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Vase purchased Beijing 1992. I always had the presumption that it was cinnabar until I was watching the Antiques Roadshow and at the end of the program they stopped a lady cradling a big vase and she said, "the appraiser told me that it is plastic." How do you tell cinnabar from plastic? My travel diary informs me that I purchased the little red pendant from an antiques shop located at Padre Island, Tx. Mar. 27, 1997. I know that it is not 'antique' but the tassel had turned from red to a maroon tone, so it had some age. I liked the knot work. I also found a first edition of the The House of Sun-Goes-Down, by Bernard DeVoto 1928, an old book and the beach is usually not a good combination, but he may have been a recent arrival from a snow bird, because he was in great condition.
Vase H: 7.0"
Hi Sharon,
Most of so-called cinnabar objects found in auctions and eBay are resin. There are both very obvious fakes and highly professional made copies currently on the market.
If you look very carefully using both your eye and your trusted friend the loupe you will see evidence of one or more of the following.
Moulded seams, air bubbles, swirling within the said material and what looks like saw marks. The presence of any of these will mean that said item is plastic.
You will never see saw like marks on the base of genuine cinnabar. On figures with bases on genuine the figure and base will be separate. On resin they are often molded as one piece.
One true way of determining if it's genuine or not is to dab a cotton swab or ear cleaner in nail polish remover. Then gently rub in a small inconspicuous area. If the swab turns reddish then it's genuine. Plastic will not be effected. If it's genuine please clean the swabed area with soapy water as soon as practical.
Hope this helps you out.
Mark
Hi Sharon,
it’s very difficult to see if plastic or not just from photos, and really I have very little experience with cinnabar. What I can tell you though is that remember, cinnabar is carved lacquer, so you should be looking for tool marks in the cuts made to decorate the pieces. If you have a magnifying glass look for a ‘grain’ pattern in any cuts that run diagonally from the surface down, because real cinnabar is made up of layers of lacquer built up one on top of the other.
Signs of plastic are moulding lines, lack of toolmarks, bubbles in the decoration.
Hope this helps you along...
best regards,
Hugh.
Thanks guys, I see no mold lines and they both come away with red from the acetone test, resembles Mercuracome on a swab, an orange red. I washed the tested areas with soap, the vase was improved by a rinse and I think I can see tool marks or imperfections.
I have tried to find out when they stopped producing real cinnanbar lacquer in China , but didn't succeed. I think there were two different stages and that's why the terminology is sometimes confused.
First the manual and time consuming process of lacquer layering onto wood, copper etc, using natural tree resin which was then carved, was replaced by a mechanical moulding of artificial plastic resin; sometime in the late C19th.
Or perhaps the expensive and cheap processes were running together for several decades.
Then second, because the cinnabar colourant was so toxic , it was replaced by a synthetic dye. (possibly in mid to late C19th) People who worked in lacquering workshops often died from mercury poisoning.
Real cinnabar lacquer is highly toxic and should not be heated and scraped etc. You might want to check if the pendant you have is safe to wear.
So there are four possibilities for your items - real lacquer plus synthetic colour, real lacquer plus mineral cinnabar colour, or plastic resin plus either synthetic or mineral colourant.
Here is a quick piece of info from the Met Museum:
"Lacquer is the resin (or sap) of a family of trees (rhus verniciflua) found throughout southern China. ... Carved lacquer, which is predominantly red, is often known as "cinnabar" lacquer, a reference to the use of this powdered mercury sulphide as the primary colorant".
tam
Thank you Tam, good research skills. I do not wear it very often and since I grew up in the era of mercury thermometer, glow in the dark clocks, aluminum cookware, uranium in Grandmother's green glassware and an asbestos infused house and school, Our Lady of Angels school fire in Chicago saw the rampant installation of asbestos products into schools across the nation, I think I have beat the odds already. I do feel horrible about all the people who worked with hazardous substances and unknowingly ingested poisonous materials across the world. They probably continue to do so.
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