Signatures

Russian signatures are a form of folk art. Nobody simply signs his name. The signature has to be a form of Chinese calligraphy. Artemiy Lebedev asked his blog’s visitors to publish their passports’ signatures (of the cops who issued them the passports).

Some examples:


(The first time I see a signature with arrows — not to mention a spiral pin. “One can state safely”, says Levedev, “that the head of 2nd Moscow Police department was schizophrenic.”)

An arrow and a star:



And some samples from his readers:

























The main themes seem to be round signatures in Chinese-character style and repetitive lines symptomatic of orbitofrontal cortical damage (or obsessive-compulsive disorder).