Henry Li Carves Me Three Special-order Japanese Seals

I may or may not have mentioned my interest in Japanese stone seals. What these are are probably recognizable to you as that square red thing that appears on traditional Chinese paintings -- well, they of course also appear on Japanese ones.

They are the signature of the artist, usually containing the three or four syllables of their name, sometimes in a highly stylized cursive form of kanji (Chinese characters) that hails from the origins of kanji. They are extremely beautiful, and when I went to Japan this summer and stopped in at a printer's place near my hotel in Nara, I remarked upon these square, large stamps that were very different from the usual inkan that all Japanese carry; it's kind of like a permanent signature, usually their name in modern kanji in a self-inking stamp. People rarely have them custom-made -- a self-respecting shop will already have their name on an inkan, so they're cheap and convenient.


But I wanted the artist's version, which is always square or rectangular, as opposed to ordinary daily-use inkan, and usually must be special ordered. As you can imagine, these can set you back a pretty penny.

I thus decided I would order the materials and do them myself, not having a clue what I was getting myself into. I wanted to carve my son's name into a name seal (called rakkan) so he could stamp his Japanese calligraphy works with it instead of some cheap plastic round one.

I ordered the materials -- soapstone and carving tools -- and set to work, inspired by Henry Li's YouTube videos.

Henry works out of Southern California and does custom name seals as well as traditional Chinese calligraphy and paintings. He's an absolute genius at the carvings, which is evident from his videos.

So I, thinking it was going to be a breeze, tried to carve a seal according to Henry's videos.

It was an utter disaster. Henry makes it look like child's play -- child's play it is not.

Not even bothering to try a second one, I sent the stones and the designs to Henry to have him carve them for me. I sent three stones, only intending to have two done, but he gave me such a great price for all three that i could not resist. And then he made not one, but THREE videos for YouTube about my son's name seals.

Let me tell you, making videos as professional as Henry's is not for the novice. His videos look like they were filmed by a cinematographer on a film set, so you can imagine how blown away I was when he put them up on YouTube.

Here then, are the three videos Henry made. I strongly urge you to consider getting your own stone seal. Henry's talents would seem to command large sums of money, but they do not. They're incredibly reasonable.

Before you go contacting him, please tell him that Nick sent you, and he'll probably lop off a nice percentage for you. But just do it.

THANK YOU, HENRY!!!!!!! When I talk to Tai-chan in my video chat I will ask him to record his thanks. He's going to freak out when he gets these seals, as are his family and all his friends.