Qianlong porcelain bowl from Norton's Art

Hello guys, I know that I am mega lazy right now but since I receive some likes in my facebook, so I have decided to post some entries.  In this week, I have found an interesting piece that can showcase what we have learnt previously.

Preview Entry 9 - Norton's Art (Fine Chinese Ceramics, Painting, Works of Art) 7 July 2016

Chinese porcelain bowl, famille rose glazed, marked

Lot 8M

6 Characters (大清乾隆年製) base mark

Estimated: $100 - $200

Motifs

For this piece, apart from the shape, we must be aware for the motifs on this piece.  As we can see here, we can find the butterfly (蝶), which has the meaning of longevity, double happiness (雙囍), and floral design that resemble peony (牡丹), which has the meaning of wealth.  For double happiness and butterfly, these motifs are well used in late Qing pieces especially during Tongzhi reign (同治 1856-1875).

Palace Museum, China

Now we explain why it is problematic

Motifs again

As we mentioned before, double happiness and butterfly motifs are common used in Tongzhi reign, to be honest here I haven't seen a Qianlong piece with this motifs combination (I seen butterfly motifs on Qianlong fabric though).  Actually it is very weird to see Tongzhi motifs (1856-1875) on a Qianlong piece (1711-1799).  I know time travel is possible but I don't think it is possible 200 years ago.

Another thing is the poor drawing of motifs, for the butterfly I think it is quite nice, similar to the pieces from Tongzhi reign.  But for the double happiness and Peony, they look questionable, I guess they spent all the budget on the butterfly.  The double happiness are separated, the peony is too simple.  I cannot find a Qianlong piece with Peony motifs yet, but as you can see here, you can see the really big difference.

Palace Museum, Taiwan

Weird mark

For the base mark, It was inscribed as “大清乾隆年製”.  Actually, it is okay to me if it is a piece from Tongzhi or Daoguang reign, since the mark is usually not very good in a famille rose piece, the production quality is dropping due to budget limitation.  The size for the mark is okay to me, not over sized or under sized.  Just one thing look weird to me, which is the "大", the head for the 大 is missing, I don't know if it is poorly photographed or what.

Shape

Actually I was going to skip this part since it is just too easy to spot the problem, the bowl is warped due to bad firing.  And the most important part is, it is not even a bowl, it looks like a satellite dish to me. seriously?

Conclusion

I think it worth the price if it is sold in $20, good for holding your key chain or coins, but I highly doubt that it is an authentic Qianlong piece.

So this is the preview after the long long vacation, I received lots of PMs from facebook, the pms and likes are meant a lot to me so I really thanks for the supports from you guys!

Chinese Qing Wucai Porcelain Bowl

Preview Entry 2 - Steven's Art & Antiques (Asian and European Art & Antiques 08-22-2015)

Polychrome Dragon Bowl

Lot 121

D: 5 3/4"

6 Characters (大清乾隆年製) mark

Estimated: $5,000-$10,000

Starting bid: $2,000

In this week, our bear has found one relatively good piece from Steven’s Art.  It is a Wucai “Dragon and Phoenix” Bowl with 6 characters Qianlong imperial seal mark.  However, this piece has not been sold in that auction.  Rrrrrrrrrrgh!! (People should see this blog!) Our bear roar.

Why Connoisseur Bear think it is not a fake piece?

Here's why:

1. Color and Motifs

First of all, the painting and the mark for this bowl has passed our checks, the color of those motifs matched with the style during Qianlong dynasty.  And the motifs are nicely painted, the mark is nicely written.

2. Proportion

Secondly, it fits the proportion.  Sometimes we may find pieces with doubtful proportion, such as the foot rim is too tall, the mouth rim flair is too long.  However, this bowl is very similar to other “Dragon” bowls during Qianlong dynasty.

3. Clay quality and the damages on the bowl

Thirdly, we think that the damages on this bowl are helping us to identify the ages for this bowl.  For a fake piece, there is no need to create some fake damages and lower its price.  Also, the damages and the foot rim also show the body of this bowl (see red circles), which is white and dense, it shown that this bowl is made with fine quality clay, unlike some fake reproduction in later ages.  And if we examine the dragon inside the bowl, we can see some iron spots near the dragon (black circle), during the firing stage, some iron grits may attached to the porcelain, this phenomenon cannot be seen if you use electric kiln for porcelain production.

So, why no one would buy this bowl? 

First, it may relate to the damages on this bowl.  As we can see in the photos, there are about 4~5 chips, for each chip, it means the seller must send the bowl to a restorer if he would like to sell it again for a better price.  Even in Hong Kong, it is very hard to find a good restorer to fix the chips.  And even if we are lucky enough to find a master to restore this bowl, the price would be costly, and it must be even higher than the original price for this bowl.  And for the second reason, for each chips it means the possibility for further damages on this bowl, if we use flash light and put it behind those chips, we may find some hairline cracks, or even worse, some large cracks, which can further lower the resell price for this bowl.

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Preview Entry 1 - Wensly Auctions (Asian Works of Arts 08-29-2015)

Chinese Qing Porcelain Famille Rose Bowl

Lot 22

2 3/4 x 5 7/8"

6 Characters (大清雍正年製) mark

Estimated: $1,500-$3,000

Starting bid: $200

Hello there!  This is the first entry from our Connoisseur Bear.  In this blog, we will analyze different works of arts from different places, we hope that you can learn from those pieces, and be a good connoisseur, just like our bear!

So, in this week, we are analyzing a Qing Famille Rose Bowl with "Peach" theme.  Qing dynasty bowl with imperial mark is always a number one choice for collectors and dealers, and if it is decorated with Peaches(!), and with a imperial mark(!!), the combination can make the bowl worth over US$3,000,000 (Sotheby's, October 2011, HK0377, Lot16).  But wow, now you can buy it with $200, even our bear sniff around and say this bowl is kinda fishy (not salmon!).

Here's why:

1. High Contrast Peaches

By looking at the peaches, we can see the unnatural color because of the high contrast effect, the tips of those peaches almost turn into purple.  For the genuine one, the color is much natural. See the collection from Metropolitan Museum(MET) for reference:

2. Bat's wings

The next concern we have, is the wings for the bats, please notice the detail of the bat wings from the collection of MET, we can see the "fingers" of the bats, but for the one we featured this one, we cannot see any of them.  For a bowl with imperial six characters mark, it should be in superior quality, so it should not be painted in this way.

3. Bottom rim quality and the mark
Basically, we stop inspecting if there is one thing in doubt.  But since we are here to teach, we will come across the bottom rim(red arrow) and the mark(black arrow) also,

First of all, we will look at the bottom rim first, the rim of this bowl is kinda "dirty", this is one of the red flags.  Bottom rim is where we can see the quality of a porcelain, we must know that the clay used by imperial kiln in Qing court must be in supreme quality, so the bottom rim supposed to be whitish and dense.  For rim like this, usually it happens in late Qing and Republic of China, since the quality of porcelain is affected by the budget of late Qing Court.  But you may see other areas of the bowl are whitish, it is because it is decorated with slip (化妝土), it is not the main body of the bowl.

After this, we will look into the mark, it is written as "Dai Qing Yong Zheng Nian Zhi" (大清雍正年製), which can be translated as "made in the reign of Yongzheng".  With this mark, it indicates this bowl supposed to be made from the imperial kiln during the Yongzheng period, and it is made for the internal use of Qing court.  I must be honest that the character "大，正，年，製" are nicely written, but for the character "清", it is kinda distorted toward the arrow's direction.  But the mark is kinda OK to me, since sometimes our bears can find stuff like this and laugh our ass off.

so these are the opinions and views from my boss, which is a bear.  If there are any questions, please let us know, and we will redirect it to the Connoisseur Bear.