How to translate two characters

[Xue Li]

Hallo!

I’m quite new here, let me give just a brief introduction, I’ve been travelling in Asia for more than 20 years, mainly countries where Chinese language is spoken, China, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong.

I don’t speak or read Chinese like a Chinese, not even like a good student, that’s for sure, I may know a few hundred characters and exchange a few words but I have always loved the Chinese Characters especially in the old styles, to me they are one of the best forms of graphic art, and I use them in my collages or mixed media paintings and I own many scrolls and Chinese items with Chinese writing on them.

I own a few Chinese dictionaries/grammars/manuals in various forms and for different purposes and I’m very proud of my two volumes of the “Great dictionary of the four stiles” I bought in Bei Jing during one of my trips on the late ’80.

Usually I don’t have problems in consulting Chinese dictionaries as I learned very soon how to navigate inside them by radicals, sound, number of strokes, but this time I need help from someone better than me at reading chinese.

I was consulting the 四体大字典 to find the correct way to write the character 福in the seal script style, as lately I’ve found on internet that someone teach to write FU in the seal script style using a character different from the one I got used to.

The picture I’m adding to my post reproduce a small part of the page of the dictionary showing both the character I always use (inside the blue rectangle)  and the character I was investigating on (inside the red rectangle).

The top one has the proper definition 小篆 easy to read as “small seal” (used also to define the seal script) but I cannot read the definition of the second one, I simply cannot find the character #2 and #3 in any of my dictionaries.

Are these characters so rare? Or it’s just me not good enough on how to use a Chinese dictionary?

I can read the single parts forming #2 and # 3 but cannot find the whole characters, I also tried many on line services but to no avail.

Can anybody here help me in finding the correct translation of these two characters and the whole phrase? Possibly letting me know the radicals? And where can I find these characters (either on line or in any book/dictionary that have them listed)?

Thanks, even a negative answer will be welcomed (at least it will mean I’m not the only one in trouble….

 

[Tomsima]

https://zh.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:永樂大典11958.pdf/9

 

史頙 鼎

 

middle character very rare, last character 鼎 common, the name of a ritual vessel called a 'ding'. The character in question is cast on the inside of the ding in the link

[Xue Li]

Thank you very much.

 

I was reading in a wrong way the #3, my eyes are betraying me sometime, now that is typed is easier to find.

Now at least I know the lower "fu" is written in a style used during the Zhou Dynasty, so it is a bit older than the standard seal script made official during the Qin Dynasty.

Thanks again