Abstract |
The Ishihara Library at the National Taiwan University library houses a collection formerly belonging to Ishihara Saku, a Japanese in charge of Taiwan Daily News during the Japanese Colonization Period, and a renowned seal-cutting artist and antique collector. Approximately half of his collection consists of sigillary prints, with rubbings of calligraphy copybooks, Chinese paintings copybooks, and inkstone prints making up the rest. After Ishihara Saku passed away, his collection was preserved by the Preparatory School of the Taipei Imperial University, and later taken over by the National Taiwan University after Taiwan Retrocession, becoming one of the most important treasures of the university library. Basically, sigillary prints in the Ishihara Library can be classified into three categories: sigillary prints collected by Ishihara Saku, original prints by fellow seal-cutting artists and collective sigillary prints by members of seal-cutting societies, and sigillary prints by Ishihara Saku himself. These sigillary prints, to a certain degree, reflect the overall status of seal-engraving activities during the Japanese Colonization Period, making the Ishihara Library a critical first-hand information source for related research, particularly in light of the serious lack of documentation available.
|