Work of Art

There is a beautiful masterpiece of art showing 5 grown fishes swimming around some curled-up leaves. The fishes are in a blue hue in a setting of golden yellow background. The carving is also polished to a brilliant shine which sparkles under light. It is a lovely piece of art created by a very skillful craftsman. Just admiring this beautiful carving sitting majestically on its exquisite wooden stand would make you wanting to own it. Of course, it is possible only if the owner wants to sell it. Sometimes, money may not be the factor as not all things can be bought.

In fact this is a carving created from a large piece of raw amber. Any amber of this size can be very valuable, especially if it is a blue amber which highly prized in the amber market. Moreover, the craftsman's incredible skills turn this blue amber into a masterpiece and enhance its value by many times.

The raw amber shows tinge of blue hue beneath the skin

Rocks of raw amber

The above masterpiece is carved out from a huge raw amber which was sold to a client who deals in amber jewelry.

This piece was among a bundle of  raw amber roughs shown to the client by a dealer and the asking price was over a million RMB. There was a small opening on its surface to reveal its interior. Of course one would need a high power torch light to see beyond the skin. After careful examination/evaluation, the client bought the whole lot from the dealer. He actually wanted this large piece of raw amber in the whole lot. He had never seen a raw amber of this size and it could be valuable because of the combination of blue and golden yellow hue hidden beneath the skin.

After buying the amber, he wanted to have it cut to reveal its interior. He wanted to find out what ornaments he could make from this amber. However, when a bit of the skin was removed, he was shocked to see some patches of impurity in the interior. Did it mean that his investment was a utter failure? Did he misjudged its value? Although the amber revealed the blue and golden hue (signs of top quality amber) under strong light, the presence of impurity would greatly lower its value. If he stopped cutting now, he might just be able to recover some of the cost he spent on it by selling it to another person. Don't forget buying any uncut raw stone is a gamble. The more you can see the interior, the better your chance of success. Hence, the raw stones often have a small opening to reveal a bit of the interior to attract clients. If he hadn't reveal too much of the interior of the amber, chances that someone would still buy it and take his own chances.

The owner did not sell away the raw amber to cut his losses. As he really liked this large amber, he wanted to examine it further to ascertain its true worth. He then consulted experts for their opinion. Using sophisticated equipment, the experts examined the amber and eventually concluded that the patches of impurity were nothing but leaves curled up inside the amber. As amber is formed from resin dripping from trees millions of years ago, it  might have trapped some leaves in the process. Amber with impurities trapped inside could be valuable if these impurities are insects, leaves and things from millions of years ago.

With encouragement from experts, the owner decided to make something out of this large amber. He then sent it to a craft-master to have it designed and made into an ornament, a carving that would characterize the potential of this rare gem. After careful thought, the craft-master created five fishes from the bluish part of the amber. The fishes were carved in different postures, all swimming around the curled leaves in a setting of golden yellow amber of the remaining material. In its final form, the amber carving is now worth several times more than its original value. This is how a good gem stone can have its value enhanced tremendously when it is cleverly designed and made into ornaments.

Value added enhancement to the raw amber

A big patch of impurity in the amber

Opaque amber bracelets

Amber is often made into bracelets, jewelry items and other decorative objects of artistic value. As more and more people appreciate the beauty of amber, its price has escalated over the years. Some really good one, like the blue amber from the Baltic region, is very costly. It is sold as hundreds of dollars per gram.

Red or blood amber

Due to the high value of amber, a lot of fake amber items find their way into the market. These are usually plastic materials which can be difficult for beginners to differentiate from the real one. One simple way is to prepare salt water solution and throw the amber items into it. If the items sink, they are definitely not made of amber. It they float in the prepared salt water, there is a good chance that they might be real amber.

How to prepare this salt water? Its very simple, just mix 14 grams of salt in 100 cc of water to make up a specific gravity of 1.14. Amber has a specific gravity of 1.13, hence it will float on this prepared salt water.

Another method is to use a UV light source to shine on it. If the light is reflected instead of transmitted into the material, it is definitely not amber. Like the bead on top of this photo is made from a plastic material.

Chenghua Chicken Cups

In 2014, a Ming dynasty wine cup, more commonly known as the Chenghua Chicken Cup, was auctioned and sold for 280 millions HK$. Twelve years ago, the same cup was auctioned and sold for a mere 5 million HK$. Amazing, isn't it?

 This cup may looks very simple and very ordinary, but there is a story behind it that made this cup so special. It is interesting to look back at the year 1481 when Emperor Chenghua issued a decree for these wine cups to be made in the imperial kilns of Jingdezhen.

The Chenghua chicken cup

Emperor Chenghua of the Ming dynasty

 

Chenghua Emperor, real name Chu Jianshen, was the Ming Emperor from 1464 to 1487. When he was 2 years old; his father, Emperor Zhengtong, was captured by the Mongolians in a battle. His uncle seized the throne and he was known as Emperor Jingtai; Chu Jianshen's status as crown prince was removed by his uncle who made his own son the crown prince. However, when the Mongolians released Emperor Zhengtong, he was immediately put under house arrest for seven years by his brother, Emperor Jingtai.

When Emperor Jingtai was very sick, Emperor Zhengtong sized this opportunity and recaptured the throne with the help of his royal supporters. Chu Jianshen was again made the crown prince. When his father died in 1464, Chu Jianshen succeeded the throne at the age of 16 and became Emperor Chenghua of the Ming dynasty. He then married Lady Wan who was twice his age (Lady Wan took care of him during his childhood years). Lady Wan was a motherly figure to the young emperor who would do anything and everything to please her.

Emperor Chengua and Lady Wan drinking wine from the chicken cups

 

Lady Wan was a simple person who liked to live a simple life. She had a taste for things that were simple. For instance, she liked domestic lifestocks like mother hen and chickens. She would very much enjoy the sight of mother hen feeding her chicks. As a result, in 1841 Emperor Chenghua instructed his officers in Jingdezhen to make some wine cups with paintings of mother hen and chicks hunting for food. He wanted the paintings of the chickens to be simple yet lively. These cups were very well made and glazed. The paintings of chicken were indeed very simple and the chickens also appeared very lively. These cups become what we know today as the Chenghua chicken cups and there were only a handful of them left in this world, many of them in museums.

 

After the wine cups were made and delivered to the palace, Emperor Chenghua would be seen every night in the company of Lady Wan in the palace enjoying and drinking wine with the chicken cups. This was an ideal setting for a love story movie. That wine cup on auction earlier could have been used by Emperor Chenghua or Lady Wan. Now you know why these cups are so special!

 

Incidentally, the chicken cups were also highly sought after even during the later part of the Ming dynasty. It was recorded that the cup would cost a hefty ten thousand gold (don't know how much is it in today's currency). As a result, emperors of the Qing dynasty wanted to make copies of these cups following the same techniques. What exactly is this technique that made the chicken cups or the Chenghua ware so valuable?

This technique is known as Douchai,or competing colours/glazes. In this technique, the outline of the subjects was first drawn on the cup using the blue-n-white glaze. The cup was then fired to secure the glaze.

 

After firing the cup with the outline of the subjects in blue-n-white, the glazes for the rest of the subjects were filled in. When all the glazes had been applied to the cups, they were fired to secure the final texture/appearance. In this way, the over-glaze was competing with the under-glaze for supremacy, hence the name douchai.

Filling in the rest of the colour

The under-glaze of the outline of the subjects in blue-n-white

The over-glaze of the final subjects in colourful glaze

Broken Antique Pieces 3

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Fancy wearing a piece of jewelry made from porcelain?

Porcelain is an unusual material for making into jewelry items. The gem stones that we know, like diamonds, rubies, sapphires and jade, are expensive. But porcelain materials are equally valuable and expensive since they are taken from antique porcelain vases that broke into pieces. As we know, antique vases are valuable because of their attractive glazes, artistic decorations/paintings and most importantly they are rare (only found in museums). Generally the porcelain pieces are from the Ming and Qing dynasties, some can even come from the famous kilns of the Song dynasty where the actual antiques are considered priceless. The antiques may be very expensive but the broken pieces are a fraction of their cost. There are people who own broken pieces of valuable porcelain and turn these porcelain pieces into beautiful jewelry items. They reap some handsome profit by selling them to antique lovers/jewelry collectors.

Here are some items designed and made by professionals who are experts in their own right.

In my last 2 posts, I talked about the valuable pieces of broken porcelain and the collectors who have a passion for them. Apart from trading in such valuable pieces among collectors, some have sought to add value to them by designing and making jewelry items using these broken pieces. As there is such a diversity in glazes and materials to choose from, one can be certain that there is almost no limit in the things that one can design and make out of these broken pieces. Obviously the only thing that hinders him is his own creativity and skills.

Anything on these broken porcelain can turn into something useful and artistic if only you have the ability to discover their hidden value and quality. To begin with, a collector needs to have a large collection of broken porcelain pieces of different varieties. From these pieces, he has to examine them and decide which one he can use to make into a jewelry item.

An valuable part of this broken piece of porcelain

Having decided on the subject, he then marks out the outline on the broken porcelain. The piece is then cut out using the parting wheel. He has to be very careful when cutting porcelain as it is a very brittle material. In the process of cutting, if the porcelain breaks, he is not able to achieve his intended design as the fracture may occur right in the middle of his masterpiece. This is a terrible thing to happen since there is no replacement available. Every broken piece is unique and valuable in its own way.

A very creative person may then look at the remaining piece and alter his design using whatever material that is not damaged. It is interesting in that a person has full control over what he intends to make from this piece of porcelain.

This broken piece is decorated with beads

Some vases have duplicate patterns that can be cut out to make into a bracelets. It can also be the different parts of a pattern such as the symbol of the Pak Qua (from Taoists' Pak Qua diagram).

A unique thing about antique vases are the figures painted on them. Some of these figures depict the characteristics of people that lived in that era, like the 2 boys playing with lanterns (above) and the ladies (shown earlier). These vases are from the Ming dynasty. The figures are are very well painted and they are very good subjects to make into items that can still be kept by antique lovers/collectors at a fraction of the cost of actual antiques.

Bracelets made from porcelain of different glazes

Designing and making jewelry items from broken antiques is another way to preserve culture and history. Our ancestors made all sorts of antiques to tell us the culture and lifestyles of the period when they lived. People collect antiques as they also treasure the good things their ancestors had and enjoyed. Just imagine if someone breaks a valuable antique, he actually destroys the evidence of life/culture of that period. The lost in monetary value is nothing compared to the loss of this cultural value.  If he then throws away the broken pieces of porcelain, he also throws away a culture and a part of history that was in this antique.

A piece of jewelry made from Lu ware

A bowl from Lu ware, the famous Song dynasty antique