Vintage Chinese Green & Brown Jadeite Serpentine Foo Dog Chop Seal

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PRESENTING A RARE Vintage Japanese Green and Brown Marble Foo Dog Chop Seal.

Japanese circa 1900.

A fantastically carved Foo … Read more PRESENTING A RARE Vintage Japanese Green and Brown Marble Foo Dog Chop Seal.

Japanese circa 1900.

A fantastically carved Foo Dog in a contorted form, hand-carved from a single piece of mottled green, brown and white marble.

Seal on the base.

Really nice size.

Bought by a Dallas Private Collector in Japan in the 1970’s.

A seal, in an East and Southeast Asian context, is a general name for printing stamps and impressions thereof which are used in lieu of signatures in personal documents, office paperwork, contracts, art, or any item requiring acknowledgement or authorship. In the western world they were traditionally known by traders as chop marks or simply chops. The process started in China and soon spread across East Asia. China, Japan and Korea currently use a mixture of seals and hand signatures, and, increasingly, electronic signatures.

In modern Japan, most people have several inkan.

A certificate of authenticity is required for any hanko used in a significant business transaction. Registration and certification of an inkan may be obtained in a local municipal office (e.g., city hall). There, a person receives a “certificate of seal impression” known as inkan tōroku shōmei-sho (印鑑登録証明書).

The increasing ease with which modern technology allows hanko fraud is beginning to cause some concern that the present system will not be able to survive.

Signatures are not used for most transactions, but in some cases, such as signing a cell phone contract, they may be used, sometimes in addition to a stamp from a mitome-in. For these transactions, a jitsuin is too official, while a mitome-in alone is insufficient, and thus signatures are used. See less