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I read through a post from last year about a lacquer box, but am still having a difficult time determining age. Any thoughts on this 15.5 cm people and landscape vase? Interesting with three background patterns of sky, upside down V and square earth pattern. I assume Qing until convinced of earlier. Is there any way to determine? Weight? Is 5.6 ounces.
@centralpapottery This vase is late 19th c. to early 20th c., so Qing. The way you can tell is actually not too hard once you have actually held/handled a genuine Ming cinnabar.
Start by keeping in mind that Mind cinnabar is about 100 times (mabye 1000 times) more rare than porcelain because it was very dangerous to make (do to having mercury in the lacquer), and required sometimes years to make a single piece (each layer of lacquer requires almost a week to cure, roughly 100 layers on Ming ware cinnabar piece, and the wood core had to be sufficiently kiln dried that it would not warp/crack (which even after 500 years, they often don't).
The carving on genuine Ming cinnabar is deep, the edges of the the depictions are highly detailed, and the surfaces are quite rounded (no sharp visible cuts). During the 18th c., the Qianlong emperor tried to recreate Ming style cinnabar, but not terribly succesfully. Sometimes these pieces are mistaken as Ming, but I think most lacquer specialists (and there are very few) are able to distinguish them from actually Ming.
Your photos are not close up, but I can see that while the design is okay for late 19th c., it has the telltale 'faceted' surface and straight cuts of late Qing work, so absolutely no chance of being Ming.
The close up surfaces of Ming cinnabar are really quite fantastic - they look like carvings of heavily grained wood, each of the layers of lacquer looking like a growth ring in a tree trunk.
I have only ever owned one Ming cinnabar box, a 4 tier round box that I attempted to sell with Lark Mason a few years back. It didn't sell, because the photos (despite being good) were not good enough to convice Cinnabar buyers to bid (starting bid was $20,000).
I took the box back, and a year later I sold it to a Chinese dealer who came to the Miami show. The dealer actually told me he had seen it online on Lark's website, but did not think to fly to NY to view it (and didn't bid), so he was very excited to have the chance to buy it from me directly.
@greeno107 here are a few closeups. I was thinking all genuine cinnabar had the ‘tree ring’ look. The top of the stone to which the pen is pointing has at least 20 layers. So the whole piece is probably more like 30 or so rather than 100. The layers can also be seen on the person seated.
1st indication to recognize genuine cinnabar from faux are "bubbles", and from your pictures provided I've seen none on yours. On cheap fakes, you can find bubbles and mold seams as well...All Chinese genuine carved cinnabar have layers, how many supposed to be of layers, personally don't know (if there is a number of layers at all). I do not come across very often to cinnabar in my life.
@centralpapottery Yes, all real cinnabar has layers.... the difference is the number/thickness of layers. As you point out, yours has about 20 layers. The same depth of carving on a genuine Ming piece would have more than double. Again...very hard to notice the difference until you've actually handled a Ming piece.
@greeno107 sorry if I mislead. There is 20 just on that hill. Definitely not saying this is Ming… just showing pictures. Guessing there are at least 30 layers though. In my short search, I haven’t found many Ming vases, mostly boxes or other items. I’ve handled maybe 5 Qing and as far as I know none from Ming.
@centralpapottery I did not take your statement as misleading or argumentative. I could not find a good photo for comparison, but I worked with what I had available. Take a look...
The surfaces of Ming cinnabar are more rounded, which exposes more layers, and the layers are closer together. Qing cinnabar is flatter, only showing layers where the carving distinguishes the form (person's robe, face, background, etc).
The white arrows point to areas within the major cuts of the carving, and show the rounded nature of the inner carving by light and dark rings of the layers of the cinnabar.
I hope this helps, and good luck finding a genuine Ming cinnabar! They are quite rare, and many large auction houses mistaken 18th c. pieces copying the Ming style as genuine Ming cinnabar.
@greeno107 yes, I see what you mean. I think I only have one spot on my whole vase like that which is noticeable. Your photo has a number on one small area. Thanks! Very helpful. Also, mine is only a couple mm deep.
I have a few pieces like this that I think are late Qing. No bubbles, coarse layers. I have noticed that you have to work really hard to get them to show any color when you do the acetone test; is that the case with the older Ming pieces? I have often thought that the ca 1900 ones are not really lacquer, but instead some sort of artificial composite.
I would assume & I would expect different color of Cinnabar if to talk about 17c or 18c and a little bit more quality & life within carved object. Of course there are exceptions. I mean in general what I would expect.
And now number of layers on earlier examples. thanks Tim for a valuable & informative lesson here!
Regards
Hello all, I am still about doing more reading than posting. I hope Greeno will not be upset by furthering the discussion on Cinnabar because I just bought my first piece.
I bought this at a very local on line auction, it looked good enough to take a punt in the hope it was real and not resin. Well it turns out it is real cinnabar, I am into it for about $18US so really could not go wrong. It past the nail polish remover test and the layering test
it is hand carved
my question for those in the know is the age? I have no expectations of it being Ming but hope for it to be late Qing or republic. The bace is unmarked with no enamelling.
Ron
This could be cast resin and it’s a modern reproduction.
This information is very helpful.
I am assuming they did make genuine cinnebar in the late Qing, it's just not as high a quality as in the Ming prototypes.
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