Impossible task?

[Brian]

I think this one is asking a bit much, but here it is anyways. I was emailed these pics by an elderly gent who purchased this 'seal stamp' from Japan. Apparently it is on the way to him. I don't even know what this is exactly.
He was asking if it is possible to translate the seal. I'm not sure if this is Chinese or Japanese, modern or old.
On the larger pic of the stamp itself, I have flipped it horizontally so that it shows as it would if it were used.
Anyone have any ideas at all? This is waaaay out of my comfort zone, and I always expect stuff like this to be modern Chinese curios.
 

 

[Nobody]

The flipped image looks upside-down.

Here is a rotated image.

 

 

[Brian]

Fantastic work, thanks! That is a LOT easier to see.

[John C]

It looks a bit like a Changhua seal stone in the form of a Foo dog. Just my opinion but the carving seems a bit unrefined.

John C.

[Matsunoki]

Agree with Brian and John. EBay has literally thousands of these seals of varying qualities. It’s Chinese, Changhua or possibly a soapstone and very crudely carved. The stone has many flaws/faults. Probably modernish…..a popular Hong Kong gift shop item…..and a popular target for modern fakers….who are indeed very skilled. The red pigment is added to give the impression of actual use. Sometimes on Soapstone the designs are partially abraded/polished to give the illusion of genuine handling wear. It’s a real minefield. On the flip side, sometimes “crude” can mean it does have some age…..but that does not necessarily equate to value.

If anyone nails this I’ll buy em a cup of tea🙂🙂

[Larason2]

I think it's a little ditty about a fine horse.

 

 

At least, I'm pretty sure that the top right character is: 驵, which means fine horse. I remember the radical on the left side of the character is an ancient variant of horse anyway. Traditionally you read top right down the column, then next column. Here's what I think it says (sort of) in (still pretty ancient!) mandarin:

 

縯寞靻礐 Fine horse startles, leather will harden

呂앵臦遯 tremendous noise, wealthy person escapes.

 

Or some such thing! Maybe I'm off one or two characters, but it's not easy sometimes to find a modern equivalent to an ancient character that is badly rendered to look like seal script. Also, most of the copied characters don't look like the characters I found that look like the originals, they are probably more modern equivalents. In Mandarin there are a lot of 3+ character sets that together form an idiom. This one looks like an 8 character idiom. I agree probably not an authentic piece in the sense that it's not ancient, but it is probably made in China, and it does look like it's actually stone. Is it a horse? It does have a strange mane and tail for a dog, but it would also make a pretty ugly horse! It's strange to me that they slathered the bottom with what looks like wax. Maybe so it doesn't scratch whatever it's sitting on.

[Larason2]

Here's the actual characters I found (mostly archaic) so that you believe me the characters are actually related to what's on the seal!

 

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52930822245_d159ae8f01_b.jpg

 

 

 

 

[xiayang]

8 hours ago, Larason2 said:

縯寞靻礐 Fine horse startles, leather will harden

呂앵臦遯 tremendous noise, wealthy person escapes.

 

I don't think that is quite correct.  The seal script variants of those characters or the ones in your image don't look like the characters on the seal at all (and you've even got a Hangul syllable in there too).  Check for yourself on shufazidian.com (and select "篆刻").  Also, I'm fairly certain your image is upside down.  Did you use OCR for this?

 

Moriyama san's image has the correct orientation.  The calligraphy is not the prettiest, but I believe I've managed to identify six out of the eight characters:

 

? ? 司右参議朱記

 

The first two characters are very likely a personal name, 司右 is a court official's title (literally translates to something like "right manager"), 参議 can be translated to "councillor" and 朱記 is "red seal".  

[k morita]

xiayang, you are great!

??　on the pic,I think it's 通 政
通政司右参議朱記

The stamp was Possibly a senior official of the Qing dynasty China.(?)

what do you think about it.

[Brian]

Wow...you guys are amazing!
Carlos, great effort. But Jan and Morita san....wow!
Incredible effort.

[xiayang]

51 minutes ago, k morita said:

xiayang, you are great!

??　on the pic,I think it's 通 政
通政司右参議朱記

The stamp was Possibly a senior official of the Qing dynasty China.(?)

what do you think about it.

 

Yes indeed, that's it!  

 

通政司 (Tongzhengsi) was a sort of liaison office between the emperor and various ministries in the Ming and Qing dynasties that dealt with things such as payrolls and proofreading.   So it's not actually a personal seal as I first thought, but rather the seal of office of the "Tongzhengsi right councillor".

 

I can't say whether it's a genuine antique item or a later reproduction though, that's not my area of expertise I'm afraid.

[Larason2]

Xiayang, you're probably right! I took two semesters of Mandarin in university, so not an expert, but probably ahead of most. I have an app named "pleco," that has handwriting, and I tried drawing in the radicals and selecting characters that look similar. The different orientations of the originals in the OP was confusing, so I tried different orientations. I didn't think the orientation you settled on was likely, because it looked like too many straight lines on the right hand side. Nice to see someone who knows what they're doing take a crack at it!

[Bugyotsuji]

We often hear of red-seal ships from Nagasaki to SE Asia, ships with letters bearing the vermilion seal of the Tokugawa.

朱印 

And above: 朱記

Nice to see this character in action. My personal seal bag has a little container of 朱肉 shu-niku or ‘red meat’ ink.

 

Also I have heard that red and green precious stone is/was highly valued in China as it resembled the colo(u)r of horse brains. (!)