Nine-fold seal script

Nine-fold seal script or nine-fold script,, also called jiudiezhuan or jiudiewen, nine-bend script, or translated as layered script is a highly stylised form of Chinese calligraphy derived from small seal script, using convoluted winding strokes aligned to horizontal and vertical directions, folded back and forth to fill the available space. It was used for Chinese characters on official seals by the Song dynasty and the contemporaneous Liao dynasty, as well as by later dynasties such as the Ming dynasty. It is encountered mainly on official governmental seals, but occasionally seen in other contexts, such as the seals of Daoist masters.