[KS] Koreans in Beijing ca. 1810

[Frank Hoffmann]

Dear All:

There are these days ... those days one had better just slept through 
instead of commenting on anything ):
It sure is not my Han'gŭl Day today! Another apology: 褱 (Chin. huai) 
is not 'hu' but 'hoe' in Korean. Thanks to Marion.  
To summarize: 
孫筠綬 would be Son Kyun-su 손균수 if this person was Korean, and Sun 
Yunsho if Chinese.
若褱 would be read Yahoe 야회 or Yak Hoe 약회 if Korean, and Ruo Huai 
if Chinese.
But in case these are actually Chinese brothers, those mentioned here 
(http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/18456/lot/66/), then it would be the 
brothers Sun Yunsho and Sun Ruohua. (I take Ruohua to be a regular name 
and not some pen name.) I of course also meant to say in my last 
posting that the family name 孫 is quite common (not 'popular') in all 
three East Asian countries: China, Korea, Japan. 

I did check the various digitized versions of classical text DBs that 
AKS and some other institutions in Korea are providing, and I found 
just nothing at all that would make sense with these names, not for the 
19th century. But on that above listed auction website, as regards to 
the coconut-shell snuff bottle, even both names appear. That alone is 
certainly no proof, but given there is nothing else to be found, this 
seems pretty intriguing. It would help if Dr. Sargent tells us more 
about the context. One more note: the description of that snuff bottle, 
or better the statement that 孫筠綬 is the artist of that bottle, is in 
my eyes also interesting: if indeed so, then it seems *very* unlikely 
that 孫筠綬 was a Korea. I am not aware of any Korean scholar artist to 
had laid hand in the production of that kind of what we would today 
classify handicraft object. In China or Japan, maybe. In Korea no. So, 
either that assignment of who the actual artist was is wrong (always 
assuming we speak about the same two people here), or he was not Korean 
(as that auction site states).

After all my Han'gŭl reading mistakes, maybe someone else could jump in 
… 


Thanks,
Frank



--------------------------------------
Frank Hoffmann
http://koreaweb.ws