Chapter 1,367: Those who have yellow jade as small as millet are the most valuable
The horns of this topaz-colored chilong holding a pot are gathered behind the head, and the mane is draped over the shoulders, looking majestic and heroic.
The dragon body is deformed, strong and powerful, and perfectly integrated with the pot body;
The bottom foot is carved to form a simplified Kui dragon pattern, and is also decorated with a Ruyi head pattern, with Yang lines on the edge to outline the shape.
The carvings of the Chilong in the jade pot are realistic and vivid, and the knife skills are bright and precise. With only a few strokes, the Chilong's flexible and uninhibited expression emerges vividly.
It complements the overall shape and charm of the pot body, not only showing the luxury and exquisiteness of the jade material, but also revealing the heavy and steady ancient charm.
Drawing on modern objects and evoking ancient thoughts, the two are combined ingeniously, making it a rare and excellent item among similar artifacts from the Ming Dynasty.
Here we want to focus on one process, which is color improvement.
Color enhancement, here is "oil extraction", which is a method to make the skin color of jade.
This method uses naturally occurring plant dyes and dyes them after physical heating.
Due to the organic nature of the raw materials and the gentle coloring technique, the internal crystal structure of the jade is not seriously damaged.
Moreover, the final product is smooth and pleasant, and actually feels more delicate than real ancient jade.
The method of extracting oil from jade is not difficult either. This is a method of coloring using a method called oil extraction, which is called oil extraction.
Among the methods for extracting oil, the best method is to extract oil with sand. Its color penetrates the jade texture and cannot be caught by boiling it with ashes. It is very similar to its color.
However, the color is brighter when the sky is sunny, and the color is turbid when it is not sunny, but the true color is not.
There is also a kind of old oil extraction, which is said to be very ancient.
During the Xuanhe Zhenghe period of the Northern Song Dynasty, some people used a kind of red light grass grown in the mountains of Sugan.
Take the sweat, add a little bit of sand, and marinate it between the textures of the newly carved jade.
Use fresh bamboo branches to grill over fire, so that the red color penetrates into the skin of the jade, which is deep and translucent and red like chicken blood.
Famous appraisers often ignore the color produced in this way and spend a lot of money to buy it.
Therefore, there are two methods of oil extraction, namely old oil extraction and new oil extraction. This is a method of artificially coloring jade.
The color of human work began in the Song Dynasty. Before the Ming Dynasty, the jargon of the color of human work was called "Laotiyou", and after the Ming Dynasty, it was called "Xintiyou".
Generally speaking, oil extraction refers to old oil extraction.
This antique method of using naturally grown plant dyes to dye jade objects while physically heating them has been lost.
Because it is said that the plant raw materials used for dyeing in nature have been exhausted.
Using the old oil extraction method, because it is dyed with organic matter, it does not harm the jade quality and can even maintain the integrity of the jade crystal structure.
Therefore, using the old oil extraction method to process jade, the color formed is naturally warm and moist.
This yellow jade color-improved chilong teapot has obvious traces of color-improvement on it.
Since then, at least during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, this old oil-drawing dyeing method has not been lost.
This makes this jade article even more precious, not to mention that it is also a piece of topaz carved work.
Among the antique jade wares of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, topaz is rarely seen, so it is rare and valuable.
Even now, this kind of topaz work can be compared with mutton-fat white jade.
Chen Wenzhe had seen the current price of mutton-fat white jade before, and naturally knew that it was really sky-high.
What's more, the topaz work in front of you is not ordinary yellow, but steamed corn yellow, which is sweet yellow.
As I said before, the ancients clearly stated that the best jade is the best.
I saw jade books saying that beautiful jade is as white as cut fat, black as pure lacquer, red as cockscomb, and yellow as steamed chestnut.
"Steamed chestnut" is used to compare the color of topaz, which is the best in quality. Therefore, topaz that is like millet is the most valuable and is called sweet and yellow;
Modern people may think that such high-quality topaz is not as good as mutton-fat white jade.
However, in the Ming Dynasty, it surpassed mutton-fat white jade.
For example, Gao Lian, a scholar in the late Ming Dynasty, argued in his treatise on ancient jades that “the best jade is sweet and yellow, followed by mutton fat, yellow is the middle color, and it is not easy to get, and white is the partial color, which is why it is sometimes found. Today,
People despise yellow and value white because they see little."
It can be seen from this that topaz has a history of looking down on mutton-fat jade.
This work is a classic representative among them, and it should have the color of "steamed chestnut" as mentioned in the literature, which is really not easy.
Looking at this yellow jade teapot, Chen Wenzhe really didn't know how many treasures the country had lost to foreign countries during the five or six hundred years of the Ming and Qing Dynasties.
Putting down the ewer and flipping through the jade articles, Chen Wenzhe just glanced at it and once again saw a top-quality topaz work.
"A cup with an auspicious beast and a dragon handle? There seems to be one of this kind of topaz cup in a foreign museum?"
After thinking about it carefully, Chen Wenzhe immediately remembered that in the Victoria and Albert Museum in England, there was already a Ming Rui beast dragon handle cup.
However, it is slightly different from this one, as you can tell from the name.
The piece hidden in the British Museum is a simple cup.
The piece in Chen Wenzhe's hand, although it has a handle, is also a cup, but its shape is obviously different.
This piece of jade is in the shape of a very high-grade pot and carved into a cup. This type of jade is very rare.
In addition to this cup, there is another topaz work, which is a bottle.
This jade is also decorated with dragon themes and is a topaz chilong vase from the Qianlong period.
Among this pile of jade articles, there is only one from the Ming Dynasty, and the rest are from the Qing Dynasty.
This time, Chen Wenzhe has learned a lot, because the topaz works in his hands are Hetian jade topaz, which is more precious than mutton-fat jade.
It turned out that he had only heard about it and knew that Hetian jade topaz was a very scarce jade.
And there is a lot of room for growth in the market, especially those with pure color and high quality, which are more precious than mutton-fat jade.
But this level of jade is definitely not something ordinary people can see.
Especially now, jade resources no matter where they are are in danger of being exhausted.
If it weren't for the advancement of modern science and technology that allowed humans to quickly tap into resources that were previously out of reach, where would there be so much jade flowing into the market now?
However, the faster technology advances, the faster it is mined, and by that time, resources will be exhausted faster.
Thinking about it now, it was easier to obtain jade in ancient times.
At that time, transportation was inconvenient, but as long as the country was strong and could reach the jade producing areas, it was not difficult to obtain some top-quality jade.
"Boss, look at these stones, they look strange!"
I don't know when Gao Qijing once again came to the cabin where Chen Wenzhe worked.
"Stone? What stone?" Chen Wenzhe looked at Gao Qijing strangely.
They were on a boat. Where did they find the rocks?
"If it were not found together with some jade and gold found in the wreckage of the ship, we would have thought it was a ballast stone. But after a closer look, we found that it looked a bit like jade!"
As he spoke, Gao Qijing handed over a fist-sized yellow stone.