Al Mar

[orvet]

I doubt that the T-shirts are even available anymore, but you might check with the current Al Mar company.

Al had a whole line of shooters/tactical gear also.
There was a gear bag that was quite well designed. Al sponsored a shooting team and the bag was designed for the team members to carry their gear in. Many of the team members were law enforcement officers & I think they also used the bags there. It was a great piece of gear for a SWAT team.

Also a jacket that he called the Tac-Jacket. It had a bunch of pockets in it, including an outside pocked over a large breast pocket made for concealed carry. The outside pocket kept the gun from printing through the jacket. It was made from Gortex and was also available with a liner for sub-zero temperatures. The outside back of the jacket was lined with elastic pockets to hold spare magazines. It even had a cell phone pocket, at a time when cell phones (as we know them today) were a new thing. There was even a couple pockets for concealed knife carry. I wanted one in the worst way, but at the time I was raising 6 kids and a $250 jacket was beyond my means. IIRC, the liner was another $100.


I have not seen any of the gear or T-shirts since Al died, but there might be some available, or at least some used ones. You might try a want ad in Knife World.

Dale

[orvet]

Yesterday I posted to a thread in BF regarding Al Mar & the meaning of his chop. I made a rather lengthy reply, including much of the info that I had posted earlier in this thread.
A member of AAPK, who read the BF post, asked me to post that info here in AAPK.
Rather than copy the entire post and the info posted already in this forum, I thought I would just add the info not already included in this thread.

NOTE: The Tee Shirt referred to here is posted here about three posts above this one.

I know Al designed his "chop." He even explained it to me at one time, many years ago but I forgot exactly how he explained it. The best explanation I have of his chop and his motto for his knives; "Al Mar Knives-A Warriors Edge" came from a friend of mine who is himself of Chinese heritage. The following is a quote he sent me in an e-mail after I had sent him pictures of the T-shirt Al designed. The T-shirt was silk screened and contain 12 colors, IIRC. Al was rather proud of the shirt and told me he had modeled for the Chinese warrior portrayed on the shirt. In the late 1980s the shirt was $25 cost. You don't see too many of them around.

The following is from my Chinese friend explaining Al's chop and the text on the back of the T-shirt.

"I don’t know how much you know about Chinese characters so I am going to assume a zero baseline. Just skip if you already know something and don’t want a lesson in Chinese.

At its most basic early written Chinese was made up of picto-graphs. The original characters for man, woman and pig were a stick figure side-on, stick figure sitting with crossed arms in a traditional pose and a round fat animal with 4 legs respectively. Over time these were stylized and simplified to become armless body and legs, crossed arms and legs and and the pig was rotated 90 degrees with the legs becoming folded. Style and “shorthand” changes have been going on for thousands of years in some cases making the initial picto-graph unrecognizable to the unlearned.

The next thing to note is that many characters are ideo-graphs, composed of two or more picto-graphs or certain “sound” characters, which convey ideas and concepts. For instance, the pictographs “roof” (a stylized pagoda shaped character) and “pig” are combined to represent “home” - a pig under a roof. Pig was probably chosen because it represented the family’s wealth and, like many other peoples, the Chinese farmers often kept their livestock indoors. Similarly, a woman under a roof was “peace” (this one confuses me maybe it was wishful thinking!). However, three women characters together meant “quarrel”. You get the picture.

The third thing is that the composite character was made up to two main parts - a radical and the main character, which itself could be a combination. The radicals modified the main character in different ways either to convey sound or to suggest another idea or quality. “River” for instance is a compound of the character for water and a sound character -which means something else entirely but is not importanst except it that tells you the sound (ho)

A clever person could, by choosing his characters carefully, convey subtle or hidden meanings known only to an in-group or to a careful educated reader. I cannot think of direct English examples but for example the word “fast” has several meanings – the verbs “quick” and to “abstain from food”, the nouns to be avoiding food, to have the quality of being firm(as in stuck )or to be sexually promiscuous (fast women). Depending how you use it in a sentence, it may be able to convey a couple of meanings – the double entendre – either obvious or hidden. The same sort of thing can be done in a single Chinese character.

Traditional Chinese was written from the right down wards then left and down ward again.

See the character map of the characters on the shirt- posted below

Taking the t- shirt first, characters 1 2 and 3 are Al’s real or assumed Chinese name – Mar, Guo (rhymes with “war”) and Lin.

4 (zhi) and 5 (dao) are “knife” – 4 is just something like a preposition.

6 (xiang) is “as” or “like” – conveying similarity or metaphor

7 (zhan) and 8 (shi) make “warrior”

9 (dao) knife and 10 (kou) mouth = “edge” (mouth of knife; where it feeds, tastes blood; consumes)

11 (yi) one and 12 (yang) make “same”

13 (li) and 14 (nai) make “terrible” or “formidable”.

So “ Mar Guo Lin’s knives a warrior’s formidable edge”
or
“ Mar Guo Lin knives a warrior’s terrible (or terrifying) edge”.

There may be more to find but this was done for a t-shirt and I guess the main purpose was advertising.

The chop is different. As you know it is in an older script. If you compare 1, 2 and 3 from the t shirt with the chop you can see how the characters have changed over time.

“Mar” (horse) is the character taking up the right half of the chop as it is the family name. The character is a straightforward pictograph if somewhat stylized. You can see the horses head and legs.

“Guo” (country) is the shield shaped character in the top left hand side. It is an ideograph and means “country” as in “my country”. It is made up of a bordered plot of land and a man standing guard with an edged weapon a short sword or knife. Look at both versions of the character.

“lin” (forest) is the bottom left hand side. It is made up of 3 characters for “tree” , hence forest. Taken with “Guo”, Al’s Chinese name means “forested country” or “green country”.

I said earlier that this might be an assumed name. There is a certain coincidence in the provenance of the characters and his profession – as soldier and knife maker. It could be his name of course or a name taken before or after he became a knife maker."

Here are a couple more scans of a Al Mar knife box, front & rear. The front shows Al’s chop and some Chinese characters. On the back of the box is the translation of the Chinese characters on the front of the box. That is not the translation of his chop.

I feel privileged to own a few of Al’s knives. It is even a greater privilege to have known him as my friend. I would trade all of my Al Mar knives for a chance to set down and have a cup of coffee and smoke a cigar with Al one last time.

Dale

[Mossdancer]

Hi;
I know this is not a folder. But, if anyone collects Al Mar it would really be a high light of the collection. No!!! it is not my auction.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0228638641

moss