Style combination · Contrasts

Chinese Calligraphy × Ottoman Tughra

The tughra makes a ruler's written name the giant emblem of a document; the Chinese seal keeps the name small, square and red beside the writing, so decide whether the signature is the picture or the counterweight.

From the research on Chinese Calligraphy & Seal Carving (Shufa & Zhuanke)

Mix them and make something Chinese Calligraphy Ottoman Tughra

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Chinese Calligraphy, their arrangement from Ottoman Tughra, the finish from Chinese Calligraphy. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Chinese Calligraphy & Seal Carving (Shufa & Zhuanke) Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphy

Type from Ottoman Tughra: Brush & pen calligraphy
Type as image
Colour from Chinese Calligraphy: Monochrome
Limited spot colours
Form from Chinese Calligraphy: Emblems & badges
Biomorphic curves
Composition from Ottoman Tughra: Single focal point
Extreme scale contrast
Surface from Chinese Calligraphy: Painterly brushwork
Carved line

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Ottoman Tughra

Public

Cinzel, standing in for Celî dîvânî, the monumental form for panels and inscriptions, mastered by the leading dîvânî calligraphers such as Sâmi Efendi and Kâmil Akdik; after the 1928 alphabet reform it lived on in a few celî dîvânî panels by famous calligraphers of the last generation, and dîvânî is still taught in Cairo

Text · Chinese Calligraphy

The written art of China and the root of East Asian lettering. A soft, pointed brush writes ink characters in vertical columns read right to left; pressure swells and thins each stroke, and a drying brush breaks into 'flying white'. Five script families run from even seal script to cursive so fast it becomes gesture. In literati work the only colour is the red seal, cut in stone, on pale paper or silk; at the New Year the brush writes couplets and 福 in black or gold on red paper. Carved in steles and plaques, the writing returns as white-on-black rubbings and signboards over doors and shops.

Shippori Mincho; Chinese Calligraphy used Seal script (zhuanshu) and Clerical script (lishu), which grew out of Qin clerks' writing and became the main script of the Han dynasty

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Chinese Calligraphy, with a counter-accent from Ottoman Tughra. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Chinese Calligraphy & Seal Carving (Shufa & Zhuanke) Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphy

#f2ebdc ground · 36%
#151311 ink · 14%
#b8282e accent · 18%
#2e4ea6 accent · 14%
#d8c7a0 accent · 10%
#bf9a52 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f2ebdc;
  --ink: #151311;
  --accent-1: #b8282e;
  --accent-2: #2e4ea6;
  --accent-3: #d8c7a0;
  --accent-4: #bf9a52;
  --font-display: "Cinzel", serif;
  --font-text: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
}

Use it with care

Chinese Calligraphy & Seal Carving (Shufa & Zhuanke): Chinese calligraphy and seal engraving are living arts, inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List in 2009 and passed on from master to apprentice, so commission or credit calligraphers and seal carvers rather than tracing their hands, and never present generated writing as the work of a named master. Japanese shodō and Korean seoye grew from this root but are distinct living traditions with their own masters; do not label them Chinese or use this entry as a stand-in for them. Have every character written or checked by a fluent reader: image models produce pseudo-characters, and mirrored, reversed or wrongly ordered characters read as nonsense (the upside-down 福 posted at the New Year is a deliberate exception). A seal is a personal signature and is still used on official documents, so never make a seal bearing a real person's or institution's name without their consent, never copy a historical collector's or emperor's seal onto new work, and remember the seal face is cut in reverse so that the impression reads correctly. Never write a living person's name in red ink, a traditional taboo that marks the condemned and the dead. Buddhist sutras and other devotional texts written as calligraphy should not be cropped into texture or put on floors and throwaway items.

Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphy: A tughra is the personal mark of one sovereign and spells his name with a prayer for victory: do not redraw a historical sultan's tughra as a brand logo, product stamp or decorative texture, do not present a new design as a historical one, and never fill the form with invented pseudo-Arabic. The calligraphy behind the tughra and Dîvânî, hüsn-i hat, is a living craft passed on through apprenticeship (UNESCO Representative List, 2021), so commission a hattat for a new tughra and have every word read by a fluent reader of Ottoman Turkish. The tughra is also a sign of Ottoman rule: where that rule is remembered as conquest, as in parts of the Balkans, Greece, Armenia and the Arab world, or is invoked by nationalist politics, it can read as a claim to that rule, so check how the audience will read it. The tughra form is also used for sacred texts, such as Qur'anic verses, hadith and the names of the founders of Sufi orders, and Popov showed a 'tughra of Allah' in Kazan; such compositions follow the parent tradition's rules: never crop, distort or mirror them, and keep them off floors, footwear and throwaway surfaces.

The two styles

Two large black brush-calligraphy characters, 清風, are stacked vertically on textured cream paper. A small red rectangular seal with stylized characters sits to the left.

c. 0–present · East Asia Chinese Calligraphy & Seal Carving (Shufa & Zhuanke) The written art of China and the root of East Asian lettering. A soft, pointed brush writes ink characters in vertical columns read right to left; pressure swells and thins each stroke, and a drying brush breaks into 'flying white'. Five script families run from even seal script to cursive so fast it becomes gesture. In literati work the only colour is the red seal, cut in stone, on pale paper or silk; at the New Year the brush writes couplets and 福 in black or gold on red paper. Carved in steles and plaques, the writing returns as white-on-black rubbings and signboards over doors and shops. c. 1324–present · Middle East & North Africa, Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, South Asia Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphy The Ottoman sultan's calligraphic monogram and the chancery hand written beneath it. From Orhan in 1324 each sultan had his own tughra, composed at his accession and redrawn by hand on every decree: his name and titles stacked at the base, three tall shafts, two nested loops sweeping left and arms reaching right. Struck on coins and carved over gates, it was at its grandest lettered in blue outlined in gold, its loops filled with scrolls and blossoms. Below it ran Dîvânî, a slanting, tightly packed hand. A counterpart of the European royal cypher: one owned mark carried across every medium.

More combinations

With Chinese Calligraphy

With Ottoman Tughra

Every style combination