Quest for the book detectives...
my-wings
if I'd ever seen a certain stamp before or had any information about it. He
says he's seen it in a number of apparently unrelated books from a variety
of publishers over the years, and had become curious as to its origin. I
have no clue, but find myself quite intrigued by it.
Here is a picture: http://www.mywingsbooks.com/temp/remainder001.jpg
In addition to the above information, the stamp is about 3/4" by 3/4" and
was positioned in the lower right hand corner of the front free end paper.
My initial speculation is that the stamp is possibly an ownership stamp, or
maybe a bookstore stamp. (Perhaps from a museum shop or something.) It looks
to me like a pictograph or glyph, probably Native American, but maybe from
another culture.
I think I see a big bird sitting on a cross (to the left) and then a pair of
birds dive-bombing two back-to-back figures, but I could just be looking for
images in the clouds.
Any thoughts on this little mystery?
--
Book collecting terms illustrated. Occasional books for sale.
http://www.mywingsbooks.com/
funQuay
"my-wings" <my_w...@TAKEOUTatt.net> wrote in message
news:my_8h.91422$Fi1....@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
> My initial speculation is that the stamp is possibly an ownership stamp,
> or maybe a bookstore stamp. (Perhaps from a museum shop or something.) It
> looks to me like a pictograph or glyph, probably Native American, but
> maybe from another culture.
>
> I think I see a big bird sitting on a cross (to the left) and then a pair
> of birds dive-bombing two back-to-back figures, but I could just be
> looking for images in the clouds.
Interesting. I see two really hot broads discussing Meinong Alexius Ritter
von Handschuchsheim's On the Theory of Objects and Psychology in a tub of
strawberry jello. One, a redhead, about 5'9", 121 pounds, with an enormous
weltanschauung, is wearing hose and heels. The other, nubian, or possibly
cubian, is well over 6 feet tall, and is wearing a black lacy thing of some
sort. She appears to be a sophist. Or her name is Sophie. Hard to tell from
this distance.
my-wings
"funQuay" <gna...@yourselfesteem.org> wrote in message
news:H3%8h.14793$wr....@twister.nyroc.rr.com...
There's a special place in heaven for the man who can make me laugh after I
just spent two hours on the phone with the IRS trying to figure out one of
their forms.
Thanks.
Alice
>
Kris Baker
"my-wings" <my_w...@TAKEOUTatt.net> wrote in message
If you'd only said that up-front. The secret to the IRS form is found
in that remainder mark.
Kris
my-wings
"Kris Baker" <kris....@prodigyyyy.net> wrote in message
news:3w09h.399$wc5...@newssvr25.news.prodigy.net...
>
> "my-wings" <my_w...@TAKEOUTatt.net> wrote in message
> news:1l09h.91780$Fi1....@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
>>
>>
>> I just spent two hours on the phone with the IRS trying to figure out one
>> of their forms.
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Alice
>
> If you'd only said that up-front. The secret to the IRS form is found
> in that remainder mark.
>
You're not too far off. One suggestion from a different list is that it's a
Chinese tax stamp!
Alice
John R. Yamamoto-Wilson
> One suggestion from a different list is that it's a
> Chinese tax stamp!
Stick with that one, Alice. It's definitely in the right ball-park.
Kris Baker
"my-wings" <my_w...@TAKEOUTatt.net> wrote in message
Makes total sense. They probably don't tax cigarettes.
Kris
my-wings
"John R. Yamamoto-Wilson" <jo...@rarebooksinjapan.org> wrote in message
news:4sk0g7F...@mid.individual.net...
> my-wings wrote:
>
>> One suggestion from a different list is that it's a Chinese tax stamp!
>
> Stick with that one, Alice. It's definitely in the right ball-park.
>
I think that's about as far as we're going to get with it, John, unless
someone who can read Chinese comes along and offers to "translate."
What I've learned from other respondents:
It's probably a Chinese "chop" mark, which could be placed on almost
anything to indicate ownership. Chops are typically carved from soapstone
but could be made of other materials as well. Some authors (James Michener
and Amy Tan as examples) have used a chop mark along with their names when
signing books. This mark could be personal, or could designate a store that
sold the book, or could even be the aforementioned tax stamp.
I still think it's got birds in it!
Alice
John R. Yamamoto-Wilson
>>> One suggestion from a different list is that it's a Chinese tax stamp!
I said:
>> Stick with that one, Alice. It's definitely in the right ball-park.
my-wings replied:
> I think that's about as far as we're going to get with it, John, unless
> someone who can read Chinese comes along and offers to "translate."
This is an ancient form of pictogram, only used these days in seals (I
think that's what you mean by "chop mark") and things like that. I've
got very full records of all the pictograms - in their ancient forms and
with their modern equivalents - used in Japan, and this doesn't seem to
be among them.
> What I've learned from other respondents:
>
> It's probably a Chinese "chop" mark, which could be placed on almost
> anything to indicate ownership. Chops are typically carved from soapstone
> but could be made of other materials as well. Some authors (James Michener
> and Amy Tan as examples) have used a chop mark along with their names when
> signing books. This mark could be personal, or could designate a store that
> sold the book, or could even be the aforementioned tax stamp.
>
> I still think it's got birds in it!
The things you see as diving birds actually represent "flowers". What
you see as back to back figurines are the character for "un-" or "not".
The cross is "earth". The thing that looks like a big bird on top of the
cross is the only thing that I can't decipher. I haven't seen it before
and can't find it in my reference works.
Just to clarify, this pictogram doesn't mean "no flowers in the earth"
or anything like that. The overall meaning will be something quite
different from the sum of the component parts. For example, the
pictogram with the component parts "sun" and "stand" actually means
"sound", and the pictogram with the parts "tree", "stand" and "look"
means "parent", whereas "tree", "stand" and "cut" means "new". Even
after deciphering the component parts one still won't be sure of the
overall meaning unless one can track it down in a pictogram dictionary.
The bit meaning "earth" is (probably) what's called the "radical", and I
have a very good reference work which groups together all the pictograms
that contain a given radical and shows the variant forms of those
pictograms over the centuries. This pictogram isn't listed, so I suspect
it may be a Chinese pictogram which never came into use in Japan. Either
that or it's in there somewhere and I missed it or - just possibly - the
bird-like thing is the radical; the other two component parts can be
discounted ("flowers" is never used as a radical and there are only a
couple with "un-" as a radical and this isn't one of them).
I have a Japanese language sensei who helps me with conundrums of this
kind, that can't be solved just by checking a regular dictionary. We're
scheduled to meet tomorrow and I'll take this along with me. If it's in
the Japanese language (or ever has been), she'll find it!
my-wings
John: This is so much more than I ever hoped for! Even if your friend
doesn't add anything new, I'm amazed at what you've been able to decipher.
Thank you for taking the time you did, and the extensive explanation. Would
it be OK for me to share your explanation with other people who've expressed
an interest?
Alice
John R. Yamamoto-Wilson
> Would it be OK for me to share your explanation with other people
> who've expressed an interest?
Of course. It's in the public domain!
John
Barbara Bailey
<jo...@rarebooksinjapan.org> wrote:
>my-wings wrote:
>
>> One suggestion from a different list is that it's a
>> Chinese tax stamp!
>
>Stick with that one, Alice. It's definitely in the right ball-park.
>
>John
It certainly looks like a Chinese 'chop' of some sort, but whether an
official one or one of the many gift-shop variants out there I don't
know.
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
John R. Yamamoto-Wilson
> The overall meaning will be something quite
> different from the sum of the component parts.
Actually, but I'm beginning to wonder whether they might be two
pictograms side by side. The "no" + "flowers" bit on the right means
"shallot" (are shallots non-flowering?). It may be that the part on the
right is a separate pictogram and this is a two-pictogram compound.
If so, it's likely to be a person's name.
> "flowers" is never used as a radical
I must have been very bleary when I wrote that! It is frequently used as
a radical. I can only cite a heavy cold in mitigation.
John
http;//rarebooksinjapan.org
John R. Yamamoto-Wilson
> Someone wrote to me based on my website page about remainder marks and asked
> if I'd ever seen a certain stamp before or had any information about it. He
> says he's seen it in a number of apparently unrelated books from a variety
> of publishers over the years, and had become curious as to its origin. I
> have no clue, but find myself quite intrigued by it.
>
> Here is a picture: http://www.mywingsbooks.com/temp/remainder001.jpg
Are all the marks he's seen over the years exactly the same? Or is this
just an example of the kind of mark he's seen?
As I said in another reply, it is either Chinese or Japanese (both
languages use the same pictogram script, with some local differences)
and I think it may be a personal name.
John R. Yamamoto-Wilson
> Here is a picture: http://www.mywingsbooks.com/temp/remainder001.jpg
> Any thoughts on this little mystery?
I was too run-down with a cold to see my Japanese language mentor today
and, as it turns out, it might not have done any good. It seems that it
is Chinese, not Japanese. Here is a pretty definitive answer from a
respondent with fluent Chinese over on scl.lang.japan:
>> The seal is composed of three characters. The one on the right fills top
>> to bottom. The two on the left form the top and bottom quarter of seal.
>> The seal reads from the right, with the top left then bottom left
>> characters to follow. As I see it, it reads 菲力士 which in Chinese
>> reads fei li shi, which seems to me like a rendering of the English name
>> FELIX.
>>
>> Notice that the horizontal line above in 士 is longer than the lower one.
>> This is the main characteristic to separate it from 'earth'...
>>
>> Note that the characters chose 'power' 'warrior' is masculine in its
>> connotations in English. Had it been a girl's name another li and shi
>> character would be chose say in Felicity...
>>
>> Although the character 'look ancient' it is a common practice to make
>> modern
>> seals using ancient characters. Your seal impression is relatively new. Say
>> the last half a century or maybe it was made yesterday, last week, or last
>> year. I may be wrong, but this is the gut reaction I have just looking
>> at the characters and sound.
[You may not be able to see the actual characters he cites, depending on
your encoding (if you switch to Japanese encoding it might help).]
So there you have it! Who "Felix" might be is a complete mystery,
The only thing I can add to this is the information that, unlike
Japanese, Chinese does not have a phonetic script to fall back on and
everything - including foreign names, etc. - has to be represented in
pictograms.
This means that Chinese pictograms have to be chosen to approximate to
the sound of the foreign name. "Feilishi" is apparently the nearest they
can get to "Felix".
The same sort of thing can be done in Japanese, and a few foreigners
adopt pictograms to represent their name, but there is a phonetic script
for foreign words and names, etc., and most people just use that.
So this "Felix" will presumably be a westerner who set up home in China
and took a Chinese reading to represent his name. I guess at some point
he must have returned, with his library, to the area of the United
States where your enquirer is living and his library subsequently dispersed.
Now, if someone can track down an eminent sinologist named Felix who
retired to that area, a bibliographic mystery will have been solved!
my-wings
"John R. Yamamoto-Wilson" <jo...@rarebooksinjapan.org> wrote in message
news:4so2anF...@mid.individual.net...
> my-wings wrote:
>
>> Here is a picture: http://www.mywingsbooks.com/temp/remainder001.jpg
>
>> Any thoughts on this little mystery?
>
> I was too run-down with a cold to see my Japanese language mentor today
> and, as it turns out, it might not have done any good. It seems that it is
> Chinese, not Japanese. Here is a pretty definitive answer from a
> respondent with fluent Chinese over on scl.lang.japan:
>
>>> The seal is composed of three characters. The one on the right fills top
>>> to bottom. The two on the left form the top and bottom quarter of seal.
>>> The seal reads from the right, with the top left then bottom left
>>> FELIX.
>>>
John: Thanks so much! I'll pass this on to my correspondent and try to find
out if she knows if the books are associated with anyone named "Felix." In
her last letter, she mentioned that she had just run across the sign again
in another book: "... from the collection ... of an extremely well-read man
who traveled just about everywhere, as he worked for ...[an international
airline]."
Thanks again for all of the effort you've put into this!
Alice
John R. Yamamoto-Wilson
> Thanks so much!
You are welcome, Alice. By the way, I made several boo-boos yesterday.
In my snuffly, befuddled state I got my wires crossed between 菲 and 韮.
The correct one is 菲, and means, basically, "inferior" in Japanese. You
can ignore all the stuff about shallots; they apply to the second
character, and are just the result of my mistake! Curiously, in Chinese,
菲 means something quite different. Here is Dylan Sung's breakdown of
the meaning, from the thread in sci.lang.japan:
> just in case you really want the meanings (pointless in the case
> of transliterations, IMO):
> The following come from CEDICT
>
> 菲 [fei1] /rich/luxurious/phenanthrene (chemical)/Philippines/
> 力 [li4] /power/force/strength/
> 士 [shi4] /scholar/warrior/knight/
>
> Notice that the horizontal line above in 士 is longer than the lower
> one. This is the main characteristic to separate it from 'earth'...
Yes, I got that wrong, too, which was very sloppy of me; I really wasn't
on the ball yesterday!
> I'll pass this on to my correspondent and try to find
> out if she knows if the books are associated with anyone named "Felix."
> In her last letter, she mentioned that she had just run across the sign
> again in another book: "... from the collection ... of an extremely
> well-read man who traveled just about everywhere, as he worked for
> ...[an international airline]."
So he may not have actually lived in China, but had been there and
picked up the idea of using a Chinese seal to denote his name. Which
part of the world is she in? Since books with the seals seem to be
turning up in her area it's a fair bet the original owner was from the
same area. If she googles for something like Felix + China + books +
[the name of the city or region] she might come up with something.
Timdo99
Hi John -
Probably a long shot, but I wonder if this could have any relationship
to "Felix Forrest", a pseudonym for Paul Linebarger, better known as SF
author Cordwainer Smith. I have read that Felix Forrest is a pun of
sorts related to the transliteration of "Linebarger" into Chinese
characters, which in turn can be interpreted as "Forest of Incandescent
Light" (this is all from memory, so I may have some of the details
wrong). Linebarger pere et fils have an extensive association with
Chinese culture and politics.
Regards, Tim
John R. Yamamoto-Wilson
> Probably a long shot, but I wonder if this could have any relationship
> to "Felix Forrest", a pseudonym for Paul Linebarger, better known as SF
> author Cordwainer Smith. I have read that Felix Forrest is a pun of
> sorts related to the transliteration of "Linebarger" into Chinese
> characters, which in turn can be interpreted as "Forest of Incandescent
> Light" (this is all from memory, so I may have some of the details
> wrong). Linebarger pere et fils have an extensive association with
> Chinese culture and politics.
Incandescent Bliss, apparently (rather than light). Hmm. Linebarger died
in Baltimore, Maryland. Does your query emanate from that part of the
planet, Alice? If so, he might fit the bill. The completest online data
I can find about him are here:
http://www.cordwainer-smith.com/index.htm
No mention of him ever having worked for an airline company, though.
All in all, that's a good little website (a fine tribute from his
family) and, if it seems like a lead worth following up, they could be
contacted directly and asked if they recognise this seal.
my-wings
Sorry for the delay in responding. Things were slowed down a bit by the
Thanksgiving holiday.
However, I have now heard back from my correspondent. She is delighted! Her
customer's name was, indeed FELIX! Apparently, my correspondent and her
husband, book dealers, had purchased the books about two years ago from the
widow of the man mentioned. They had separated the collection and were
slowing getting them cataloged, which explains why they thought they had
seen the stamp in several unrelated books. The books were indeed related by
being in the single collection. It turns out, they are from my area of the
country, northern Illinois (about 50 miles away from me), and I think I've
managed to make a new friend over the matter.
John, kudos to your Chinese expert friend who deciphered the pictogram. He
(or she?) was exactly right! Thanks so much for all of your help.
Alice
my-wings
"Timdo99" <kesr...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1164428427.3...@f16g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
John R. Yamamoto-Wilson wrote:
> my-wings wrote:
>
> > Thanks so much!
>
>Hi John -
>Probably a long shot, but I wonder if this could have any relationship
>to "Felix Forrest", a pseudonym for Paul Linebarger, better known as SF
>author Cordwainer Smith. I have read that Felix Forrest is a pun of
>sorts related to the transliteration of "Linebarger" into Chinese
>characters, which in turn can be interpreted as "Forest of Incandescent
>Light" (this is all from memory, so I may have some of the details
>wrong). Linebarger pere et fils have an extensive association with
>Chinese culture and politics.
Hi Tim. This is a delightful theory, and I'll pass it on my correspondents,
although I'm fairly sure it won't be the same man. See my other response to
John about the location of the books.
Alice
Ted Jones
I learned something about pictographs.