Understanding and Identifying Late Qing Chinese Porcelain Decorations, Footrims and Styles

[Music] well hello this is Peter combs from bit amount calm and Pio combs Asian art in Gloucester Massachusetts and today is April 2nd 2020 it's Thursday and this is a video we're going to we put together to as a follow-up to one we did several weeks ago on late Ming porcelains and foot rims and so forth I hope you looked at it and you enjoyed it and we're going to now talk about examples made during the 19th century and the early 20th century and how they changed and how to identify them and differentiate them from the old examples that they're typically modeled after and this the problem is that the porcelains produced during the late ching in early republic period between 1880 in the 1930s have been a conundrum for collectors and dealer ever since the time they were made it's always been a problem late Qing and Republic examples often were passed off as originals as marking period examples and so forth to unsuspecting buyers who gobbled them up unaware that the piece that they were buying was most often modern at the time or barely a few decades old and they often paid premium prices along the way the most famous case was Henry Frick paying twenty thousand dollars for a standard Kang she cracked ice jar at or near the time these relatively contemporary pieces were made they were most often sold as authentic older examples of Tang through the Ming to the Ching dynasty pieces all the way up to the doll Kwan period after that they didn't tend to replicate them too much scholarship at the time in the West and in China it was very limited about old pieces and these new pieces they couldn't tell the difference many were as a result mixed into collections that were being formed at the time and ending up in sort of an odd assortment of old pieces and new pieces without much notice about what was what the problem led to confusion among many museums wealthy collectors and higher-end dealers and it's only gotten worse as the years have gone on intentional and unintentional misinformation that was being shared coupled with very limited archaeological knowledge that they have today about kiln sites may at times almost impossible for scholars and collectors to differentiate between old and new pieces sadly many books at the time were published and they also contained equally inaccurate information and only served to further validate and reinforce the already circulating misinformation that was being shared as accepted knowledge among collectors and dealers it was a real mess the problem continues today for collectors in an outside of China the situation has only been exacerbated by the flood of high-end fakes and copies being made today in Jing de gen primarily that are either being peddled as marking period examples or they're saying their Republic period and today the public term Republic period has become for the most part a euphemism for brand new all right they didn't make a lot of porcelain during the during the Republic period especially really great high-end examples they made some but not many so when evaluating and looking for the authenticity of Chinese porcelain one element alone does not mean it's authentic all of the aspects muscle line to the affirmative to support dating of an early piece or of a later piece shape style of decoration the colors that were used color of the enamels the glaze the glaze texture outlining brush techniques mark paste color and the texture of the paste needs to be seen that are also known to be on other known examples at this time keep in mind there are very few one-of-a-kind or unique types that are ever found their way into the market today virtually all of the great one-of-a-kind examples from the Ming and early Qing dynasties are either today in private collections are in museums and not going anywhere or they'll be sold through a major auction house and they've long since been accepted as authentic and rare and they're rare because they made very few of them to understand it all requires looking at a lot of examples and making sure that all of the elements add up to provide correct dating and information and identification this is very important the images here are just part of what you need to know going ahead and there's a lot to look at so we're gonna get started in a couple of seconds here and we'll go through them all before I get started I want to point out a couple of things that at the end of the video if you want to learn more you can come over to bit amount com and if you scroll down to the yellow boxes here you'll find a box with information these are the research boxes on the home page for museums and so forth but if you come to our home page and you click on the auctioneers and free catalogs and books and so forth section it'll bring you over to the reference section where we have about 500 right now 528 catalogs and books and one of the ones we just put up this week is this one true or v true or false defining the fake in Chinese porcelain it's a pretty good paper written by Stacy Pearson who's a scholar on the subject and she goes through all of the different things about faking faking for profit than this how fakes are made she has examples of thetic pieces that isn't a terribly long story or article it's about probably 20 pages but it's worth reading I think and the other section you can go to if you want to look at more images by period go to the bit amount drop down again under the image archive and it'll bring you over here to this page and it has lots of images by section many of them are posted in blogs we've done over the years with considerable number of images so you can come here you can put the mouse up on it and it will show you the information about the piece and give its age and so forth and it can be pretty handy if you're looking to get more information and there's add one here on some pieces as well and these all enlarge with text and information and so forth and pretty handy to have alrighty now let's get started we're going to start with this this is a late Ching as you know as it's obvious is a sort of a lying ow or red glaze pot that has had an amel decoration added to it the application of coloured enamels over monochromes like this was not done typically in the 18th century so if you see one with the chin lung mark or a young chen mark or some other mark you can rest assured it's a fake or was made in the in the late chang or early public period again between 1870 or so in 1930 this is one such piece and this is what they look like they're beautifully done there's nothing wrong with them they're quite nice and it's a variant on just the straight-up monochrome or an enameled white ground or you know yellow ground piece is something like that and here's a picture of the bottom of it what it looks like and you'll notice that it has a lot of sort of grunge and irregularities where the under glaze red came over before they enameled it and then you have this slightly scooped out bottom with a rather fine crackle to it and this is a fairly typical example of the late 19th century so you'll know what they look like when you come across it the other example is this this is part of a stacking cup set done in famille Rose it's a second half of the 19th century set they were produced in fairly large quantities they're highly collected people love them and they do sell well in the market because they're interesting and one larger cup fits a smaller cup inside of it a smaller cup and a smaller cup and they they fill up so you get them and they have you know 15 or so small cups inside of one larger cup and this is what the bottom of it looks like all right and one of the things you notice on Later Ching pieces is that you don't see an iron oxide line all the time around the foot like you do on 18 - more typically on 18th century pieces they tend to be just white they do exist there are exceptions always but typically they don't and the foot has a slightly v-shaped form to it on these little cups and the bottom is very white and then has this soft sort of celadon over glaze enameling on it alright and then on to this this is one of those very recognizable peach form puzzle pots where they're filled in through the bottom there's no top area to fill it and they made these throughout the 19th century they made a few before that they made some in the early days but most of the ones you come across or 19th century and they can be blue and white they can be familiar and decorated they can have celadon glazes like this one these are peach form and that's why it is the little red thing on the top and then the the underglaze blue leaves and so forth and if you were to flip the thing over that's what the bottom of it would look like pretty typical for a late 19th century piece a no iron-oxide line a little bit of killing grit which is not unusual and a rather flat fairly smooth foot but not that snowy white type that you see on Kong see pieces it's end just to be a little more a little grayer or oatmealy colored it's because the quality of the porcelain often in the late 19th century in the mid 19th century was not up to the standards that were set in the 18th century for example all right and then on to this the peach pattern peach boxes were very popular in the late 19th century and the early 20th century here is one of them it's a perfectly good box there's nothing wrong with it and we we sold this a number of years ago and I think we got thousands of dollars for it nonetheless here's a picture of the foot room it is not marked it does have a faint iron oxide line though here's one of the exceptions but nothing on the inside just a little bit of it on the outside in the foot again is that sort of grayish white with little little black spots in it it's not very very fine paste like you would see on old pieces all right in a very very white glaze but the brushwork on it is not as good as the early pieces and we're going to look at a peach peach vase an old one and a new one and a little bit we can compare them and then you get into things like this these little paste boxes were very popular in the late 19th and early 20th century they were exported in large numbers because they were small they were easy to turn out and they're easy to ship and they could get a pretty good price for them because they were they would sell them as being very rare and this was a sort of ad outside with underglaze blue but with famille rose on top of it it's a real hodgepodge of of enameling techniques which is one of the reasons you know it's a probably a later piece and here's a picture of the foot room and this particular example has a looks like a chin lung mark on it and if you notice the foot here is is fairly white there's no iron oxide line and a little bit of the glaze got onto the unglazed paste you can see the reflection and as these little tiny black spots in it which is fairly typical of late 19th early 20th century porcelains and copies alright but the the haziness here for the blue line and the way these black Inc lines are drawn for the waves indicate that the piece is probably a late 19th early 20th century pot and then you have examples like this is a very nice teapot with iron Redfoo liens on it it's an early to mid 19th century example probably Dow Quan the mid 19th century and here's a picture of the bottom of it right there and again you have that that that that similar sort of 19th century foot rim a little bit dirty a little few little black spots in here and no iron oxide line again but very neatly glazed very important to notice here that the glaze is very well done this was a very nice teapot and here is the bottom of this was a vase that we Rob Michael sold recently a millefiori base that we had talked about on the video for his auction and he had dated it as late Ching and I agree with them and here's a picture of the bottom of it and if you blow it up you'll notice that the paste on the foot is very beige II looking it's not that beautiful white pure paste that you'd expect to see and the rain mark is a bit followed up this particular part of the mark right here where it looks like an upside down why sometimes these look like a tea they did make marking period examples with this variant form of the mark but not often they were they're very very rare relative to the ones that were done differently so if you see this this the second part of the aspect of the characters and this is not a straight line but Forks out or forms a tea you want to be suspicious at the minimum of the piece and with the foot rim like this you know that it's this this is not snow-white and beautifully levitated clay this is a fairly crude paste that's been beautifully decorated so you know the piece is probably out of period and then moving on over here you have a nice pair of long shoe marking period Lotus fine plates these are fine made in the period probably about 1900 again you have that very nice white foot and so forth had they put a dog wan mark on this a lot of people would accept it as dog one but fortunately at the time they didn't do a lot of that on these pieces they used the period mark but they did also continue using the gwang-soo mark long after the period ended you will find it in underglaze blue and particularly over glazed red in pieces made in the nineteen teens 20s 30s and so forth that the gwangju market was used a long time after the end of his time all right and then you get over pieces it'll look like this it looks like a Kangxi vase of many many ways it's clearly meant to replicate one however the composition is not a typical composition you see on Kangxi and i tried to find one with this pattern i really couldn't find it with the boys holding the vase like this though I'm sure that there's a painting or somewhere that it's sourced from but that's what it looked like and when you flip this over you see the bottom and when you look at the bottom of this as a few things that jump out right away is being problematic one is a four-character Kangxi mark not another usual thing okay that's not how they would do them typically and then the foot rim itself has this little step on the inside no iron oxide ring and the you do see this slightly gray these little spots in the paste and the foot is a little bit too rounded and then flattened in other places and it's just problematic and how it's done in between that and the shape and the decoration and how the bottom looks you can exclude it readily from being a country piece all right and this is one of the peach plum peach vases this is a peach face that sold at sotheby's it sold for a huge amount I forget what it sold for a million two million dollars but there is a there's a late nineteenth century version of this base and we're going to put them up side-by-side and have a good look at them all right but this is this is a great one and you want to before we get onto the copies or the later copy the layer reproduction you want to get a chance to look at this nice all by itself and you'll notice how spectacularly well it's painted how the pink and the peaches are all beautifully shaded the shading of the green the very very neat outlining and then filling in of the colors it has a very three-dimensional feel to it all the way down to the bottom the the use of slight shading on the inside and up in here we're good darker and then with the light is hitting here and all these little sensitivities add up to authenticity and then when we hop over here let's mosey on over to this one this is the copy okay this is a late 19th century copy and here they are together all right and before we get started this I want to pull this in and you can get a good look at how this looks how this is painted how the shading is done here and the way that is done and photos you know shoot that in your brain hold that there and now look at the difference they're very different they're entirely different creatures at a glance they're quite similar and they can be confusing but this is an old one and this is a newer one and it doesn't mean that there aren't good details this one is quite well painted they did some nice shading work down in here one of the issues that they did do is they darkened areas that implying shadows from both sides which which don't look quite right visually because the light would have been coming from a direction the the peaches are nicely painted but they're not beautifully painted and if we pull this up a little bit there it is there the peaches on the later copies you notice how the this cross pattern here on the top of the peach is sort of just thrown on there almost looks like a doodle and then you get over here to the originals and you don't see that you see a single line very sinuously drawn down the side that that splits the peach the way peaches have seems it's not just a pair of criss crossing lines on the top of it and that's that's that's the big difference but you also notice that the the way the leaves are done they're outlined sort of faintly and then washed in but you don't see a lot of elegant shading of greens into England it's either a blueish green or a light green and that's it all right but overall visually they're very very similar if you pull back and look at it in total there it is they look like kissing cousins but though the authentic example on the right is obviously has a much more much more artistically done alright and here's a picture of the bottom of that copy of the reproduction and it is a late 19th or early 20th century one and again we see that chin lung mark in the bottom that has that funny element here this this y form which is again as I said nearly always late Ching early Republic period and the the other part of the secondary mark here is messed up but then you go up and look at the foot rim it's very round it isn't snow white it's got sort of an ambarish tone to it there is a little bit of iron oxide here and here but the texture and the shape of the foot is just wrong and then you look up here at the glaze it's a little bit ripoli the body was not smooth down as beautifully as one would think and it has more of a bluish tinge to it than a snow white snow white glaze all right now let's hop over to the next one the pink famille Rose vase this is a reuleaux vase they're called or mallet vase this is a late 19th century run and there's a few a few things you should know about these one they didn't make pink mallet vases in the 18th century really this is this was a form that became very popular in the Kangxi period they continued to make some of them during the chin lung period but they never did them like this okay and if you if you pull the image in will try to blow this up a little you can see the the work always look at the work by its elements one by one don't absorb the whole thing and look at it look at it in sections and if you look at it piece by piece and you look at the precious objects that are implied here it's a very attractive vase I'm not knocking the vase it's a pretty vase it was but it was probably done in the you know 1890s 1880s to around 1910 alright maybe even a little later but you'll notice the coloration the coloring the way the enamels are applied it's there isn't that gentle shading and layering that glowing effect that they had typically the pink background is a bit too opaque and again up here you see the outlining is sort of sporadic and so forth the lotus blossoms coming out of this out of this pod are not particularly well done and lastly on these later mallet vases up here under the neck where this this support flares out Mallett vases tended to be square the neck tended to go up higher and then come out straighter rather than angling off in this Manor and we're gonna look at a few of them in a few minutes to show you the difference all right now let's hop over here and here's the bottom of that vase that pink vase and when you look at it again you have that that sort of sandy looking foot rim again sort of flattened out fairly gritty with impurities little air pockets and so forth and you have that stepped glaze edge on the inside again little bits of killing grit but it's just not the right texture it's not the whiteness that you'd expect to see and the ring on the bottom of course is just applied because it was a habit people think that well it was supposed to be Imperial but they didn't add the mark so it's it was something that was rejected by a palace now they just put the double rings on there as uh as more of a tradition at this point than anything else all right and let's see ya get this back out and hop over to here this is a Kangxi for mallet vase but it's not kind she this is a late femi their example late 19th early 20th century piece fairly typical of the period but they did copy a lot of Congress she appearing items and again you have that rather peculiar the way the the mouth is formed with angling off rather than coming up all the way and going straight over and the enamels are rather bright and hide looking the the way the soldiers are drawn a very typical of the 19th century renderings how they did them and when you compare them this kind of brushwork and we're going to do a side-by-side in a second with kind she examples from which this was supposed to have been taken you'll see what I mean and we'll just push that back up over here and there we have it on the left is the is the late 19th century example and on the right are three kunshi pieces of different patterns but I just wanted to do it to show the colors and to show how they differentiated and right off a bat you can see again here's that difference in the way the mouth is applied here it goes off like this and you'll notice on the Kangxi examples it's like a flattened disc that's placed on top of the vase alright you'll notice also the neck tends to be a little bit shorter on the ridge the slope of the shoulder from the body to the base of the neck is also more gradual and less steep here you see it's it's it's a it's a number of degrees steeper it's a broader broader band and the bases are run down and then stepped under very smoothly and then terminating in the foot in all three pieces and on this one it sort of just tapers to the bottom the way they do in all nineteenth-century vases and export jars and so forth that was the technique but on the eighteenth-century Kangxi pieces the bodies taper down a little and then and then sort of swept under and then went down again forming the foot rim and if we pull these in we get a pretty good look at them here we go all right there's the there's the late 19th century example and right away you'll notice the way the the people are drawn is very different on the Kangxi originals notice the hair on the women the way the men's faces are done how the colours are added the shading of the ground and so on and so forth also the blue the over glazed blue enamel on the Kangxi examples tend to be fairly bright and clear or sort of a dark royal blue like this okay or that alright on the later pieces the blue is noticeably grayer looking typically the over glazed blue enamels were noticeably grayer and the greens were harder alright here's that that very deep green that you see here and you see it here and then when you come over here the greens are softer more bright more more pleasurable looking they just they look happier though it's a more happy looking vase and that's that's really the big difference but you need to examine a lot of them because there are some very convincing late copies of country pieces floating around and the modern copies can even be more dangerous so you want it you want to really learn what they should look like and here's a close-up of them once again here's the the copy on the left kunshi example in the middle and another authentic Anxi example on the right and once again you can really compare the greens the way the greens look here and here compared to this one alright they're quite different the mountains and all that sort of thing are drawn somewhat similarly though they tend to be shown with just single lines or one sweeping line and on the Kangxi authentic examples it's many many many lines some criss crossing some some in parallel but it's done more as a shading technique rather than as a line technique so to speak on the example on the left alright and there's a foot rim of that 19th century base clearly not a right looking foot room for Keng sheepies it should be snow white it should be beautifully hand trimmed it should be very hide and dense looking and this is sort of gritty looking it almost looks like compressed sand and if you see a foot rim that looks like compressed sand or compressed powder sandy powder it's you can rest assured that it's it's a later piece or even modern all right and if you're not interested in that kind of thing you know to avoid it you no matter how good the rest of it looks all right the rest of the base could look absolutely great and if the foot looks like this run for your life all right and then over here to a late 19th century transitional style vase these were copies of examples that were made during the 1640s 50 60s in there so out of the middle of the 17th century and this is what they looked like and here's a foot rim this is the bottom of it it's been dirtied up to make it look old stained and so forth you can see the turning lines on it but the the genuine examples rarely turned up this grungy okay and here's a real pair of transitional vases and one of the things we're going to do is we're going to pull in both and give you a chance to look at the coloring and see how the pigment varied between them and here's another pair this is a pair that I've used in other videos because it's such a good pair it's a hundred boys pair of hundred boys gyres and they're in a collection around here and if you examine transitional painting you'll notice that the blue tends to have a very soft watery look to it it's sort of layered in and they were able to do very nice soft blue very light blue with a very delicately done outline all the way around you notice that the red has sort of a hide almost an orange tone to it all right and it nearly always has little areas if you look carefully where the enamels have worn away a bit here and here and nowadays on the fakes they tend to try to wear away some of that red knowing that that's something that people look for okay and here's a picture of the foot rim all right so if we scroll over one more there's the fit Roma foot rim on that one and notice how it's basically the same shape as the previous example except that it's much smoother and there's a legitimate area of wear from sitting on tabletops because the middle of it is somewhat concave all right and I want to go back now just for a second and now we'll go back and look at that first piece which is the copy and we're gonna pull that in and we're gonna look at it sort of carefully at the way these pieces are drawn and just move it back just a tiny bit there we go and one of the first things that jumps out is the outlining the outlining in red it's too stiff it's too neat it's way too orderly the face is fairly well done but doesn't have it as the sense of animation that the other ones do the underglaze blue you notice it looks like it's almost put on like a sticker and the heavy outlining here and very neatly very very closely trimmed filled in coloring of the green is another indication of a later piece and you can see down here that there's some sort of dirt a grunge that's been actually sort of rubbed into it to make it look old you never want to see this these little orange areas around enamels on a white ground usually means that somebody's been trying to give it the look of aged and there's a few areas of enamel loss which has nothing to do with anything it's just enamel loss all right and now we're gonna hop over and take a look at the the next piece when you pull this in and look at it you'll see the blue looks quite then to glaze blue looks quite different than on the copy it looks like almost like the underglaze blue you see on kunshi pieces which is the period just after this and you notice that the birds are sort of quickly drawn and then you have that nice soft yellow not a hard yellow and the greens are nicely outlined but the Greens have shading differences in them they're not all solid color you have light green you have dark green and light green in the same leaf you have this area here the flowers where it's sort of rusty but it's somewhat translucent and again you have this blue that's suffused under bubbles because the glazes were fairly thick and you need to examine transitional pieces so you can really differentiate between the originals and the more modern pieces because they they have mastered to a large extent making them you want to be extremely careful and this is the bottom of the of that pair of transitional vases again you have cavities and whatnot from air imperfections in the glaze give this nicely worn outer edge here from standing on a table a little splash of glaze in the middle and so forth but those those are really the big differences between them and you need to look at a lot of transitional pieces to see it here's another shot of it and then you get over here to this it's a it's a nice first half of the 19th century rose mandarin type of vase there's again the the foot of it unglazed the big bases often were unglazed they just didn't bother especially when they got to be over 24 inches they often left them on glaze but again you also see that sort of sandy compressed foot it's not a foot you'd see on an 18th century vase in this vase style this particular vase style was not made in the 18th century so you you no one can ever tell you that this this particular vase is is under any circumstance ever an 18th century vase these are all made in the 19th century in this pattern this this rose mandarin rose medallion rose canton all of these were done only in the 19th century for the export market and there's another one and then over here to this this is a pair of late Ching early Republic copies of chin long vases they're very famous type of vase and these are we're extremely well done they did pretty well because they were very good quality here's a real one all right you notice right away the colors are brighter they're stronger and so forth there's a pair is here's a late 19th century pair notice the way the the color of the acanthus leaves so there are the bok choy leaves around the top the color of the blue the way they did heaping and piling in the late 19th century this heaping and piling is where the the blue sort of creates these spots and it was a popular thing from Ming Jace's to kunshi pieces on and by the late 19th century they were pretty good at perfecting them so you get this heaping and piling effect it is not an indication of age despite what people say you can have heaping and piling on a piece that was made two weeks ago alright and here's here's a chin long example that's authentic that went through I believe this is a Christie's image and if you if you bring it in you can actually see the difference in that heaped and pile effect it's much thicker it's much denser and this is how they did it then it wasn't just little tiny dots everywhere hoping that would pass off they actually created that same effect in the 18th century and it was much more successful and it looks different here is the here is the the 18th century example and that'll just hop back quickly over and look at the 19th century example and it's it's pretty instant the difference all right there it is you see all the little dots and they were just dabbed on they weren't painted on really you're sort of just little dots applied with the brush all right now let's hop over to the next set of series of photos here we go here's the bottoms of them and again here's here's the foot rim of it and you have that messed up again that messed up Qinling rain mark under there would that upside down why and here you do have a little bit of iron oxide lining around it but the foot rim is too too as too many little black areas too many little imperfections and it's not smooth it's not a smooth glossy smooth very compact white paste porcelain it's a little bit gritty it's got a little bit of a texture to it and is not an authentic example from the period for that very reason the rest of the painting also if you if if the rest of the painting got by you the foot rim and and this shouldn't at this point alright and then onto this again another pair of 19th century vases done it's a popular pattern 1842 1850 1830 somewhere in there and this is a nice one it's got the ruffle trim on it that came into fashion especially during the 19th century an elongated neck with figures in an interview well they're at a lay on a terrace setting and one of them is sitting in a scholar is a scholars table here with a marble top and somebody bowing down to the lady and it's just sort of a day in the court of the day and a governor's palace or something and here are these beautifully done dragons going up the neck it's a very nice face very nice pair of aces these really were pretty and they were good sizes I remember they're about 15 inches tall typically and if you were to flip them over that's what the bottoms of them look like again sort of yellowy looking and again that same sort of sandy compressed pasty bottom on that's how they were that's just how they were and then a pair of ephemeral June relief worked vases these were done during the 19th century they did do these in the country period typically with the white body and they had the precious objects and creatures and relief but they didn't do big vases in famille June alright this is the yellow ground all around yellow ground bases were not that common in the 18th century at all most of them were on you know wall pockets sedan sedan bases those little flattened pockets to sit on on the walls they did do them in examples of those with the yellow ground but it tended to be an strong egg yolk yellow or almost a yellow lemon yellow at the time this is a soft yellow all right and if you pop over here here's a picture of the bottom and again you have that very sort of oatmealy looking sandy foot a little bit of an iron oxide line to it but again not an iced white pure pace obviously it's brown and because they didn't care too much about how the foot looked because they were the body was going to be so heavily glazed it would cover up any of the impurities if this vase was fired without without the glaze over it you'd see a lot of a lot of pretty ugly looking paste underneath but we've done this way you never see it it's so it's all covered over with a thick glaze and then on to this one of these a raised foot sort of lighthouse form famille Rose teapots these were made in the early first half of the 19th century typically this is simple nice simple one beautiful decoration very sort of elegant just as it is and these were all made for export none of these were made for consumption in China these were all made and sent abroad and here's a picture of the bottom of it again you see those little traces of kiln grit here all right that's all just a bits of kiln grit that got onto there and and then you have that same that sandy sort of unglazed paste foot and the same thing here on the cover where these when they put these deep sleeves on the choleric covers they tended to smooth them down more because they didn't want them to scratch and scuff the inside of the mouth of the of the pot that was going on or sometimes they did them on vases and this was a tea dust glazed vase that we sold a few years ago was a long shoe marking period example came out of a very old collection that was formed in Italy back in the 1920s it was quite a nice example and it did very well but it's it's an authentic one and that's why I wanted to show it and if we pop it over it will get a good look at the foot room on this there's the bottom of it we actually sold this on eBay that's right and you'll notice the foot where it's been exposed is very very white it was made from a nice paste nice glaze and the foot is superbly neatly trimmed trimmed it's nearly square the edges of the foot room is almost squared off on it and then what they did with these when they marked them they did a sort of a center panel as you can see here and where they didn't put this the necessarily always put the tea dust glaze they used a smoother shade of green glaze patch in the center and then incised the rain mark in after that so you could read it and it had a good look to it and that vase was about 14 inches tall and here's a nice shot of the side of another foot rim look a little iron oxide line and notice how neatly the glaze ends and there's a slight space between the end of the glaze and the foot room which is always a good sign to see if it melds right into the foot you want to step back and think about it for a minute alright and then onto these these lanterns Chinese lanterns especially reticulated ones typically were not done in the 18th century very much they did make lanterns but they weren't pierced and reticulated quite like this they did in fem Iver during the Kangxi period they didn't do in the during the later part of the Qin LUN period but these examples with this top this top was originally on the early ones but the reticulated openwork body all this cutout work with these rounded dolls and cartouche --is and done like this sometimes you'll even find these with holes in the piece so that you could put a wire in and because you know those were made in the 1920s and 30s they were very popular export pieces they were often sent out in pairs but the earliest ones would hold a candle and were made in the typically in the late 19th century so when you see these reticulated lanterns on these shaped bases unless they have kind of a biscuit supporting them and they're in family they're assumed typically that they are fairly late Ching early republic period at least before you go anywhere and there's the foot room to it again you have that flattened foot like you saw on the gwangsu vase and it's fairly good texture there's a lot of impurities though when you look at it in here a lot of little black spots and whatnot and that's because again the porcelain they typically use wasn't of the highest quality compared to the 18th century examples and then you come along to a pair of aces like these these are a nice pair of blue ground with famille Rose or from avaran a m'ling over them and these were very pretty these are about 18 inches tall and again here's the bottom of it again this has a 6 character Kangxi mark and these no doubt were made and sold as country pieces at the time because they nailing on them was very good but anybody that knows country pieces even without the mark just a glance of this foot rim this greyish white foot rim flattened the way it is and so forth this is not a country foot this is not a kind of Shi foot and the rain mark is so poorly done that the the fourth character in particular is just that the rain mark is just a hodgepodge and wouldn't fool anyone also there's a lot of orange peel under here and country pieces tend to not that much orange peel they tended to be very smooth all right orange peel on porcelain started coming along more typically in the late 18th century and then way all the way through the 19th century you had a lot of orange peel and then this this is a nice probably Republic period seated figure and famille Rose it's a very nice this was a very nice example and these figures were really popular in the early 20th century into the Republic period the the these these these sort of brickwork I don't know Alistair column a pattern on the robes in particular is seen on these and on the seated Buddha's that you run into all the time but a very nice very nice enameling rather prettily done good modeling of the face and all that very typical but they didn't make these really in the 18th and 19th century like this you're not going to come across them so you can generally always assume these are later and then when you flip it over and you see this bottom and there's indications of rough spots fairly thick bottom though when they're fairly thick like this they tend to be a little earlier rather than later for some reason thin thin bottoms tend to be much later from the 1930s to the 50s even but this looks like a little bit older one it's got some rough spots in it from impurities and so forth but still a nice figure that's that's still a $1,500 figure now this is another peach bloom I mean another tea dust glazed face that we solved who formed one this is not marking period it's got a great shape to it it was fairly large this was about a 15 inch tall vase beautifully done here's the foot room on it and you notice it's got this sort of sandy compressed again that look to it it's not that nice nicely compacted and neatly trimmed foot we saw on the other piece and you notice there's some gapping going on here where the glaze meets and the glaze spills over a little bit here and there on the bottom and that's sort of typical of those alright this was a perfectly nice face I don't I'm not gonna it sold to a collector in Malaysia it's a late 19th or early 20th century piece but beautifully done it almost had the feeling of bronze to it there's nothing wrong with it but some people thought it was much earlier and it is it wasn't in the end of course all right and then on to this very typical late 1880s - 1900 famille Rose on this these sort of they did this technique back then where they did sort of a dry dressing glaze over the porcelain that made it look like bronze it's sort of emulated bronze and then the bodies they would often crackle and do an under glaze blue only they would do them and over glaze enamels only they'd do them in family ver they did them in family Jun they did them and everything they basically were blank slates that they could paint onto and on the left and right in this picture you see blue and white examples with the crackle and here's a female Rose example with the crackle all right and there's the mouth and the neck and they made these in a wide number of sizes they did not make these in the 8th - they did not make them as far as I know prior to about 1870 alright so when you see this this with this brown banding assume that it's a late 19th late 19th century or after example alrighty and if you were to flip it over that's what you see on the bottom you see that Brown dressing again and quite often it's a Ming mark I can't tell what that mark is maybe it's trying to be a ton while mark or something and they're often sort of messy and again a crackle ground and this rather unattractive paste underlying the glaze but it's hidden again as I said before it's hidden under the glaze you don't see it but these square brown seals that you see are very typical of these late 19th century King examples all right they did you won't see that on an early piece and then over here to this this is a slip decorated blue-and-white Basin these were typically made after about 1850 it often had a bottle that went in it and it was meant for export to go in on a commode or a nightstand and they were they were rather nice and they did them in blue they did them in celadon and this was sort of a typical pattern with a few precious objects and then lotuses and so forth and the backs of them can be unglazed or just glazed white rather but they're always glazed or they can be the same colors the interior and when you flip this one over you see the foot and again it once again you're seeing that sandy compressed rounded foot not an early pace not an early early paste at all and there's a little iron oxide line on the inside but not really and on the outside all right and you notice it's just glazed white on the on the bottom all right and then onto this little turquoise Lotus for my teapot this is based on a young farm but a very nicely done monochrome it's a nineteenth-century one sort of a robin's egg blue almost green it's a nice color but this is not a pot you typically see in earlier periods at all but beautifully done nonetheless the shape of the pot is fairly classical and here's a picture of the foot room and that's all you need to see you see that nice even white foot with no iron oxide line a little bit dirty a little bit grey not that compact smooth white paste it's it's looser and not quite the same quality but again because it's so heavily glazed you don't see it all right and here's a slip decorated green green ball very very similar to the one we just looked at I threw this in just as an example to show it in green this is sort of a light celadon green color very similar to the other again white deck white slip under white slip decoration with green and here's the bottom of this and this one is unglazed on the bottom they didn't even bother glazing it it's just sort of scooped out and again you have that rather lower lower quality paste underlying the piece as you examine it and these are all 19th mid to late 19th century typically and then you have this the Femi vert country style vase this is a late 19th century one and if you pull it in nice and close you'll notice that the decoration all looks a bit stiff the shading of the greens within within leaves is non-existent you have two dark green leaves next to a light green leaf but you don't have dark green and light green often in the same leaf unless it's just a black area typically they didn't do that and the red tends to be too red it doesn't have that brownish orange tone to it of the old pieces all right now it's mosey on over to the foot room there it is again that that that that courser foot room that's squared this is a pretty vase I shouldn't say that it's a pretty vase squared off and again sort of a lower end quality paste not all nicely hand trimmed compact very white and very smooth this you can you know when you ran your finger over this you're gonna feel a gritty surface and that's not something you want to see on the bottom of a country basis of any quality that's for sure and then the Rosamond mandarin vases for export not about 1840 pretty typical example nicely decorated always examined the faces and the hair on these the later copies they tend to overshadow over shade the faces they all look like they have sunburns or something that was not something they would do but the knock-offs especially the really recent ones they all they all look like like the they just came in off the farm working in the Sun all day which was not a look they wanted alright so they were shown typically to be very fair-skinned very light in color then again here you have that bottom and by now you're seeing a pattern I suspect you this is what the foot of this looks like it looks just like that sandy compressed foot that we saw in the last 10 bases again quite a lot of orange peel on the bottom which is a 20 19 century phenomenon most of the time those few laughs you 18th century pieces at but not often you see a lot of orange peel with rose mandarin you know it was made in the 20th in the 19th century and then this nice big Mandarin is a group being received at a palace nice-looking vase this came out of a house actually up in this area but good famille Rose decoration 1840 to 1860 somewhere and there and again we're going to take a look at the bottom of this and there's that same foot again that's sandy sandy texture and a little bit of orange discoloration with the glaze sort of ran over it's sort of half glazed and half not glaze and this puckered up bottom pretty typical and again you notice in the reflection I was looking the reflection of photographs to get the texture of the glaze and you see again it's rather orange peely on the surface alright and ditto for this this big this is a late 19th probably early 20th century the proportions are a bit odd with it the big swollen body and then a little tiny neck sort of flaring out it almost looks like a Mei ping vase that they extended the neck on and when you examine the figures they're sort of like the figures you see on transitional vases except that it's a whole other school of drawing the flower is just sort of shaded in solid there's no it doesn't have that orangey yellow tone to it and the figures look very stiff as though they fell into the painting rather than we're part of it all right now that's yeah I think we have a bottom of the foot of this as well to get the point about there it is there's that same foot again that gritty sandy compressed looking foot you can see here where some of the glazes chipped away it probably happened out shortly after the firing and then on to this this is a Kong vase it's a Gwang shoe marking period celadon kong with the trigrams on it this is a nice example there's a genuine one and here's a picture of the foot room very white if you look at the area where it's had where it's very very very white and smooth and well rounded nice example and a lot of second go back to that just for a second and the mark is precisely done but the glaze and the form of the pot itself were just excellent this was a very fine example notice the glaze isn't too shiny it's got sort of almost a matte finish to it but beautifully done and beautifully coated all the way down no drips no sags no nothing it was just a beautiful example and then hop over to this another country style late 19th century vase and if you pull that in you'll see that it's again this sort of this static color of green running through everything there's no she's not a lot of shading the closest they come to shading on this one they threw in some black lines but they didn't change the color of the green anywhere they just used the same color green all the way through and typically they varied it a little bit they added some areas of darker areas where there might have been light implying that light was shining on one side and not hitting the other and so forth and the aubergine here this eggplant color is too watery looking it doesn't have the depth of color should be translucent but it should look flat alright and also the shape is a bit off - again and there's the foot rim to it that's all you need to see it evidently had something burned into the end of the paste here lots of kiln grit under there that gritty rounded foot all none of the none of the characteristics you'd see on a country example alright and then the family June planned our early 20th century example famille Rose bright bright famille Rose enamels but very thick not a lot of layering going on so to just paint it on with a heavy brush the bird is barely outlined he looks almost like a cartoon character and then you have the yellow enameling which is a bit uneven and so forth in this thick rim the thick rounded white rim all typical of early 20th century and some late 19th century examples but not of early examples alright and here's a picture of the bottom of it and again you're revealing it reveals that same sandy compressed sandy base on it all the way around and that's something you want to look for in this case it's not glazed plate as often weren't place but many of them were so it's hard to tell sometimes because being glazed or unglazed doesn't necessarily mean anything smaller pieces tended to be glazed alright and then there was this the big family June dragon bases these were extremely pretty and they sold actually for quite a lot of money as I recall but they were very nicely done very brightly painted very decorative and they were about twenty six or eight inches tall as I recall and it had the st. this had the same foot room as the as the other other vase did the rounded sandy foot and getting back to ephemeral June this is a chin long period Femi june wall pocket or sedan pocket these were we're good to go in sedans when people are being transported to put flowers and and this is a very fine one and notice that notice the vibrancy of the enamels this one's in the National Palace collection and again chin lung marked on the neck and with it with a poem by the Emperor but you have this beautiful shading of the greens look at the greens here and you can really see it how they use a light green and then a dark green also blending together within the same outlining and that's that's more typical of what you really want to see on these early pieces is that they had varying shades of green within within the same outlined areas so far that's just one of many things but that's one of them all right no we're gonna hop over here oh here's the foot to that big yellow vase we just looked at and again you have that same very sandy looking that really does look like compressed and look at that that's really gritty and Sandy but the vases were extremely pretty so that's that's what really matters and then over here you have one of these these are slab constructed these have turned on a wheel these are made from long pieces of blue and white but paste porcelain pressed out stamped and then they mold them together and build them and they would call them slab constructed vases and here's a picture of the bottom of it again again like so many of these vases it's a rather gritty little iron-oxide dancing around the edges but not a high quality paste but it was fairly thickly glazed so it looked okay and the cobalt on it was rather well done so it looked fine this was a one of a pair of aces this was part of a pair and again the ever-present lion mask with the ring handle and a style sort of coming out of the 18th century and this was in the late 19th century when they were still popping them along alright and then you get on to these these are very late 19th early 20th century famille Rose Mandarin scene vases these were made for export a lot of these turned up in Europe northern Europe for some reason I don't know why but this was these were fairly nice typically a 16 to 20 inches tall they were good to put in your house and so forth but the the decoration on them clearly is that that same school as all the other rows Mandarin and Rose medallion export stuff that's what they were meant for and there's a picture of the foot room on that and it looks just again sandy dirty rounded and so forth and a lot of staining and whatnot because the quality of these pieces the underlying bodies did deteriorate in the late Qing period and many many examples it isn't to say they never made anything nice they certainly did but but this was more typical of what see the production from that period all right and that's sort of it all right there's a lot more to talk about and we'll be doing more videos anyway as we go along but I wanted to share those pictures because we had gathered them up when we were doing the Ming Ming video and I thought you'd all enjoy seeing it and seeing as everybody has plenty of time to sit around watching videos today why not so there we are we'll be back tomorrow with the regular Friday video and this will be also linked in to the newsletter page on bit amount tomorrow when we update it with all the eBay and cata wiki stuff and the global member pages were updated yesterday for those of you that like to shop on invaluable and live auctioneers and bid square some good things were added this week and we did a post on some bargains it's in the blog on some things that we thought were relative bargains that went through the global pages in the last couple of weeks one of them was a great little Tang Shi teapot for literally $200 it was a wonderful Amaury example but anyway you can go read the blog all right have a great day and we'll see you tomorrow and we'll be back with the regular weekly video and everyone stay safe and be nice to your family out there until this thing gets wrapped up okay bye bye [Music]

Channel: Peter Combs

Views: 61,850

Keywords: fine art, fine chinese art, auction, chinese art, chinese art auction, japanese art auction, japanese art, art news, auction news, asian art, auction results, chinese porcelain, chinese paintings, chinese bronze, jade, asian art auction news, asian art values, chinese art values, auction houses, online auctions, internet auctions, authenticating chinese porcelain, art, peter combs, antiques

Id: XYaFA68d2tw

Length: 57min 23sec (3443 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 02 2020