I have that exact blade as well, most kindly gifted to me by awesome SRP member JBHoren...great straight razor!
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Very interesting razor for sure, and very nice work once again.
A little late on this thread but...
Very good work!
I've had one on my list but are hard to find.
The tail is beautiful, what is that tail style called?
It wasn't to do with razors specifically, but I remember reading or watching something once about 19th century british manufacturers and Chinese and Japanese characters.
Apparently there was a fascination with all things "eastern" back then, and manufacturers of all sorts of things would cash in on that by using symbols. I guess some took some effort, but others apparently simply copied characters off, for example, shipping containers.
So it is entirely possible that the chinese characters on your antique vase, razor, whatever, simply translate into "This Way Up"!!
lol!
James.
Lol! That just cracked me up! This whole time we thought that the Chinese characters were ancient secrets that if deciphered and understood could lead one to health, wealth, and enlightenment (in no specific order).
How wrong we were! My interest in these blades is now gone. What a fool I was, tricked by marketing strategies over a century old! Damn.
:D
I can believe it. I remember seeing one picture of a razor with "Chinese" writing that wasn't actually text. It didn't mean anything (according to the article I read) and looked like someone trying to make up symbols that looked Chinese.
EDIT:
I found a picture of it. It was on Strazors site.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]http://www.strazors.com/uploads/ForSale/14_06_2015/wb_ch_ad_1.jpg[/ATTACH]