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bowl

by Shelley Kong
(France)

Peter,
Could you please identify this bow? The seller told me it is people's ware.
Thank you!
Shelley

PS I went to see 2 different experts on Chinese porcelain in Paris and they both confirmed that my Song bowls are all authentic. One expert, who is from an auction house, said that the blue and white bowl with the 8 immortals is mark Ming but Kangxi period.

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bowls
by: Shelley Kong

Peter,
I just checked the design(a little bright to my taste) on the bowl. It is under the glaze. The ring in the center is the stack ring, right? Could you tell me more about the blue mark on the bottom?
As for the other bowls, actually all they confirm is that the bowls are very old and not fakes nor copies. The auction house is interested in my B/W bowl with the 8 immortals mainly because, I think, that's what the Mainland "nouveau riches" like. The auction expert, like you, thinks Ching pièces are better investments and more sought after, at least for the moment. I used to buy what I like-- very old things but to be realistic, I think I should be more careful and selective, thanks to your advice and my own short experience of porcelain collection.
I did receive your emails, thanks!
Shelley
bowl
by: peter

The bowl itself could be older, the decoration is perhaps late Qing to early republic at the most. If the blue color is on top of the glaze, there is a good chance that it was added at a later time (後加彩).

As to the other bowls, as I mentioned elsewhere, some (many) of the pictures were really insufficient in view to proximity and image resolution, especially the blue and white one. Be careful however of Chenghua marked items. The Chenghua mark appears more often on Japanese porcelain than on Chinese one. And, some Japanese porcelain copies Ming and Qing decorations very closely, AND is antique too. The 福 and 成化 marks are the Chinese marks most often found on Japanese porcelain. Of these the former is still used today, on modern items.
The thing that concerns me most with that B/W bowl is the color of the clay or paste (胎). It is very suspicious. In the pictures it looks completely white, and at the same time the rim looks as if it were straight up and high. The glaze is white but without gloss, which on the other hand might be questionable if it is Qing. Hope you got the right person to look at it.

Regarding the Song bowls, the white one is the one I find most likely to accept. With the others, depends on weight and density (胎), but the green one is definitely not Song Longquan. If it were Longquan, with that color it would have to be Ming. And we here consider that color of 胎 as doubtfulon Longquan ware. But the decoration is Longquan; so to many points to clear up for my test. The glaze and clay aren't this color, normally. Could be from another kiln, though.

Did they tell you from which kilns the think the bowls are?
I must emphasize that the black one other cannot be Jian. For Jian there is a way of checking for authenticity. There is a number of points it must conform to, some of which require a magnifier. It fails several, so it must be Jizhou, if it is Song.

When you contact auction house personnel (former or current), you need to make sure of their expertise. I am more specialized on Qing/late Ming; much of my Yuan/Song related knowledge comes from weekly contacts with people who are specialized on these periods.
Also, auction and museum personnel may understand more than others, but you have still to be careful regarding of their expertise. We know that minor auction houses frequently sell fakes, even in Europe (because they don't have the experts, supposedly). For me only those of the top tier are reliable. Even renowned museum collections contain fakes (this includes top museums in China and Taiwan). I hear/read frequently that the authenticity of items that were there for decades are now in doubt. The experts were fooled by good fakes. The only we can do is to limit what we collect to items we can handle in terms of knowledge, and don't spend too much on items you are not sure about.
Anyway, stay alert!

By the way, did you get my email regarding the answer posted in the other place?

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