Etsy Front Page Today

So cool to see my bangle bracelet making it to the Etsy Front Page today.  Sweet! It is the third item down on the left column.



A lot of people would ask me the font I use. Well, it's really not any word processing fonts or any other machine generated graphic design. It's actually my handwriting, inscribed onto the object with a sharp tool.

The ingredients? Lots of concentration and a steady hand. The result is personalized scripts that average about 1mm tall for lower case letters. If I need to squeeze many words onto a small area, the inscriptions can be smaller. You might need to use a magnifying device to read them.

Micro Engraving

Micro carving/engraving has 3000 years of history, in the Shang Dynasty in China. The artisans had a strong foundation in calligraphy, excellent control of their hands, worked in total concentration, and possessed unparallel eyesight. The requirements are so demanding that there were only a handful of these experts. Majority of this art were commonly seen on oracle bones, stone, wood, ivory, human hair and requires a microscopic of 100 magnification in order to read them.

Some of the better known micro engravers today who practice this art include Feng Yaozhong (Zhejiang) who carves on sesame seeds with works listed in the Guinness Book of World Records, Li Qiufeng (Shandong Province) who carved the full text of Confucius teachings on porcelain, Shen Weizhong (Suzhou) who engraves poems on pieces of hair only several mm long, and Zhang Yunhu (Shanghai) who reproduced the 300 Tang Poems of over 10,000 characters on a 3cm square piece of ivory.

To the right is a sterling bracelet where I engraved Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How do I love thee” poem. I would consider my inscriptions as mini engravings since you do not need a microscope to read the text. Yes, it required a lot of practice, breath-holding, and total concentration. This bracelet was purchased by a gentleman for his wife to celebrate a special birthday. I love happy endings. :)