TWO INSCRIBED STONE STELES AFTER WANG XIZHI QING DYNASTY, XIANFENG PERIOD, DATED 1854

each of rectangular form, one long side incised with an inscription in cursive script, one stele terminating with Xianfeng si nian suici jiayin dong wu ri ('the fifth day of Winter in the 4th year of the Xianfeng period'), dated 1854, the slightly pitted of a pale greyish-white colour

The present set of steles is crisply engraved with an excerpt of Shiqi Tie (‘Seventeen Models’) after Wang Xizhi (303-361) of the Eastern Jin period. Named after the first two characters, Shiqi Tie is a collection of 29 letters written by Wang to his friend Zhou Fu, who served as a Prefect in Yizhou at the time. Highly revered among scholars and celebrated as “the dragon of calligraphy” by Huang Bosi of the Song dynasty, Wang’s excellent writing throughout the letters has been held as the supreme model of cursive script. For an ink rubbing of Shiqi Tie from the Song dynasty, see Three Decades of Acquisition at the Art Museum, Art Museum, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 2001, cat. no. 47.

The present steles include seven letters from Shiqi Tie, followed by an inscription signed by an unrecorded scholar named Chen An.