Preview Entry 6 - New Castle Art & Antique Gallery (Chinese Antiques and Collectibles 11-08-2015)

Hey Hey Hey, Connoisseur Bear is here!  I have noticed that we talked about many good stuffs recently, it’s time to talk about some “questionable” stuff, so that we can practice what we have learnt…

This week we will talk about a Qianlong monochrome dish.

For this dish, like the color itself, is full with red flags!

Chinese Porcelain Red Glazed Dish

Lot 245

4 Characters (乾隆年製) mark

Estimated: $600-$800

1.      Body & Foot rim

For the body of this dish, it is greyish and full of 
black dots (kiln grits), the greyish color and kiln grits (circled) are due to poor firing.  It contradicts with the quality of Qianlong wares already.  During the reigns of Kangxi康熙, Yongzheng雍正, Qianlong乾隆(we call it as Kang Yong Qian 康雍乾), it is the golden age of China pottery craftsmanship, so the quality like this dish is not acceptable at all, the potter who in charge of this dish can be punished for submitting stuffs like this.  

And the foot rim, it is kinda “dirty”, remember the peach bowl we talked about in first week (link)?  The foot rim reflect the quality of the material used, for this dish, it is not very good.  However, the porcelain near the mark is white and smooth, it means that the potter applied a good amount of slip (化妝土) near the mark, so it is white and shiny, but the bad thing for using slip is, it will turn yellow as the time pass.

2.      Mark

This one is too obvious… please have a quick look first.  There are two major issues I want to point out, first is the script style, second is the number of words.

For the script style, we can see that the style of this mark is quite different from the marks we talked about previously, even though they are in the same category, regular script (Kai Shu楷書), there is a slight difference.

Usually if you see fonts are writing in a direction like this, it’s a red flag, since this kind of script style is not used in Qing dynasty, you might find it in Ming dynasty though (still rare), or modern piece.

For the number of words, this one is the real problem.  In this mark, it is written as “乾隆年製”, however, in my knowledge only enamel or glass pieces use a 4 character marks, for the rest it is usually大清乾隆年製, either in regular script or mostly in seal script (Suan Shu篆書).  So this mark contradicts with the style during Qianlong reign.

Due to these two elements, this piece is problematic to me.  However, I do admire the courage for the one who bid this piece, let’s cheer for this person! (slow claps).  It’s a hard and crazy decision for me, or for him, if he read my blog.

wow come on!