Seal (East Asia)
A seal, in an East Asian context, is a general name for printing stamps and impressions thereof are used in lieu of signatures in personal documents, office paperwork, contracts, art, or any item requiring acknowledgment or authorship. China, Japan, Taiwan, and Korea currently use a mixture of seals and hand signatures, and increasingly, electronic signatures.
Chinese seals are typically made of stone, sometimes of metals, wood, bamboo, plastic, or ivory, and are typically used with red ink or cinnabar paste (Chinese: 朱砂; pinyin: zhūshā). The word 印 ("yìn" in Mandarin, "in" in Japanese and Korean, pronounced the same) specifically refers to the imprint created by the seal, as well as appearing in combination with other ideographs in words related to any printing, as in the word "印刷", "printing", pronounced "yìnshuā" in Mandarin, "insatsu" in Japanese. The colloquial name chop, when referring to these kinds of seals, was adapted from the Hindi word chapa and from the Malay word cap meaning stamp or rubber stamps.
Read more about Seal (East Asia): History, Types, Government Authorities, Seal Paste, Chinese Usage, Japanese Usage, Korean Usage, Other Usage
Famous quotes containing the word seal:
“The denial of our duty to act in this case is a denial of our right to act; and if we have no right to act, then may we well be termed “the white slaves of the North,” for like our brethren in bonds, we must seal our lips in silence and despair.”
—Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)