Blue-and-white porcelain ware in Yuan Dynasty, mainly decorated with "Guiguzi going down the mountain", describes the story of Sun Bin's master Guiguzi who, at the repeated request of Su Dai, the envoy of the State of Qi, promised to go down the mountain to rescue Sun Bin and Duguchen, the famous soldiers of the State of Qi besieged by the State of Yan. This artifact was sold at the auction of "China Ceramics, Export Fine Crafts" held at Christie's in London on July 2, 2005. The price was 654.38+04 million pounds, and after deducting the commission, it was 654.38+0568.8 million pounds, equivalent to about 230 million yuan, which set the highest auction record of China artworks in the world at that time.
Gui gu zi Xia shan Hua Guo
Appearance characteristics of Guiguzi downhill map: tank height is 27.5cm, caliber is 2 1cm, abdominal diameter is 33cm, and foot diameter is 20cm. The plain base is round and wide, the mouth is straight and the neck is short, the lips are slightly thick, the shoulders are smooth, the abdomen is round, the shoulder is gradually widened, approaching the lower abdomen and slightly skimming the bottom. Painted with imported cobalt, the blue-and-white pattern is divided into four layers, one is decorated with water ripples on the neck, the other is decorated with peony wrapped in branches on the shoulders, the third is decorated with the theme of "Guiguzi going down the mountain" on the abdomen, and the lower part of the fourth layer is painted with deformed lotus petals, commonly known as "eight yards".
This large blue-and-white jar of Yuan Dynasty was exhibited in Beijing and Shanghai before the auction, which attracted great attention of collectors. At that time, people estimated that it might set a world record for China porcelain auction, and people at Christie's estimated that its value would reach $6.5438+million, but the fact greatly exceeded people's expectations.
The pattern of "Ghost Valley Down the Mountain" on this big jar is a masterpiece of blue and white porcelain handed down from generation to generation. The pattern is Guiguzi riding a car pulled by a tiger and a leopard down the mountain. The story comes from the Yuan Dynasty print "The Collection of Seven Kingdoms in Le Yi during the Spring and Autumn Period", which shows the story that Sun Bin was imprisoned by Yan during the Warring States Period and his master Guiguzi went down the mountain to rescue his disciples. The design on the jar is lifelike, and the painter is exquisite, from the hand of the painter rather than the hand of the craftsman, making the porcelain jar comparable to ordinary blue and white porcelain.
In 2005, the same blue-and-white "Jinxiangtingtu" jar was sold at Christie's in Hong Kong for a high price of 49 million RMB. The scene painted on the jar comes from Wang Zhongwen's drama Meng Yuemei Writing Hate Jin Xiangting, a famous playwright in Yuan Dynasty, which shows the tortuous love story between Chen Gui, a talented woman and a beautiful woman in Tang Xuanzong period. These two jars are rare treasures-two of the eight blue and white jars in the Yuan Dynasty. Although the stories of the theme characters in the two cans of paintings are different, the height and diameter of the objects are roughly the same. Similar patterns are painted on the neck and shoulders. Unfortunately, the jar mouth of Jinxiang Pavilion has been repaired, and its value is far lower than that of Guiguzi Mountain Map.
Yuan Qinghua "Jinxiang Pavilion" jar
The decorative patterns of blue and white porcelain in Yuan Dynasty were mostly peony, bamboo plum, dragon pattern, lotus pattern, flowers and birds, etc. Therefore, the appearance of historical figures' stories on blue and white porcelain is even more precious. Yuan Qinghua's former collector of Guiguzi Tutan was a Dutchman, and his great-grandfather bought it when he was the commander of the Dutch embassy guard in Beijing. This blue and white jar has been handed down in this family for four generations. In recent years, the family has used this big jar to hold DVD discs. A few years ago, Christie's visited his home and thought it was only worth about 2000 dollars. It was not until Christie's experts visited again that they found this porcelain extremely rare.
It is reported that there are only eight similar blue-and-white antiques handed down from ancient times with characters' stories like this jar. On the other six works, you can see the wavy lines painted on the neck of the jar, which are all collected by the David Foundation. Three of the eight treasures have lotus flowers on their shoulders, including this one. There are no stripes on the shoulders and feet of the cans collected by the Boston Museum. This jar is the only one of the eight antiques with Ji Xiangwen painted on the bottom lotus petals, which is very similar to the blue vase collected by the David Foundation. The other six lotus petals all have drooping patterns. It is worth mentioning that the peony pattern on the jar is also very similar to that painted on the bottle hidden by David. Judging from the wavy patterns, peony patterns and Ji Xiangwen that are very similar to the porcelain bottles collected by David Foundation, the production age of this jar is about 135 1 year.
Lian Huai-en, an expert in the China department of Christie's auction house in London, said that porcelain pots with characters' stories are usually made and fired in China, and other varieties are exported to the Middle East and other regions. The quantity of local customization is very small, and the burnt blue and white is gorgeous in color and exquisite in painting, which is one of the best in the world, and many of them are collected by museums.
It is worth mentioning that two or three months after Christie's received the porcelain jar, even Yongli accidentally found the prints printed between 132 1- 1323 in the library, and the decoration on the jar was greatly influenced by the prints, and no similar scenes were painted on other porcelains. In this way, the porcelain pot has "all the qualities" that collectors like, and it is precisely because of this that the auction in London is particularly precious.
Rare is rare, but this jar doesn't have many twists and turns of rare artworks. The porcelain jar was bought in China by Dutch Baron Van Helmut in the early 20th century. At that time, it was the First World War. 19 13- 1923 served in the Dutch navy. He was stationed in Beijing as the commander of the Dutch embassy guard, and was responsible for the security of envoys and territories of Germany, Austria and Hungary. Hemert loves art and has a wide collection. His love for China porcelain can be seen from the photos of his old house in Beijing. Interestingly, when he bought this jar, no one recognized that he could make such fine Yuan porcelain, so he always thought it was a work of Ming Dynasty.
During the reign of Mongolia, there were few blue and white porcelain pieces, which were easily forgotten. Western collectors didn't begin to favor Yuan Dynasty porcelain until 1968, when the Cleveland Museum of Art held an exhibition of China under Mongolian rule. Since 1970s, people have paid more and more attention to blue and white flowers in Yuan Dynasty, but few blue and white flowers have been found. Hemert's descendants, like him, didn't know that porcelain pots were so valuable, so they didn't pay special attention to them for many years. In the 1960s, porcelain pots were identified by the first generation of descendants of Hermite, but experts also mistook them for blue and white porcelain in the Ming Dynasty. When it was passed to the third generation, his family asked Christie's auction house to evaluate it, and the precious value of porcelain pots was discovered. Interestingly, the jar has never been noticed in the general's house, and it has been placed in the corner as a container for sundries for many years.
Lian Wynn said that antique dealers have always attached great importance to the source of items. The origin of this jar is clear, and it has been collected by a family since 19 13, which was unknown to the world before. It is a "fresh product" in the eyes of experts, so once it is disclosed, the market interest is high and it is highly valued by collectors. In addition, since March this year, porcelain pots have been exhibited in new york, Japan, Hongkong, Shanghai, Beijing, Taiwan Province Province, the Netherlands, France and other places, which has increased people's perceptual knowledge of the collection and naturally increased the valuation.
Before the auction, the expert's appraisal of the porcelain pot was 6.5438+0 million pounds, and some people said that it was no problem to auction more than 5 million pounds. Even Wynn's own estimate is between 6 million and 8 million pounds.
Although the porcelain jar was finally won by Giuseppe Escana, an antique dealer in London, the bidding process was not smooth, especially with the participation of bidders from China, which made the bidding more dangerous and the price rose again and again.
The winner, Eskenaz, is the world's leading dealer of early art antiques in China. This time, he bid for an overseas private collector. He didn't join until the price tag reached 6.5438+0.35 million. After a long competition with a telephone bidder, he won the treasure. After the filming, Eskenazi said that he was exhausted by the tense atmosphere at the scene and admitted: "I have reached the limit, and I don't know how long I can hold on."
The sky-high auction of Yuan blue-and-white porcelain pots shows that there is an increasing demand for China's collections in the international market in recent years. Previously, the record holder of the highest auction price of China artworks was Lan Fang, a bronze of the Western Zhou Dynasty in the 10 century BC, which was auctioned by Christie's in new york in March of 200 1 year at a price of 5.3 million pounds (then 9.3 million US dollars).
Yuan Qinghua's Zhaojun Dike
Lian Huai 'en said that in the past, collectors liked China colored porcelain because of its rich colors and regular decoration. However, as time goes on, people gradually find that colored porcelain is thick in color, but they can't savor it carefully. Although blue and white are only two colors, they are elegant. Besides, blue-and-white porcelain is generally heavily painted, which can show nature. The auction results of blue and white porcelain have been very good in recent years. In 2003, Dole Auction Company, a small auction company in new york, auctioned the Yuan Dynasty blue-and-white pilgrimage dragon flat pot, which was the highest price of China porcelain-more than 5.83 million US dollars, becoming a world record at that time.
With the development of China's economy, the demand of collectors from China for China's collection is also increasing. After all, this kind of collection has a historical background in China, which has deepened collectors' interest in China culture. This demand has also pushed up the price of the whole market. Moreover, the collection categories of China's collections are also being updated. The prices of bamboo carvings, rhinoceros horn carvings and Four Treasures of the Study, which were not favored by foreigners in the past, are now rising, and the paintings and calligraphy originally belonging to Asian collectors have also attracted the attention of foreign collectors. In the past, Hongkong was the most important auction place for China artworks, but now this situation is changing. As the lot is collected in Europe, the seller's family wants to participate in the European auction in person, and Christie's London auction house also hopes to promote the auction of China's collection in the European market.
Yuan Qinghua Mudan Yunlong pattern jar
Not only ordinary people, but also porcelain experts who have dealt with porcelain all their lives know very little. Although Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province successfully fired Yuan Blue and White, due to the lack of historical records and physical evidence with clear dates, the world's understanding and understanding of Yuan Blue and White has been blank for more than 600 years. Do you have blue and white in China? What are its artistic features? Why did a gourd bottle with a size of 70 cm and a large plate with a diameter of 50 cm appear in the Yuan Dynasty? Why are there as many as 9 layers of blue and white decorative patterns in Yuan Dynasty? In ancient China, middle and low-grade household porcelain was the mainstream. Why do those people who are known as "the most exquisite Yuan blue and white porcelain in the world" travel across mountains and rivers and settle in foreign palaces one after another? All these historical mysteries have attracted the attention of collectors.
1929, an Englishman, Hobson, was the first to reveal a pair of blue-and-white elephant ear bottles with dragon patterns engraved with the oriental ceramics "Eleven Years of Zheng Zheng" (135 1 year). There is a 62-word inscription on the bottleneck in blue and white. The 11th year of Zheng Zhi is one of the titles of Hui Yuan Zong, the last emperor of Yuan Dynasty. Before the Yuan Dynasty, China porcelain did not form the convention of writing age. This blue-and-white porcelain announced to the world for the first time that Jingdezhen, China had already fired blue-and-white porcelain in the Yuan Dynasty.
Yuan Qinghua Mudan Yunlong pattern jar
In 1950s, an American museum curator, Dr. Pope, made a comparative study of this pair of blue-and-white porcelain with money as the standard, and got a news that shocked the world cultural circles: the Iranian Art Temple and Topca Museum, the old palace in Istanbul, Turkey, contained hundreds of exquisite blue-and-white porcelain of China Yuan Dynasty, which shocked the world, and were called "the most authentic" artifacts. Pope's 32-inch black-and-white atlas rewrote the history of world ceramics in one fell swoop. In 1980s, Britain and Japan also published China porcelain works collected by Turkey.
At the end of March, approved by the Turkish Prime Minister, Topca Bibi Museum welcomed seven ceramic experts, including Fei, Wang, Liu Xinyuan and Xu Ming. It is said that for three consecutive days, in the temporary warehouse next to the big exhibition hall, armed Turkish military police stood by, and a large number of yuan, blue and white national treasures were carefully opened one by one.
There are 40 yuan blue and white pieces in these collections, which are huge in shape and elegant in pattern, ranking first in the world and rare in China. China experts forgot the agreement that they couldn't get started. Fei, an old collector who spent most of his life pursuing Yuan Qinghua, was deeply touched: "At first glance, I carefully looked at my throat, and I caressed it again and again."
Yuan Qinghua rhyme dragon plum bottle
Blue-and-white in the Yuan Dynasty was the product of the combination of China's traditional culture, political thought, religious belief and the strategy of governing the country, said Lei, a researcher at the National Museum of China.
"There was a worship of numbers in the Yuan Dynasty. When Genghis Khan started his army, he set up nine flags and appointed nine generals. He warned his subordinates:' Don't make nine mistakes in the future'. " Li Zhiyan, vice president of China Ceramic Society and researcher of the National Museum, concluded that it was a mystery that there were nine layers of blue and white ornamentation in Yuan Dynasty.
After the consolidation of the Yuan Dynasty's rule, the ethnic relations were very complicated, and the Yuan government implemented the ethnic hierarchy policy. Mongolian is a nomadic people, and their customs are difficult to be accepted by Han literati. Some literati went to the mountains in anguish and became hermits. Xu Ming, head and editor-in-chief of the Social Science Newspaper and doctor of aesthetics, said: "Many literati are forced by life, and it is entirely possible to wander to Jingdezhen to paint porcelain bottles, so the blue-and-white paintings in the Yuan Dynasty are very different from those of craftsmen in other dynasties. It is precisely because the Yuan Dynasty was ruled by foreigners that the Ming people not only despised the meta-culture, but also denied its artistic achievements, which led to no record in the history books. Until the Republic of China, ancient players generally believed that the Yuan Dynasty did not attach importance to the production of ancient ceramics, let alone appreciate blue and white. "