PREVIEW Christie's Asia Week New York, Fine Chinese, Japanese and Korean Art

[Music] thank you thank you boom here we are it is uh today's uh Wednesday September 13 2023 and uh today as I mentioned last week we're going to come up and do some videos on the uh Asia week material coming up for sale at Christie's the rest of them we talked about the Marchant sale and the uh fine Chinese works of art sale and all this and I wanted to talk about the the Jade component of the sale that they have the Japanese uh sale and Korean art sale there's some nice things in there and the uh uh uh the the another ceramic cell small one from a Japanese collection and uh yesterday I I got a hold of uh Mike Bass Down in New York who's the uh International uh director of the Chinese Department out of New York and uh known Mike for a long time and we had a nice chat we talked for about an hour we went through the sale in quite a bit of detail um and we talked about some of the items and and how they came about how the collections were built and so forth and um you know I told them I wanted to uh use it in the video he said that's fine go ahead so here we are uh Christie's always been very open with information I've found um and Mike in particular so here we are um one of the things I wanted to mention because sometimes people forget it if you go to the uh they set up a section for Asia week on their site at Christie's every year and if you go down here you'll see what's on and this button here highlights and if you click the highlights button down below it you'll find an area they call special features and they have an interesting little videos and articles and things they put together specifically for the items in the sale uh sort of as a general guide and information and and and you know useful tips for how to look at things and I strongly recommend that you do it because if you if you do it with every series of sales leader you can accumulate a lot on knowledge you can learn a lot over time and these aren't extensively long articles they're very easy to read They're fairly brief and to the point and uh there's a there's a pretty good video in here they did on the Marchant sale and there's another video here they did a the the shiraku Japanese woodblock print which is a very rare wood block print that's in the Japanese component should sell for a quarter of a million or more dollars in bronzes and all this and the Jade sale of course so uh worth taking a look but I wanted to start with this the ljz collection of Chinese Jades uh this is a fairly small sale as far as quantity goes it doesn't have you know the the mountains of Jade belt buckles and all this other business that you often see but it's got some um pretty pretty exceptional uh examples and I wanted to hop into it and here it is the catalog of course is on the on the bit amount site and in the in the reference section you go over there and look at it and here they are and one of the things that struck me and and Mike agreed was that the the the the the quality of these pieces um was is really exceptional very finely worked small very for the most part these are small Jades they're personal Jades they're little Jades you could hold in your hand and enjoy looking at studying the details the fine polish the workmanship and all that there's a couple of bigger pieces there's a there's a right on Cup in here that's about eight inches tall and there's a boulder as they call it that's around 10 inches but for the most part most of these Jades are fairly small but superb quality and typically dating from the Sun to the chin lung period sung Dynasty to the chin lung period so this is it and this is one that Mike in particular pointed there's a couple that he put I'm going to go through the ones they pointed out and why he apparently loves this little Jade and it's of a it's a greenish white Jade late Ming to early Ching um and of a recumbent uh scholar sitting back and uh it's a the guy just looks cool the way the face is done notice the Polish and this was the one thing that I I talked to Mike about I said all of these pieces are so spectacularly polished um just finished perfectly and this was what the collector was after and most of these days when you read back through the provenance it came from a fairly group of narrow sources a lot of the stuff we went back to bluets and things like that or were sold maybe at Sotheby's or something along those Sotheby's or Christie's back in the 1990s for the most part he bought a few things after that but this collection was built up over the last 30 35 years I would guess from what I understand but he has this this wonderful Jade and uh the the facial expression it almost looks modern that's the thing that I found really interesting about this it has a very contemporary look to it I love the face I just absolutely love this guy's face he's uh it just seems so pleased so calm you know just a lovely guy sitting back he's got a nice big belly here well-dressed um very comfortable and uh just a really really lovely example and as I said they date this to probably the the the uh the the the 16th to the to the mid 17th century something like that it has a 60 to 80 000 estimate but a lovely lovely piece of Jade and when you look at these also keep in mind because we often get uh Jade's pictures sent to us through the identification program and um one of the things you always want to look at when you look at Jade how extensively has been finished and Polished um we had a group of belt hooks that came in the other day that were late Chang examples and in the video reply I told them how you you want to look underneath the areas that are hard to get to the areas that are hard to see how well finished are those and when you take a look at the Jades in this collection no matter where you look all the Jades are beautifully finished all you know inside the mouth all the edges the teeth are meticulously done notice the eyes the nostrils all of the elements of the Jade are finished all of the all the little little tiny spots are beautifully done under here you can see the toes of the animal and so forth and this comes from this particular piece comes from a very old collection it was something uh Mike in particular pointed out he apparently likes this one a great deal it's a little poorer in the form of a creature with a monkey on it and uh here it is and it's Southern sung to yawn Dynasty that's as narrow these are very hard to date dating early Jades dating Jades in general is very very difficult and often you will see in catalogs they'll say sung to Ming even which is a fairly wide range of times several hundred years because they really can't always nail it down but they know it's in that range but until there's some sort of documentation or some sort of study or something something to give them more precise dating they have to really do it that way but what you're paying for is the artwork and the quality of the of the Polish and these Jades are just beautifully polished this one is estimated at sixty to eighty thousand dollars um the price of the values of these are not for the faint of heart but it's it's great Jades historically especially in in strange Economic Times have been a great place uh for people to put a little money uh because when economies um uh the broader economies bounce back and things get better they're they're awfully good things to own and then you have this really really well-carved Lotus saucer washer I forget how they call it they call it just a foliate dish um Southern sung again to yawn Dynasty four inches in diameter but meticulously carved again um absolutely beautifully carved a nice looking piece of Jade greenish white Jade again with a little a few inclusions in it to add some element some elements of interest but the sculptural quality of the rim of the dish as well as the sculptural quality at the base of the petals uh if you look at this carefully you'll notice that the the bottom of the petals not just around the outside but on the inside is shaped as well the shape did well it's not just a round area with a bunch of pedals coming out of it the the Carver here very very meticulously carved the base of the petals as well as the tops of the petals and it's a really lovely example here's the back of it it's just a flat bottom back there you go and but you can see more of the details and again beautifully polished and wonderfully finished it's estimated at 100 to 150 000 and then over to this this uh incense holder this was something that you would have put a a you know incense sticks in something with a scent and put them in a drawer on not sort of like a like a cash powder today you know you put it in the drawer with your clothes that makes them have a nice fresh smell to them and this is a really unusual one it's probably chin lung period they just dated it as 18th century because there's nothing else to you know it could be a little before chin lung could be at the end of the chin lung um but but it looks like chin lung worked to me and it's it's it's a nephrite white and green jade at the top and very unusual if you're sitting there looking at saying usually you see this kind of carving on brush pots you're right you do but here they did it on an incense uh on a sense holder sensor holder perfumer holder and uh just a beautiful work all the way up the buildings very three-dimensional again the little areas everything is finished everything is polished out there are no rough edges and it's finished deep inside deep down into all these little recesses and then of course you have the uh the green dragon on top and here's an here's another view of it right here this is very typical of uh 18th century carving and you see similar carving to this on not only Jades but bamboo brush pots can have similar carving rhinoceros horns from the 18th century can be kind of very similarly and so forth and uh here you have a a Lohan with his staff walking along a Mountain Ridge and then you have these craggy Rocky areas above them with the air going through and all that just a really interesting thing it's estimated again at 100 to 150 000 but wonderful thing uh and it is 10 inches tall which is very big that's a big piece of uh Jade and it was bought originally at Sotheby's uh 23 years ago 22 years ago was in a sotheby sale but a really really nice example and this is sort of like the the most valuable thing in the sale and it deserves to be it's a right on cup uh which comes from much earlier days this particular form but it's chin lung period 18th century uh probably around 1740 to 1750 uh superb quality absolutely outstanding quality this is such a great piece of Jade it's about I think it's what is it six inches tall I'm gonna get the height before I go any further 6 and 5 8 inches so about six a little over six and a half inches tall but a really really really lovely example and perfectly is again you get down to it and you see that it's it's absolutely beautifully finished every little area on here and they've and this they're providing lots of photos this side is I think is better lit to examine there you go and you'll notice that on the groundwork down below you have all the little scrolling clouds and so forth and you have these great big uh rolls above it and every Edge every corner every aspect of it is is completely finished even the rope that goes around it meticulously worked and then this upper section with these these uh patterns that you often see on a archaeistic Jades um from long before this period um they they brought in to use as the band around the top and then you have this key fret border uh running around the top of that so every inch of this thing has just been gone over and uh spectacularly well carved uh very very nice it's got a big estimate it's estimated that 800 000 to 1.2 million dollars and uh it came from uh let's see Lady Horlick a woman in England owned this then it was at eskenazi's then Anthony Carter who was uh who's a dealer in England and then into this collection around 2008 when he bought it uh but so he's had it for about 15 years it's absolutely beautiful piece of work absolutely beautiful and this was something that Michael talked about he's just a nice big but he put it it's a big boulder it is it's 10 inches tall which is quite large for one of these and uh again meticulously done very finely worked from top to bottom every face of the stone has been finished completely and Polished out even you know again in the hard to reach areas the areas you you wouldn't expect they'd bother with but they did they did do it in there they did all the little nooks and crannies so that it's truly complete so when a person would examine it they could really appreciate the calendar the workmen that did it under the pine trees here and all this nicely colored too very strong greenish white color um excellent and uh that was sort of all of the Jades I think there's one more this was something that Mike uh wanted to look at he loved this little Sun camel a southern sun to Ming Dynasty here's one of those the things that they they're not really not they can't really date to a lot of precision because the style and form was fairly ubiquitous but it's a recumbent camel and you see camels often in Chinese art because of world lots and lots and lots of camels in China they were they were the pachyderms of the country you even see them in old black and white movies from the late 19th early 20th century coming out of Beijing the Caravans of camels they're still using them they're still there today but they they were still using them heavily to transport Goods in and out of the uh the the rural areas and back into the city because they could carry massive amounts of uh goods and so forth and needed very little uh water or food or anything they could just go on for days but uh here they have this beautiful beautiful recumbent Bactrian camel uh notice again the first thing the way the way the the patterns in the stone were incorporated into it so it looks almost like like a hint of fur coming off the animal and then this beautifully polished rear haunch and the legs and the eyes and the hump and everything all of it all of it is just wonderfully carved there's the uh side of it there's the underside of it with and and all these good these good early Jades they always finish the bottoms they're the the cleft hoofs underneath and nicely Polished in every little corner and really completed and this is a wonderful piece of shade and it's got a good estimate it's got a big estimate 150 to 250 000 it measures about three and a quarter inches long these are not big J's this is something that a person you can hold in your hand and just enjoy it and uh get a sense of how it was finished how it was polished and then you of course you can go and read up all about camels in Chinese history so anyway Mike Mike was uh he's he was very up on this sale he was very up on the March hand so he was very up on a number of things and we're going to go through the next one which is this the mini Ohana sale and what he told me was that a mediohada is a Japanese um doctor or a medical scientist I guess and he's selling this collection um and the proceeds are going to benefit medical research it isn't announced anywhere in the catalog but he told me I could I could mention it but but uh this is this guy is a very interesting collector he's got a very very good eye and he bought some beautiful things and I don't know if this is everything I doubt nobody ever sells off all of their collection but he's selling off some awfully nice pieces from it and in particular the cover a lot we're going to talk about that a little and Mike liked this stuff he liked the Aesthetics of this sale I think quite a bit and these are just some of the Lots in here and we're going to go through a few of them there's a couple in here that really jumped out at me that I liked and see what you think the first thing I wanted to mention was this one this is a really interesting piece of pottery if you like if you're interested in Northern song in somewhares this is a very interesting thing you'll notice this is a assuming the green glazed bowl and it's got writing on it and I was thinking that looked unusual to me so I went down and I found a lot essay and this is a very if you're a song buyer you want to pay attention to this the estimate is ten to fifteen thousand dollars it's eight inches in diameter it says the inscription carved on the interior of the bowl may be translated quote in the second month of the year of renshu year of John long Reign congratulations to Elder cousin on his promotion in official position in a raising salary bringing glory to our family your younger brother made this bowl as a gift in other words a brother a a fellow who's obviously he was promoted and given a good job somewhere and his younger brother made this bowl and inscribed it and gave it to him and written by Zhang Chun Lin so this was a very personal thing very interesting thing considering this is from the northern sung um uh and it's it's dated to around 962 A.D over over so it's about 1400 years ago a brother made this for an older brother to congratulate him on getting a good job with a good raise um which was very very important to Chinese families with status getting ahead advancing being successful being admired and uh so forth so this is really I think this is a terribly interesting piece for that reason alone and it's rather interesting looking and it's a nice size and it's in good condition and it's estimated at 10 to 15 000 and I think that's worth every dime Penny of that and more all right and then over to this this very very fine um important as they say important long Quan celadon canuta green vase and the color of this vase is exceptional but what also is interesting about this face is its size it's very large it's 30 percent bigger than most of these kaduda green the Southern Southern Sun celadons it is 13 and three quarter inches tall almost 14 inches most of these vases run around 10 to 11 inches so this is a big vase and it not only is a big vase but it's perfectly potted absolutely perfect from top to bottom um the way the way the the flange top is done and these amazing mold relief work serpents on here one of them has an old black gold lacquer up here which I think makes it more interesting but notice the high points on the on on the relief on the molding the molded creatures are in white because the porcelain is pushing through and the glaze is pulling back a little bit and you have this perfect canoe to Green absolutely perfect this nice slope to the lid to the to the off the base of the neck rather and then down onto the body and you notice the color remains very very consistent right through from top to bottom and this is a significantly larger type of uh some piece than the typical one which makes it so it's larger it's superbly glazed great color and it's got these fantastic creatures on the neck and it goes right down to there and there are lots and lots and lots of pictures of it um very very nice nice photography too I have to say and as I mentioned many many times they are now showing very helpfully the foot rims to these and you'll notice the very natural wear on the on the on the on the contact point of that foot which is right along there you can actually see it it's much wider than the rest of it um it goes all the way around in this nice glaze creeping down you see the iron oxide showing up on the edges of the glaze and this is what they should look like on The Fakes today when they make copies they smear this red junk all over them and they look they look like somebody dipped it and melted butterscotch or something but that looks awfully good and the bottom of it the color came out extremely well and they don't always on these but in this one it really came out exactly the same as the body of the piece and it's estimated that seven hundred thousand to a million dollars but it's a corker of a vase and it's a big one uh and uh Mike was very excited about I have to say he really likes it he liked the handles and especially and then this the siju type oil spot t-ball uh Jin Dynasty uh but very fine and absolutely no apparent wear to the center this is a nice old Bowl there's that oil spot glaze and you can you can go and read on sung Ceramics on how they produce this it's quite a trick it's a layering technique that they do and uh but very very nicely potted uh beautiful beautiful color uh and you don't see them that of that of this silver that's really nice silver tone all that often so evenly done it's estimated at twenty to thirty thousand dollars and it measures four and one quarter inches in diameter this is not a big bowl it's a little bowl it's a little tiny Bowl but absolutely sort of one of those gem things as they say and then over to this this absolutely jumped out at me I I you know and as we all know flambe pieces have been really really popular lately they've been doing great um anything with the Flaming glaze seems to be doing great but every once in a while a flambe please you may remember the uh there was that the collection out of uh uh uh the Philippines a few years ago not it wasn't the Fujita collection that was the Japanese one um there was a lady there that collected Chinese furniture we did a video on it I can't remember her name but anyway she had a really great flambe decorated Chun lung base and it went through the roof it did but it had this kind of really unusual coloring and when you look at this face it's yeah it's flambe but when you when you when you take Zoom it in and you look at the colors in this very very fine crackle on the body and this is you know it's a standard type of food form base they made they were making these right through the end of the dog one period but the chin lung ones and the yongshan ones are the earliest and uh but notice the quality of this blue glaze this blue glaze is absolutely it absolutely glows and when you go through um uh oxygen results um on flambe with flambe pieces you will find that the pieces that have this that go to this extremely light almost electric blue with this beautiful blue that erupted on these and this cherry red when you have that combination and and bleeding down the vase in this manner very evenly sort of flowing like it's still liquid it looks like it's almost still liquid flowing down over the piece they tend to do awfully well and this one I think has a a very low estimate um you know if you're interested in getting conditioner report because the estimate I think is is about half of what it should bring at least the estimate is 40 to sixty thousand and uh I think if you go through auction records you're gonna find um most of the who Farm bases and the pieces with this this quality of glaze uh bringing 80 to 150 000 um and maybe even more there's a there's a few types that I've seen that bring about a quarter of a million so I think the estimate is very very modest I think it's maybe maybe it's to encourage participation I don't know um the bottom of the vase is marked and it's got this uh this this uh a brownish glaze that you find often on the bottom of these flambeige uh chin lung pieces sometimes this one really they put a lot of it on here they really they really glaze this thing right up uh the but the mark underneath is extremely crisp and sharp which is crisper and sharper than that you see on some on a lot of other examples it's very clean but there's a lot of glaze over it which is fine because but the Mark is meticulously done the markers particularly is done but the glaze protected it and you have this nice very typical flat white uh porcelain foot Rim very evenly finished very fine quality porcelain of course and just a really lovely example and there it is and it has its box on top of it it's Japanese box and uh the only provenance on this is just as many ohada collection Kobe Japan so he probably bought this from a private collector or Source or something I went looking around I couldn't find it anywhere that had turned up in some sale I actually spent about an hour and a half looking I was going through different sources I have and I couldn't find this anywhere in a prior auction or on a search so um who knows what it'll bring but forty to sixty thousand seems awfully low it is chin lung Market period and it's what I thought it was just a glorious piece of porcelain all right and here's here's another example which I don't think is as nice now this one sold um in 2022 this sold last year I thought it was it's a very nice vase but I think this face this face is more elegant I think it's just my personal opinion you may disagree but I think this is more elegant than this one and this one brought a hundred thousand dollars with an 80 to 100 000 estimate all right and it has the same brown uh glazed bottom this one is a little bit flatter and so forth but I thought the glaze on the other one was a little bit nicer it would have got my attention more there's more contrast and uh but that that's uh there's a a similar example all right and then over to the Japanese and the rest of the sale is very good too there's some brases there's all kinds of great stuff in there um and then you have the Japanese sale that's coming up um a Japanese and Korean are there's a few very nice things in here a couple in particular one of them is this great big wooden uh muromachi the momoyamo period um uh Food Lion uh I like that a lot this is it and it's this is Kai from a solid block of wood and it's about 30 inches tall it's a very very lovely early piece 16th to 17th century and um and here you have them I'm standing you know back with his legs straight down and his mouth open and these were creatures of protection so he's on the ready he's on guard so to speak and they would have you would find these outside of temples or homes um and so forth and uh uh uh but a really really lovely example and these aren't these aren't outrageously expensive I love the wood grain on this the the patina of the wood is absolutely great the scrolling um of the fur and then the the detail this very very detailed mouth including all the little teeth and the nostrils and the eyes and so forth it's just a great looking thing and there he is and it's big it's 30 inches tall so this would this would definitely be a sculptural statement in your house uh and it's estimated just ten to fifteen thousand dollars which seems awfully reasonable for something at this age and that quality and of that of the of the religious and historic significance of these creatures what they stood for um and you don't often you find them and they're broken their front legs have been stuck back on and they're in terrible condition um is there any information about where this came from nope just a consignment the old-fashioned way and then over to this the uh katsushika Hokusai The Great Wave um the the the the real the real Under The Well of The Great Wave um uh off of uh Kanagawa is the uh is the full name of it but they just known as The Great Wave uh Prince and we've seen these before they do anywhere from 200 000 um upwards getting close to a million uh and this is a very nice example it's a good clean impression you have this area of pink in the sky still it hasn't faded out and here are the men in the boat coming down and overall this looks like a nice example uh very crisp um good condition lots of details still in it you pull it in and you'll notice you know all of the edges are still in good shape you don't see any stains or fading or anything like that it's a nice a nice nice example and it's estimated that six to seven hundred thousand dollars but but uh those of you that are into um uh uh Japanese wood block prints no know what the significance of these and there's a little essay at the bottom it's rather nice written by Chris Christine Guth who's the author of the book she wrote a book of Honolulu University press years ago about seven or eight years ago on a hooker's eyes and his biography and all this and she talks at Great length about the wave and there's an excerpt from that at the bottom of this listing so you can go down and learn a little bit more about it and then the last thing is this this absolutely knocked me out um it's it's this is not a bronze this is a wood carving and I love it when they are able to carve wood this is a Korean piece uh joseon period Jose Dynasty uh probably in the second half of what they say second half of the 17th century which looks about right but what's fantastic about this this Gilt wood carving is it looks so much like a bronze and you see these um from time to time they come up in this it's been they did of course lacquer bronzes um in the in the Ming dynasty in China the guilt lacquer from the 16th century and so forth and here is a wooden a wooden example from Korea but uh notice the quality of the carving and the patina of the wood um down here the folds of the robe the sweeping sweeping lines of the robe as it goes under and so forth very very similar to what you see on bronzes the fingers are for the most part intact which is almost a miracle and uh you have this a beautifully guilt upper body creases and folds in the robes again and this very very sort of sublime picture image of the the the the the head the eyes cast down the Brows gently folding up into the head this flat forehead and then the curls of course and the hair and so forth this is a really really lovely you know aesthetically very beautiful thing and it is 40 inches tall this is not a uh you know an eight or nine inch uh carving or like like a small bronze is often are in this size they've made bronzes that were this big too but this is a wooden example Korean joseon period uh belongs in an institution and all they say is it was it was acquired by a family in California prior to 1963 40 inches tall and it looks to be in absolutely great condition whoever had this over the years for the last 40 years has taken really really nice care of it and uh there it is with a little darker lighting and some side shots of it and some brighter lighting from the side and here's the back of it it's still all intact it looks great they didn't do a video about this they should have they should have put this on a little video um and there's there's the back of it looks great looks absolutely great and uh 40 to 60 000 that's I don't know that seems reasonable for something so striking and good size this is a big piece 40 inches it's over three feet tall um so you could you could basically make a you know a room around it it'd be quite something put a spotlight on it look great all right and those are the sales um um um there and I want to thank Mike for uh taking the time I know he's busy he's been on the road a lot lately he's always on the road seems and uh uh he got back and we had a great time talking um and he said you know when you do the video he said if anybody has questions have them contact the office they'll be happy to answer them and you still have time because the auctions are still over a week away they come up in about seven days so you still have time if you're interested in getting more information condition reports uh answers to questions do it do it over the weekend to do it in the next couple of days anyway uh to give them all plenty of time so you're not scrambling around at the last minute but it's a good looking group of sales um some nice small pieces and uh oh we talked about this bronze remember last week we talked about this bronzer let's quickly go over this and I asked Mike about it I told him we'd already done the video on it but I want to know what he thought because I said I thought this was absolutely amazing and and he sort of under his press and needs to go to a museum uh that's literally what he said without even thinking and and and I agree with him uh this is an Amazing Mirror an absolutely amazing mirror of incredible quality uh there are other SIM somewhat similar but examples around but but not many that are of this size this thing is 17 inches in diameter and uh he said it's about a quarter inch thick but meticulously cast meticulously cast it is what it looks like in the pictures so I was because I really wanted to ask him about it because I I I was just so dumbstruck by this thing and uh and he he seemed to feel immediately that this needed to go to the Metropolitan or the MFA in Boston or something so if one of you is a big benefactor to a museum with an Asian wing um give him a gift for the end of the summer you know that kind of thing all right have a good week thanks so much for watching uh leave a comment uh what you think of these we're going to do the Sotheby's uh sotheby sales tomorrow and we're going to touch on Bottoms too they got a couple of sales coming up and again over a week away you still have time to get involved if you want to chase something down or go to a preview in New York and uh uh I think I think yeah they're more than happy to see you down there if you go down there the city to to preview maybe call ahead and I don't know if they have schedules or what they're doing but um you'll have no trouble getting in there I don't think and uh have a great rest of your day and we'll be back again with more all right bye-bye thank you [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Peter Combs

Views: 3,696

Keywords: antiques, antique auctions, chinese art, japanese art, auction news, chinese porcelain, imperial porcelain, asian art, antique collecting, chinese antiques, christie's, asia week New York, korean art, most expensive antiques

Id: mMg_cOTmUDI

Length: 33min 38sec (2018 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 13 2023