Christie's Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art, A GREAT Auction

Good morning, this is Peter Combs from www.BidAmount.com, and today is Monday, November 28th. This morning we're going to talk a bit about an auction that's coming up on the 30th, just in a couple of days. It's an auction that Christie's is doing in Hong Kong, maybe one of the best sales they've had in a couple of years, I think. Just a spectacular sale. We did a post on our website about it, it's on the blog, and as always we have the catalog here. If you click on that, it'll bring you over to the catalog. Here it is. You can flip back to see what the front of it looks like again. When you open it up, it comes to the first lot in the sale is this. It's a really great Western Han Dynasty ram's horn brush, or water pot. Measures about four inches long, came from the Huang Jun collection. He lived from the 1870s until 1951. He owned it, and then it went to a Swiss collection, now it's being sold. Great quality, rare form, estimated at $260,000 to $390,000. I think it'll get there. It's a great piece. Another jade worth checking out, if you like jades and early jades, is this Han Dynasty phoenix ornament, or Bai, they call her a bee. Beautifully done, lots of nice calcification in it. It's estimated at $340,000 to $520,000, but when you look at it, look at the quality of the work. If you're familiar with the Palace Museum collection, they have a nice range of these, and this is as good as anything in their collection. Just great quality through and through. There's the front, and there's the back. Beautifully done, just beautifully done, and carrying a pretty big estimate, $340,000 to $520,000. It's about four inches wide. These are never that, usually these are not that big. If you see big ones, they're often copies. And then next up is the, starts off the porcelain section with masterpieces of Qing ceramics, and they're focusing in here on this ruby ground Falangai Yongchen Cup. Rosemary Scott, the in-house scholar at Christie's, wrote a very nice piece on this and their significance, and shows some comparison examples. Beautifully written, lots of information. Her papers are always worth reading. If you come across a catalog with an article by Rosemary in it, you want to read it. She's really something, and she can get a lot of information into a very small space. This little cup here had been exhibited at the Min Chu Society, which is a very prominent place, and estimated at $5 to $6.5 million. It's two and a quarter inches tall. It is marked on the base, there's a picture of the mark, and those of you that like marks will blow it up for you. You can do it yourself with this tool at the top of the bar. There it is, there's the bottom of it, four character mark, and it's a really beautiful cup. You can see the decoration here, just spectacular. And next is another thing. These are a pair of, a little over eight inches tall, these Fay Wah decorated chin-lung vases. Rosemary also wrote a piece on these, and she included with it a photograph of one that was done in a painting of the Palace Museum collection, and here's a couple of them shown there. And we'll get over to the jars, there they are. It'll be interesting to see how these do. These jars were sold just 11 years ago at Christie's in Hong Kong. They did fairly well apparently, but they're bringing them back, and they have an estimated of $2 to $2.3 million, but just great quality, so let's see how they do. Next up is this, Lot 3224. This may be the best roose scepter I've ever seen. It's made of bamboo, it's veneered, beautifully carved, there's a lot of information on here. It's estimated at $910 to $1.2 million. It was bought in Osaka around 1999, probably from a good collection over there. But the quality of the work, when you really look at this, is just amazing. These beautifully done, low relief carved clouds, the chow character with bats, everything you want to see. This beautifully done rooey head piece here, reflective of the shape of the piece in general. Lots of good detail, and on the underside is this poem, in this relief worked cartouche, and they translated it in the listing, and they show a similar shaped item in the palace collection with jades. I don't think it's as nice as this one though, I think this one's better. Now let's move along, we'll get over here, another scholar's object for bamboo brush pot collectors. This is a great one, signed by Zhi Yan, done around 1750 during the Qinlong period, has a poem in it, with this spectacularly well done relief worked landscape, and estimated at $260,000 to $390,000 US, and let's get over here and see what this, there it is. I love the flattening technique they can do with cameras these days. Here you have what the landscape looks like on this, with these little houses, and the mountains in the background, and pine trees all around it, the poem here in the upper right, and they even accompanied the illustration with a painting showing the style of artwork that was done, and what's in this painting and what it symbolizes, it's all explained in the write-up. So you want to check that out. And now you have this, this is going to bring the world. This is going to do very, very, very well. It is a monster. It is a 38-inch tall, over 3 feet tall, massive bronze figure, Ming Dynasty. It originally sold, or sold the last time at the Jerome in Paris, over 100 years ago, in November of 1904. But just the very best quality, they have with it all the paperwork on this, it was in a sale they did of Tibetan bronzes, just amazing. Here's another shot of it. I'm going to blow this up just so you can get a look at this. This is a really powerful bronze. Look at the details. The heads, the Tibetan figures, there's a varj right there, another figure, the facial expression, the multiple heads, the whole thing, it's just, this is what they say really over the top. This is an over-the-top bronze, and there's a nice write-up on it, here's an older picture of it from the original time, the last time it was sold, here's another detail of it, the gilding is still in remarkable condition on it, and here it is in comparison to some tankas, but there's the back of it. Wait until you see what this does, I suspect it will blow through the high estimate. I may be wrong, but I couldn't find another one like this out there that is sold any time in the last 30 years. Then we move on to this, this is a Tang Sankai camel, it's a really great camel, it had been in the Chang, exhibited at the Chang Foundation in 2000, and it was bought in Taipei from a collection, a lot of good collections in Taipei. And this is a very nice, good size example, it's 34 inches tall, almost 3 feet tall, so that's a good big one, and I love the detail of his head, the way his head and his mouth is done, beautifully shaped, the tongue curling up, and the teeth, and then the lip peeling back, the expression, the eyes, the way the eyes are so expressive on this. And what's interesting, if you don't look carefully, the saddle is made, is a mask-form saddle, here it is. And on the right side is a white tongue porcelain ewer, it's interesting, there's a ewer that looks a lot like this in this sale. So you maybe go take a look and compare them, but it's a classical whiteware piece. Beautifully done. Now we'll move over to this, the Yuan blue and white jar, beautiful Yuan dynasty jar, they included happily this time a picture of the foot, they often don't, and I don't know why. It's 14 inches tall, spectacularly well painted, let's blow it up, there it is, you can see the photography is just excellent as always, you see the heaping and piling effect that they appear on this piece, nicely done, very neat all the way through. Don't let heaping and piling though, if you see it on a jar fool you, they can copy that today, just unbelievably well, so be careful. And it's estimated at $650,000 to $1,000,000, they don't show any previous sales records so this could surprise people, we'll see how it does. And then you have this, another article by Rosemary Scott on this extremely rare moon flask, let's get over to it and see what I'm talking about, here it is, okay, it had been in a collection in London since the 1950s, it's Yung Chen period, absolutely an elegant moon flask with bamboo decoration up here, and these wonderful vine-like devices, you don't see these very often, around the base and around the neck with the magpies, okay, on the prunus branches, just beautiful quality, and there's a lot written in here about it and their history and the evolution of the form and so forth, it's worth reading, like I said before, always read Rosemary's articles, she puts a lot into them and they're extremely well researched, she's been writing about them for decades. And next is this, lot 3310, I'll be interested to see how this does, this stem cup is an extremely rare one, it's Ming Xiong Di period, it had been sold in 1992 and again in 2007, and it's carrying a big estimate, 7.8 to 10 million US, 10 million dollars, 6 inches tall, but of very very good quality, the quality of the thing is just amazing, we'll go back to it, here's some other views of the dragon, with this light blue wave background, and the waves crashing around the rocks and so forth, we'll see how it does. And the last item we're going to look at is this, if you like Yi Xing ware, this is something to take a close look at, it's a slip decorated crab, with crabs on it, brush pot with a creamy slip on it, and it was also signed by Yang Jishu, who was a pretty famous Yi Xing potter, during the Qinlong period, when during that period it was made, I don't know, but he was well known, he did great examples, and that's one of them, and it's estimated at 340 to 520 thousand dollars, so we'll see how that does, alright, and that's it for the sale, but do take a look at it, and if you want to, you can probably register online to watch the sale or at least listen to it, it'll be fascinating, very exciting auction, and subscribe to our YouTube channel here, and we'll put up videos, we put them up at least once a week nowadays, and visit us at bidamount.com, get the newsletter, and use the site, and all that good stuff, and thanks for visiting, have a great week, bye bye.