Though I have a few more round seal stones I may eventually use, I won’t buy any more. No matter how carefully I try to position the stone on my artwork, and whether or not I have a mark on the stone indicating which way is up, it’s very hard to get it aligned up and down—it usually ends up slanted in one direction or another. Instead, I’m going to carve my round designs into a square stone. That way, if I’ve aligned the design correctly, it’s easy to stamp the seal and know which way is up. And I feel justified in doing so because so many old seals were made in this way. The stone seal illustrated here is from the Palace Museum in Beijing.
Here’s another interesting example in wood from the Palace Museum in Beijing [the Museum has quite a lot of these wooden seals].
Unlike the Chinese, the most common shape for seals in Japan, especially for modern personal seals, is round and made of plastic or wood.
Usually a notch is carved in the side of these Japanese seals or a small bead is inserted to indicate which way is up.
