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Subject:Cloisonne Sacred Heart canister from Royal Ontario Museum
Posted By: beadiste Sun, Jan 31, 2016 IP: 206.174.69.67
Does the "ZI KA WEY CHINE" transcription actually match the characters text?
Any chance "Zi ka wey" is a pronunciation of "Sacred"?







Subject:Re: Cloisonne Sacred Heart canister from Royal Ontario Museum
Posted By: Bill H Mon, Feb 01, 2016
"Zi Ka Wei Chine" appears to have been an observatory operated near Shanghai by Jesuit missionaries during the late Qing dynasty. I found several pages of references to it using Google. It apparently recorded meteorological and seismological observations.

I can't see the stroke order well enough in the photo to read the characters accurately and couldn't find any references online from which to extract the characters either.

Best regards,

Bill H.

Subject:Zi Ka Wei library in Shanghai
Posted By: beadiste Tue, Feb 02, 2016
founded by the Jesuits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliotheca_Zi-Ka-Wei

"The site chosen was the village of Xujiahui (pronounced Zikawei in the local dialect), five miles southwest of Shanghai."

Thanks, Bill, for the reminder that simply doing a Google search can produce results.

Subject:Re: Cloisonne Sacred Heart canister from Royal Ontario Museum
Posted By: rat Mon, Feb 01, 2016
Zi Ka Wei appears to be a non-standard romanization of the first three characters of the inscription: 徐家滙窗(?)X業造(?).

Using pinyin romanization, the first three characters read "Xu jia hui". This refers either to a location within Shanghai by this name, or "xu jia" by itself refers to "the Xu family" which leaves "hui" referring to I'm not sure what. (The older Wade-Giles romanization would call those three characters "Hsu chia hui".)

The rest of the inscription which I can't entirely make out seems to be (the rest of?) the maker's company's formal name. In any case I feel that Zi Ka Wei has nothing to do with "sacred".

Subject:Yes, you're right, according to Wikipedia; thank you!
Posted By: beadiste Tue, Feb 02, 2016
I kind of wonder what was stored in the canister. Somehow it seems a bit sacrilegious to use it for cigarettes, which apparently what most other people were doing, judging from the ubiquity of canister+matchbox+small ashtray dish smoking sets. Tea, maybe?

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Subject:Re: Yes, you're right, according to Wikipedia; thank you!
Posted By: rat Wed, Feb 03, 2016
I was unaware of the Jesuit library until reading Bill H's post, very interesting. Despite the sacred heart on the lid, the characters on the base don't match the library name included in the Wikipedia article though, am still stuck on that bit.


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