Chinese Calligraphy: The Four Treasures and the Five Scripts

Chinese calligraphy (書法, shūfǎ, literally “the way of writing”) is the most respected of all the Chinese visual arts, considered by many the most profound. A great calligrapher was honoured more than a great painter, and a high official who wrote well was expected to display his calligraphy in the public halls of his office. Calligraphy, painting, and poetry were three branches of the same discipline, and a finished literati painting was expected to bear a poem in beautiful running script, a seal, and a signature. This article offers a focused survey of Chinese calligraphy, the four treasures of the study, the major scripts, the great calligraphers, and the aesthetic theory. For a broader look at the visual arts of imperial China, see the survey of Chinese visual arts, and for the related art of the kiln, see our survey of Chinese porcelain. Calligraphy sat at the heart of the literary tradition surveyed here and the broader Chinese art, culture, and society of the imperial period.

The Four Treasures of the Study

The classical equipment of the Chinese calligrapher was the Four Treasures of the Study (文房四寶, wénfáng sì bǎo): the brush (筆, bǐ), the ink (墨, mò), the paper (紙, zhǐ), and the inkstone (硯, yàn). Each was a sophisticated tool with its own traditions of production and connoisseurship.

The Brush

The Chinese brush is the most distinctive of the Four Treasures. It is made of animal hair — wolf, goat, rabbit, or weasel — bound to a bamboo or wooden shaft. The brush is held vertically and used with the wrist and arm rather than the fingers; a skilled calligrapher can produce a vast range of line qualities. The greatest brushes were produced in Huzhou (湖州) in Zhejiang and were prized throughout the empire.

The Ink, Paper, and Inkstone

Ink was made by burning pine soot or lampblack, mixing it with animal glue, and pressing the mixture into sticks. The best inks were made in Huizhou (徽州) in Anhui, and a stick of fine Huizhou ink could take years to produce. The most famous papers were xuan paper (宣紙, xuānzhǐ) from Jing County in Anhui, still the standard paper for calligraphy and painting today. The inkstone, often of slate, was the most permanent of the Four Treasures; the most prized came from Duanxi (端溪) in Guangdong or from Shexian (歙縣) in Anhui, and a fine old inkstone could be an heirloom.

The Five Major Scripts

The Chinese script evolved over more than three thousand years from oracle bone inscriptions to the modern regular script, passing through several distinct stages. The five scripts of the traditional classification are the seal, clerical, regular, running, and cursive scripts.

Seal Script

The seal script (篆書, zhuànshū) is the oldest formal script. The large seal script (大篆, dàzhuàn) is the form seen on Shang and Zhou bronze vessels, and the small seal script (小篆, xiǎozhuàn) was the official standard of the Qin dynasty, codified by Li Si. The small seal script is a beautiful but cumbersome style with symmetrical, curvilinear characters of uniform thickness. It is no longer used for daily writing, but has remained a vehicle for seals, monumental inscriptions, and decorative calligraphy.### Clerical Script

The clerical script (隸書, lìshū) developed from the chancery hands of the late Qin and early Han and became the standard Han dynasty script. It is characterised by broad, flat horizontal strokes, a clear distinction between the dense verticals and the sweeping, tapered horizontals (the famous “silkworm head, swallow tail” 蠶頭燕尾, cántóu yànwěi), and a flatter, more rectangular character structure. The most famous surviving example is the Cao Quan Stele (曹全碑, Cáo Quán Bēi) of 185 CE.

Regular Script

The regular script (楷書, kǎishū), also called “model script,” is the direct ancestor of the printed Chinese of today. It developed in the Wei and Jin periods and reached its classical form in the Tang. The regular script is more regularised than the clerical, with clear, distinguishable strokes, an upright, balanced structure. It is the most legible of the five scripts and the one most often taught to beginners.### Running Script

The running script (行書, xíngshū) is a semi-cursive style that occupies the middle ground between the formal regular script and the highly abbreviated cursive. It allows the brush to flow more freely, with strokes often connected, simplified components, and an overall sense of movement and rhythm. The supreme masterpiece of the running script is Wang Xizhi’s Lantingji Xu (蘭亭集序, “Preface to the Poems Composed at the Orchid Pavilion”) of 353 CE.

Cursive Script

The cursive script (草書, cǎoshū) is the most abbreviated and most personal of the five scripts. It allows the writer to connect strokes, simplify characters, and merge several characters into a single gesture. The draft cursive (今草, jīncǎo) of the Jin and Tang is still recognisable as a system of writing; the wild cursive (狂草, kuángcǎo) of the Tang is often nearly illegible, and is valued for its visual and emotional power. The Tang masters Zhang Xu and Huaisu were the legendary wild cursive masters.

The Great Calligraphers

A handful of calligraphers are honoured above all others. The single most famous calligrapher in Chinese history is Wang Xizhi (王羲之, 303–361), a Jin dynasty scholar-official honoured as the Sage of Calligraphy (書聖, shūshèng) and considered the founder of the modern running script tradition. His masterpiece is the Lantingji Xu, written in 353 CE at a spring purification festival at which he and forty-one friends composed poems, drank wine from cups floating down a winding stream, and celebrated the transience of life. The work survives only in copies, the most famous of which is in the Palace Museum in Beijing.

The Tang dynasty calligrapher Yan Zhenqing (顏真卿, 709–785) is the second great figure of Chinese calligraphy, honoured for his regular script in which he developed a strong, austere, monumental style that broke with the elegant tradition of Wang and established a new classical standard. His Draft of a Requiem to My Nephew (祭侄文稿, Jìzhí wéngǎo), written in 758 CE in mourning for a nephew killed in the An Lushan Rebellion, is one of the supreme examples of the running script tradition. The brushstrokes are visibly more agitated in the sections where Yan’s grief is most intense, and the work is treasured for the way in which the calligrapher’s hand makes his emotion visible. The Song dynasty calligrapher-statesman Su Shi (1037–1101) was a master of running and cursive script. The late Ming calligrapher Dong Qichang and the early Qing calligrapher Wang Yuanqi were the most influential critics of the tradition.

Aesthetic Theory and the Moral Dimension

Chinese calligraphy is not just a visual art; it is a moral and philosophical practice. The calligrapher’s brush, controlled by the breath, the wrist, and the heart, is a direct extension of the writer’s character. The famous phrase “calligraphy is the painting of the mind” (書為心畫, shū wéi xīn huà), attributed to the Han scholar Yang Xiong, captures this. The aesthetic principles centre on four concepts: bone (骨, gǔ), flesh (肉, ròu), blood (血, xuè), and qi (氣, qì) — the vital energy that animates the work. A good calligrapher writes with strong bone, balanced flesh, flowing blood, and abundant qi. The judgement of these qualities is part of the tradition of connoisseurship that has grown up around calligraphy since the Han dynasty.