MCLC: Ohio statehouse ticket query (1)

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Ohio statehouse ticket query (1)
I think you’re right that it’s Wilson’s name. It looks like a souvenir chop of the kind that foreign visitors to China still like to buy. Maybe Wilson went to sea in his youth, and bought this in some treaty-port shop. The shape does not look like an regular Chinese seal. It is the shield shape of western heraldry, and may be intended to suggest the Great Seal of the United States–used to sign treaties– which shows an eagle with a shield-shaped stars and stripes escutcheon on its breast. Perhaps Wilson, whoever he was, was in charge of tickets and pre-stamped them all, then signed or let someone else sign as circumstances dictated, for example if he was out of the office when someone asked for one. He probably understood that a chop was used to denote authenticity and authority in China, and enjoyed wielding his own minor authority in this way.
mary scott <mscott at sfsu.edu>
by denton.2 at osu.edu on June 3, 2015
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