DIY Variants: Excellent!

I spotted this intriguing-looking character on a signboard on a road I have walked down a million times before. It looks like a cross between 「優」(yōu/excellent) and 「收」(shōu/to receive):

Google tells me the name of the company–which sells office supplies and prints name cards–is 「猷美」(yóuměi), so the other two characters on the sign seem decorative. If anyone has solved this mystery before or has any suggestions, let me know.

I tried the variant dictionary already and there does seem to be a wide variety of different forms of 「優」, none I saw though replaced the 「心」and 「夂」 with a 「收」though:

Update: Thanks to jdmartinsen for resolving the mystery, stating that the 「丩」 is likely a stylized 「忄」:

劉炳森寫的優

The 「優」 in the sign seems to resemble the style of calligrapher Liu Bingsen, as shown in this calligraphic database.

You can see that the 「有」 also employs a variant form, with 「𠂇」 written 「㐅」, similar but not identical to one of the variants listed below:

Another sign in a shop two streets away had this (rather more common) variant of 「價」(jià/price):

This simplified version of 「價」 is also the Japanese kanji version of the character, 「価」(か/ka). Cool to see the use of variants in action and perhaps Japanese usage influencing choice of shorthand in Chinese.

7 thoughts on “DIY Variants: Excellent!

  1. Intriguing! It looks like some kind of secret message. I hope you will continue to point out such marvels of the Chinese script.

    • Thanks, Simon. I’ll try, and hope you’ll send me anything you find interesting too!

  2. 爱 I am no lover of the PRC simplify characters, but I love this one. This “love” square really looks so Japanese. If you put a イ wold be PRC’s 优, but nicely good looking than 优 ! And there is friend in your ❤.

  3. Rather than a 丩 element, it looks like a stylized 忄. There are a couple 隶书 examples on this page (https://www.cidianwang.com/shufa/you6724_ls.htm ) that group the 心 and 攵 elements horizontally instead of vertically. Also, a 有 in that style sometimes has diagonal top strokes with only the barest of hooks on the start of the first.

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