Nie Yuanxin: From Stonemason to Master Seal Carver

Nie Yuanxin learned to carve characters into stone at twelve. More than fifty years later, the man who calls himself “the Tujia mountain man” is one of China’s most accomplished seal carvers — chief seal carver at Badou Art — with a career running from tombstones in the mountains of Hunan to seals of jadeite, agate and crystal.

Of Tujia ethnicity, Nie is a member of the Hunan Calligraphers and Hunan Artists Associations and has studied under such masters as Chen Chusheng, Li Gangtian and Han Tianheng. He specializes in hard precious stones cut in classic pictographic seal script; he has carved more than ten thousand seals and published nearly ten seal-impression albums; his work has entered dozens of national and provincial exhibitions, and he has been invited to Malaysia for international academic exchange.

From Tombstone to Seal Stone

Born in March 1956 into a stonemason family in Sangzhi County — the hometown of Marshal He Long — Nie spent his first twenty-five working years carving characters on stones, tombstones and epitaphs beside his father.

In 1993, a long night of conversation with the scholar Huang Aixiang persuaded him to study ancient Chinese scripts in earnest. From zero he taught himself bronze inscriptions, small seal script and oracle-bone forms — two hours a day writing characters, eight hours studying seal-face composition, and a seal carved daily.

In 1997 he read in the *Calligraphy* Newspaper that the Chinese Calligraphers Association was running a training program in Guangzhou under the famous carver Li Gangtian. He enrolled at once and continued through four consecutive years of courses in Beijing and Guangzhou. Li Gangtian critiqued his work five times, approving its generosity — “not petty, able to open wide, mellow in conception” — and passing on the key to the knife: thick yet brisk, clear in starts and stops, refined and worth savoring. Later seminars at the Xiling Seal Society in Hangzhou completed the transformation.

His series in Guangdong green stone — the “Eight Scenic Views of Yangcheng” and the names of Guangzhou’s historic capitals — earned him renown across Lingnan, and Guangdong Television told his story in the documentary *A Bond of Metal and Stone*. To the Zhangjiajie municipal archives he donated his *Album of Analects Seal Impressions* and pyrophyllite seals. The master calligrapher Chen Chusheng, a professor at Jinan University, sums up his perseverance with a line from Xunzi: “Keep carving, and even metal and stone can be engraved.”

The Goodness of Giving

Nie’s art has long been tied to giving. At the Qizhi School for special-needs children in his home county, he has mentored several students in seal carving — among them an eighteen-year-old boy with autism who now cuts seals of real accomplishment.

In 2022, for the 126th anniversary of Marshal He Long’s birth, he donated a seal to the He Long Memorial Hall, its side inscription recording the marshal’s deeds. He has organized charity sales for the He Long Education Foundation, and during the 2020 pandemic he donated funds and works to encourage his stricken hometown.

Evergreen

Nie travels with carving knives and seal stones, always ready to cut. One favorite seal bears the Analects line “When three people walk together, one can be my teacher” — proof that a seal can carry culture as well as a name.

Now sixty-eight, he sees no slowdown ahead. “My knife and brush feel ever more mature,” he says. “By the Lishui River in my hometown, I want to carve more classic phrases and pass on more of this culture’s positive energy.”