Chapter 1,211: Buying, selling, and making a mistake
In the antique shop, many appraisal certificates, certifications, etc. are not counted for the appraiser and can only be used as a reference. Why?
Many appraisers don't look at these things, they just look at the real thing.
No matter how famous the certification agency is, it can only be used for reference, because many things are not as real as seeing them with your own eyes.
Especially for appraisers, it is better to believe in your own eyes than to believe in the so-called inspection certificate.
If it doesn't match the real thing, or if some details are wrong, then it's doubtful, and it's wrong.
Just like this piece of ancient porcelain that is "more expensive than a chicken vat cup", it has caused controversy in the art circle.
Some insiders directly call this beauty pillow. The way the feet are stacked is similar to the Ding kiln child pillow of the same period.
However, this method of showing the innocence and cuteness of children is quite strange when used on beautiful women.
Others pointed out that the bottom of the lot was treated using the grouting electric firing process after the 1980s.
In fact, without analyzing these aspects, the problem is very simple. Chen Wenzhe directly compared the three works that appeared.
The first one is about the white-glazed female sleeping pillow from Ding kiln in the late Tang Dynasty, which is privately collected in Europe. It was hand-carved and applied with a slightly yellowish white transparent glass glaze. It should be a model of the original carving.
Compared with the Northern Song Dynasty stamped white-glazed female pillow unearthed from the Ding Kiln site in 1985, the two pieces have the same shape.
Although one piece is purely hand-carved and the other is molded, it can be clearly seen that the mold is based on the original hand-carved mold in the late Tang Dynasty.
That original piece is consistent.
The last beauty pillow sold for nearly RMB 300 million at auction in Australia. First of all, I noticed that the proportions of this pillow were out of proportion. The head was too big, and the buttocks and feet were completely replicas of the child pillow.
See the three children's pillows that exist in the Forbidden City on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. They are completely different from the previous two beauty pillows (female pillows).
The most critical point is that the angle of the pillow surface is wrong.
These points are enough to explain the problem, because the porcelain pillows of the ancients were practical objects used to relieve the heat and enjoy the coolness.
The height of the porcelain pillow and the angle of the pillow surface are all summed up by experienced Chinese medicine practitioners over thousands of years, so there can be no mistakes.
If you sleep for a while on the one auctioned in Australia, your cervical spine may not be able to bear it.
Some modern people who imitate beauty pillows do not understand the true meaning of porcelain pillows. They think it is just an object. How do they understand that it is a practical device?
Therefore, the pillows made cannot be used for sleeping, so it is said that only porcelain pillows that can be used to sleep comfortably can be true.
There are so many problems, so this high-priced beauty pillow is considered to be a fake by many people.
And this is not the most outrageous thing, because there are even more outrageous things.
Afterwards, someone directly posted a message saying that this auction was basically his own, speculating, selling, and buying!
This is not just what Chen Wenzhe thinks, but also has this tendency in his practice.
This item, named the Beauty Pillow from Ding Kiln in the Song Dynasty, finally sold for HK$350 million after more than 60 bids.
After adding a 13% commission, the transaction price is close to HK$400 million, or approximately more than 316.4 million yuan.
This is the highest transaction record for an Australian art piece, and also the highest transaction record for a Ding kiln work in the world’s auction history.
Such a high price is naturally attractive and attracts more people. If it changes hands again, will it be worth more?
Even if it's not sold and used as a mortgage, it's just 60% of the value. That's not a big deal.
However, things often have two sides.
The hype surrounding this piece of porcelain has brought traffic and high value, but there will also be more discussions and questions.
For Chen Wenzhe, there are many problems if he just looks at the carving techniques without looking at anything else.
For example, her face is questionable because she looks like a Buddha statue and not like a noble lady.
Then there are the questionable postures, the beauty’s head and the doll’s butt.
Ladies usually lie on their sides, but the posture of this beauty pillow is like a child's pillow, with their feet crossed.
The third is big feet. During the Song and Jin Dynasties, women began to bind their feet, and the three-inch golden lotus became popular, so "heavenly feet" were almost invisible.
The feet of this Song beauty are as big as a child's pillow.
Finally, the clothing is wrong. Women in the Song and Jin Dynasties wore "coats" like double-breasted robes.
This one is not wearing a t-shirt, but a common "shirt" for children.
In addition, the opening direction of the stomata is also questionable.
Simply looking at the photo, I feel that the form of this Ding Kiln ‘Beauty Pillow’ is not quite accurate and the shape is very awkward.
The decoration, including glaze color and pattern, is not sure.
So many people think that this is self-buying, self-selling, and self-defeating!
According to the information collected by Chen Wenzhe, this beauty pillow was unearthed near Quyang County, Beihe a few years ago.
It was dug up by tomb robbers and later sold to an antique dealer for hundreds of thousands.
Since the head was damaged, the antique dealer hoped to sell it for 10 million yuan after simple repairs.
But in the end, for some unknown reason, it was sold to a company for only about 1 million yuan.
Afterwards, the Beauty Pillow, which was restored twice, appeared in the Cong Shang Art Exhibition that opened on December 17, 2012.
The exhibition is located in a cultural company in Shendu. Most of the exhibits are contemporary paintings and calligraphy and ancient artifacts collected by the company, including this beauty pillow.
Later, it was suspected that this company smuggled the beauty pillows to Australia for auction.
Although it is impossible to determine whether the auction was in collusion with the cultural company, it is certain that among the people holding placards at the auction, five or six people were insiders of the company.
Among them were two directors of this company, and finally one of them succeeded in bidding.
No matter whether this beauty pillow is worth the sky-high price due to speculation, judging from the market reaction, the final result is indeed worth 300 million yuan, which does not seem to be unacceptable.
The main thing is whether the thing is right. As long as the thing is right, someone worth 300 million yuan will buy it.
After all, there is a large Ding kiln bowl in front of you. No matter how low its price is, how can it be inferior to a large white porcelain bowl?
You must know that the auction scene was very popular at that time. Even if the final transaction price was deliberately raised and hyped, some of the prices in the middle were real quotes.
If you're not greedy, there's absolutely no problem selling it for 100 million or 200 million.
Through this beauty pillow, and then looking at the beauty pillows in Jingzhi Temple, we can come to the conclusion that this batch of Ding kiln porcelain in Jingzhi Temple is of immeasurable value.
You will definitely not be able to buy porcelain of this level, but if you can take a look at it, it is very good.
The main reason why Chen Wenzhe pulled out so many things was to understand Beauty Pillow.
The number of Beauty Pillows handed down to the world is too small, and the world knows even less about her. In addition, the value is huge, and every detail cannot be understood.