Since a lot of the works on display were letters, I've got a far-fetched hypothesis that some of the seals might be postmarks. However this is just my hypothesis, so I invite people who might actually know what is happening (John? Steve?) to set me straight. As I mentioned, none of the contemporary pieces had an unreasonable number of seal impressions (though given the dadaist nature of some of those pieces I wouldn't be surprised to see one where they completely obliterate a text). In general it seems like the sort of thing people did before certificates of authenticity and modern ideas of art preservation. But why would you need to approve or inspect the same piece over and over again, even over centuries? One manuscript had 90 seal impressions counting duplicates (fortunately, most of these were in blank space at the end), and one unfortunate masterpiece had 27 impressions all over it like misplaced kisses. Sometimes the impressions actually obscure a bit of the work, which is the sort of sloppy stamping I'd expect from a censor or customs inspector.

Seals use all different styles of script, but if the seal is part of the work you shouldn't get extremely old pieces with modern-looking impressions on top of them. That only makes sense if they were in the same collections for a while. I found two pieces that had two impressions in common, but they were made a century apart by different people in different genres. The impressions aren't part of the work because some of them got cropped when the work was remounted, and in some cases more stamps were added to the new mounting material. I believe that those extra seals come from the previous owners of the work. (I learned this much from English descriptions.) In older works you have seal impressions in those places, but also impressions scattered throughout the document seemingly at random. In recent works you have one or two seal impressions to act as the artist's signature and/or studio stamp.

I don't understand a word of Chinese, except as part of a much larger system, but I think I figured it out. Today I decided I would get to the bottom of a mystery that's been bothering me: why do the manuscripts and paintings on display have so many seal impressions on them? Once I noticed this it really started bothering me and I kept looking at the seal impressions instead of the manuscripts. Went to the Met today to say goodbye to the lovely Chinese writing exhibit. So I'm going to believe Wikipedia's characterization of the article just out of spite. I tried to go to the original source material on that (original source: artsy-fartsy art magazine) so as not to be passing around Wikipedia hearsay, but original source material was 1) behind a paywall that 2) pretended not to be a paywall for the Googlebot but 3) pretended not to be pretending not to be a paywall when I pretended to be the Googlebot. You know all those SUV ads that have the SUV climbing Mount Rushmore? They would have been moot because there already would have been an SUV carved into the top of the mountain. Constitution, Louisiana Purchase, and seven other territorial acquisitions from Alaska to Texas to the Panama Canal Zone.' And Washington would have been wearing one of those big foam 'USA #1' hands. It would also have included 'a massive panel in the shape of the Louisiana Purchase commemorating in eight-foot-tall gilded letters the Declaration of Independence, U.S. But now I'm finding out things that are just ridiculous.įor instance, the original scope of the project included not just busts of the four presidents but sculptures of their torsos. I chose it as a minor example for the REST book because it's a well-known place about which people can have drastically different things to say. I'm learning more about Mount Rushmore than I ever cared to, which is kind of distressing as I already knew more about Mount Rushmore than I ever cared to.

Snoopy blowing tumbleweed gif