Click the "Customize" button next to your name below to start your personalized Betelgeuse calligraphy artwork...
參宿四 is the title for Betelgeuse (star in the constellation Orion) in Chinese.
Also known as “α Orionis” (Alpha Orionis), Alpha Ori, or in Japan the Heike-boshi or Heike-star.
Note: 参宿 (Shēn Xiù) is the name given by ancient Chinese astronomers for a constellation of three stars (the three naked-eye visible belt stars of Orion). Therefore, 參宿四 means the Fourth Star of the constellation of Three Stars (which sounds like a joke). As telescopes got better, it should be noted that there are actually 10 stars in the constellation.
平家星 is the old Japanese title for the Betelgeuse star in the constellation Orion.
While also known as Alpha Orionis or Betelgeuse in the West, this was the “Heike star” in Japan.
The powerful Taira clan, known colloquially as the 平家 (Heike clan), adopted this star's red color as its symbol sometime in the late 800s AD. They called the star 平家星 (Heike-boshi).
The following table may be helpful for those studying Chinese or Japanese...
Title | Characters | Romaji (Romanized Japanese) | Various forms of Romanized Chinese | |
Betelgeuse | 參宿四 | sān sù sì san1 su4 si4 san su si sansusi | san su ssu sansussu |
|
Betelgeuse | ベテルギウス | beterugiusu | ||
Heike Star Betelgeuse | 平家星 | hei ke boshi heikeboshi |
All of our calligraphy wall scrolls are handmade.
When the calligrapher finishes creating your artwork, it is taken to my art mounting workshop in Beijing where a wall scroll is made by hand from a combination of silk, rice paper, and wood.
After we create your wall scroll, it takes at least two weeks for air mail delivery from Beijing to you.
Allow a few weeks for delivery. Rush service speeds it up by a week or two for $10!
When you select your calligraphy, you'll be taken to another page where you can choose various custom options.
The wall scroll that Sandy is holding in this picture is a "large size"
single-character wall scroll.
We also offer custom wall scrolls in small, medium, and an even-larger jumbo size.
Professional calligraphers are getting to be hard to find these days.
Instead of drawing characters by hand, the new generation in China merely type roman letters into their computer keyboards and pick the character that they want from a list that pops up.
There is some fear that true Chinese calligraphy may become a lost art in the coming years. Many art institutes in China are now promoting calligraphy programs in hopes of keeping this unique form
of art alive.
Even with the teachings of a top-ranked calligrapher in China, my calligraphy will never be good enough to sell. I will leave that to the experts.
The same calligrapher who gave me those lessons also attracted a crowd of thousands and a TV crew as he created characters over 6-feet high. He happens to be ranked as one of the top 100 calligraphers in all of China. He is also one of very few that would actually attempt such a feat.
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