates to the Ming Dynasty.

Chicken-blood stone is a blend of cinnabar, dick­ite, pyro­phyl­lite and kao­lin­ite produced by millennia of geological activity in the Mt. Yu­yan area of mainland China. The stone looks as if it has been splashed with flowing blood, the shapes suggesting paintings of alpine waterfalls, raging fires, or satin banners blowing in the wind. Collectors adore it and refer to it as the queen of seal stones.

“You can catch a glimpse of the beauty of Chinese landscapes in chicken-blood stone,” says Li. “That’s why it’s so precious.” The best chicken-blood stone is a brilliant blood red without any impurities. It is graded on the basis of the depth of the red (deeper is better) and its distribution (at least half of the surface area should be blood red). Other factors that can increase the price include the vibrancy of the “blood images,” and the purity and translucency of the material. The greater the size and the more cylindrical the shape, the greater the value as well.

“Chicken-blood stone from Chang­hua has long been widely renowned,” says Li. “The most expensive are the white, red and black Liu-Guan-Zhang and the completely blood-hued da hong pao you varieties. In recent years, collectors have also become infatuated with chicken-blood stone from Ba­lin, Chi­feng Prefecture, Inner Mongolia, because of its fine grain, translucency, and brilliant reds.”

He says that appreciating chicken-blood stone requires not only looking at the color, the quality of the stone, and the images on it, but also taking in the totality of the scene, the patterns and the mood the stone evokes. “The most important thing is having a sense of connection. If you’re drawn to it, buy it for your collection!”

Li also enjoys the carvings on seal stones, and suggests that the calligraphy on them is indicative of the carver’s thinking, skill with a blade, and literary sophistication. Carvers can take advantage of the different colors and textures in the stones to create especially interesting pieces. Li says that in classical times seal stone carvings were largely two dimensional, and that exceptionally skilled artists would embellish their work with landscapes from poems. “In the Qing Dynasty and the Republican Era, more advanced tools enabled carvers to create more complex three-dimensional effects.” But he also laments that while 15 years ago some masters were still willing to invest the time to craft elegant “headpieces” for seal stones, very few do so today.

He pulls out several stone seals composed of different materials and combining two or three colors. Worked by expert carvers, the head­pieces have been shaped into forms that include silkworms boring into trees and pairs of fish playing in the water. “The headpiece was originally something you ran a string through,” says Li. “Later, it became a place where a carver could take advantage of the stone’s veins and fissures, as well as its shape, to create a variety of images.”

“Some 20 years ago, I bought nearly every hand-carved seal stone I saw,” recalls Li. Over time, he learned to distinguish the good from the bad, and got to know numerous other collectors. After exchanging thoughts and experiences with them, he grew concerned that he might be getting outright counterfeits or low-quality stones and became much more cautious.

This nested set of Shoushan stones (5.1 cm on a side) dates to the Ming Dynasty.

Li, who used to enjoy appraising seal stones for friends, now likes teaching people how to do it themselves. After all, every collector needs to learn to judge whether a stone is real or counterfeit.

“I know a veteran seal-stone collector who got stuck with a fake on a visit to the mainland.” Li says the collector had passed a gallery and seen the owner pull out a bright red chicken-blood-stone chop that he used to apply a seal to a painting with calligraphy. Li’s friend thought he’d found a real treasure and spent NT$1 million to buy it. He later learned that a real one of that apparent quality would have cost at least six times as much.

“He was very excited when he showed it to me,” recalls Li. “But when I rubbed it with a bit of sandpaper and touched it with a lighter flame, the deception was unmasked.” The gallery owner had used the chop in front of a customer in a deliberate attempt to deceive someone who should have known better.

The tools Li uses to assess the authenticity of pieces are very simple: a sheet of sandpaper, a sculpting knife, and a wind-resistant lighter. “Rubbing a corner of the seal stone with sandpaper produces a fine powder in the stone’s original color. In the case of chicken-blood stone, if the powder is red, the stone is genuine. A coarser grit is likely a plastic film or wax coating.” The surface of counterfeit tian­huang and chicken-blood stones is often colored with wax, then coated with plastic film to deceive non-experts. “Chicken-blood stones that have been colored will often have seams at the corners where the color changes,” he explains.

Next, he uses a sculpting knife to scrape a corner, which gives him similar results to the sandpaper. “A flame is the quickest, most effective test,” he says. “Real stone is unaffected, but the plastic film on fake stones blackens and emits a stink.”

This tianhuang stone (8.2 cm x 4.6 cm x 2.1 cm) has been carved with the images of nine dragons and was allegedly once owned by Emperor Qianlong.

Li is besotted with seal stones, and wears a small, very fine one around his neck. It’s a habit he picked up from friends in Japan. The Japanese treat their favorite seal stones as accessories, keeping them at hand to seal memorable items. “The Japanese excel at developing and expanding aspects of the cultures of other nations. They got me thinking about promoting seal stone culture because right now all the good seal stones are in Taiwan.”

In the latter part of mainland China’s Cultural Revolution, many seal stones found their way to Japan. But, over the last 20 years, Taiwan’s wealth has enabled it to purchase numerous antique stones from Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and placed it at the heart of the seal-stone collecting world.

“Most of what people inherit from their ancestors, is simply money without any other significance.” But carved seal stones marry calligraphy, carving, poetry and landscape art in a compact package. They represent identity, power, wealth, and status. Passed down from grandfather to grandchild, a fine seal stone will not only gain in value, but will become a family heirloom.

“An entry-level seal stone might be a pyrophyllite stone from Shou­shan that costs NT$30,000 or more and can be passed down through the generations as a specimen seal.” Pyrophyllite from Shou­shan in Fu­jian is said to have six virtues: fine grain, solidity, moistness, smoothness, warmth, and slickness. Such stones are also priced on the basis of the geographical area and particular quarry where they were produced, their stone quality and hue, their shape, the circumstances in which they were produced, and history. Stones from old quarries are considered finer than those from new because the stones were shaped longer ago, are of fine quality, and have a warm, moist feel to their surfaces. Stones from newer quarries are thought to be more friable and easily damaged. “Once you have a nice, heritable stone chop, you need a master carver to work on the sides to really bring out its beauty.” A computer-carved chop lacks spirit. Many expert carvers are also themselves connoisseurs who won’t lightly undertake to carve a stone that’s “not right.”

In addition to gathering family treasures for his children, Li is also helping his employees acquire their own. His son now not only helps run the company, but is also willing to take on Li’s seal stone legacy.

“A number of friends are hoping I’ll found a seal stone museum, but I don’t feel like I have the capability yet,” says Li, even though he dreams of sharing his treasures with collectors and others. Li works tirelessly to promote a greater appreciation of the beauty and culture surrounding seal stones, while also using exchanges with collectors around the world to help make Taiwan the world’s seal stone treasure house.

When modern artists carve seal stones, they tend to prefer soft stones over hard, and rose quartz is a particular favorite. Master carvers typically test the stone with a knife prior to carving to get a sense of how much force to apply.

This two-piece Shoushan stone (6.3 cm x 4 cm x 4.1 cm) depicts a turtle and dates to the early Qing Dynasty.

This two-piece Shoushan stone (6.3 cm x 4 cm x 4.1 cm) depicts a turtle and dates to the early Qing Dynasty.

Tiny seal stones are microcosms of the larger world. The images, characters, and landscapes carved into their surfaces have helped collector Li Wenshou better understand the stages of life.