Wise words, Tim. I often wondered about the amount of great looking pieces offered by certain sellers and auction houses. Let me push this thread to the front again. 

@shinigami Thank you, Birgit!

There is so much beauty to enjoy in Chinese art, and like most everyone, of course I'm looking for that lost treasure - the drive is extremely strong... intoxicating, really.  I get it.

Unlike most (I think), I almost never buy from auctions, opting to sacrifice my comfort to drive (or fly) to an estate sale and live in my van for a few days in order to buy a piece in person.  There's nothing glamorous about it, but it is an adventure every time.

But, after a trip, and I'm looking just to unwind, I find myself browsing Ebay, Liveauctioneers.com, and Auctionzip.com, just to see what's out there.  And, wow.... it's really rough terrain.  Tons and tons of modern reproduction.  How can this industry (for lack of a better word) survive all of the adversity intended to deceive buyers?

I think Peter has a really tough job in that he has to provide advice on a regular basis on Chinese antiques/art worth buying, because honestly, I hardly find a single piece worth buying in a month or longer.  And, while there are still good pieces that will come into the market in time (as current owners pass away), once the piece makes its way back to China... that's it....it is permanently out of the global market.  

So, it is no exaggeration to say that the supply of good Chinese antiques is dwindling.

Perhaps we've already reached the point that it makes far more sense to expand in new directions with Asian art, and to take the money that is currently being spent on inferior quality Chinese pieces (or worse, Chinese fakes), and start spending it on Japanese art, or for that matter, art from other areas of Asia.

After all, once we've reached a point where there is no way to physically determine fakes from genuine, collecting becomes arbitrary, because scarcity can be 'corrected'...just make more, right?

I realize as I'm writing that I'm coming off with a high degree of pessimism - might be the rainy weather that's effecting me (but I do love the rain). 

However, there is one thing that I feel Peter and others in his position to influence collectors should do, and that is to take a step back from promoting Chinese antiques on the basis of their 'popularity among collectors' and their monetary value, and refocus on the curitorial assessment.

I think it would be of benefit to the industry as a whole to focus the artistic qualities of a piece that make it a good example (representative) of the period it was made, add some context about the meaning behind the design and construction, and leave monetary valuation to the marketplace to decide.

We'd all be better off for it.

Chinese they made, tens of millions & tens of millions objects trough out theirs history.. And we see, just very few of them up for sale.. Better, average, worse quality doesn't matter. Very odd, is it not?

@lucky You are correct... tens of millions of pieces were made over thousands of years.  Many were destroyed by just the normal decomposition over time (and breakage), others by war, and many by the destruction that occured during Mao.

However, we should also not count every piece of 'minyao' people's ware, nor every item intended for tourist production as 'art' - there should be a certain level of artistic quality that needs to be achieved for a piece to be considered 'art'.

So, the pieces that left China, and made it Europe and the USA, that we hold in high regard today (mark and period porcelain, Buddha, cinnabar, huanghuali, jadeite, master paintings, cloisonne),  these items are not in the tens of millions, but more likely far less (maybe less than a few million in total).

My point is that as forgery achieves producing near perfect copies, then this depreciates the value of the art, both artistically and monetarily.

What is the point to own a $5,000 mark and period Guangxu bowl if the identical bowl can be purchased for $100?  This is the nature of most humans.  And, the presence of perfect copies can create doubt among collectors of the authenticity of your genuine piece, which will bring it value down, too.

This is a very destructive practice playing out before our eyes.  And since there seems to be so much negative momentum, perhaps it is a good time to take a step back by buying other forms of Asian art...let the forgers loose their ill-gotten gains, and perhaps the Chinese market will correct itself in a few years.

@greeno107 Thank you for bringing this up for discussion. The issue of popularity over quality is something that bothers me, too. For example, how in the world can some unique intricately and masterfully decorated finer kutani piece go for similar money in an auction to an average looking mass produced rose mandarin piece? But such things are all too common.

I guess I would put the blame partly on all of us who are buyers as well as sellers. We should start bidding items up to levels we feel they are worth, rather than just to where the current market value is. By doing so, we would naturally increase the value given to those items which would then help to move the market upward. Quite literally two well resourced bidders who decided to battle over an auction full of high quality kutani and bid everything way up would probably change the kutani market overnight. Just two people who admire and want to own those objects could do that. Yesterday that vase was worth 300, but tomorrow it will be worth 3000 because of what somebody paid for it today.

I do agree that the influencers can help shift the needle also. And I think Peter does a great job of not only assessing what the market is doing currently,  but also in promoting less valued objects that he feels have high artistic merit. So many times in his videos he has said something like "always look at the quality of the work".

As dealers and collectors we have to balance the reality of today's market with what we feel should change moving forward. Financial realities need to be understood, but beauty should never be forgotten.   John

@greeno107 Tim you are 100 percent correct on what you are saying here. I feel the same way there needs to be a clear line copies for decor and antique art for collecting. I actually like blending the two copies and antiques for me it’s about room esthetics but I have no doubt that the antique pieces always seem more attractive due to the master copies you are referring to don’t hit our market. We get two forms in Colorado real and fake all fakes are very noticeable to the authentic pieces. One other thing Colorados market is all about decor most could care less about age the decor shops get containers in recent shipments are fake antique Chinese alter tables they are even using recycled old wood. But the Aspen and Cherry Creek markets don’t care and know they are copies the strange thing is I see them paying sometimes as much as an old piece they just want what they want.

@lotusblack Some people just don't get it, in fact, not only do they not get it, they think antiques are genuinely creepy. They have no concept of history, nor do they get a thrilling sense of time travel by physically touching an item from the past. True, a lot of thinking of the past is pure romance, an old forged shot spoon dug up in Pennsylvania, may have had nothing to do with the Revolution, an old lockplate marked with an 1861 date from a building used as a civil war hospital, may not have been touched by a valiant soldier or a kind and beautiful nurse, but it's possible. We, the true believers, know the thrill of seeing the underside of objects seldom touched and we are easy to spot when we travel, trying to place our hands on walls where the fewest of our contempories have touched for a bit of communion with the past.

@lotusblack But the Aspen and Cherry Creek markets don’t care and know they are copies the strange thing is I see them paying sometimes as much as an old piece they just want what they want.

This is a direct result of the shift from what 'antique' meant before, and what it means now.  Those who sold antiques were quite scholarly in their pursuits, so much so that they were (or associated with) archeologists.

During the past 20-30 years, we (humans) have dumbed down the meaning to include anything that emmulates something old, rather than preserving the meaning to be defined as something at least 100 years of age and of high quality.

We (humans) do this all the time with all sorts of things... Do you enjoy cookies made from scratch?

Real vanilla extract from the vanilla bean costs around $10 per ounce, vs. vanilla flavored extract that cost around $1 per ounce.  The reality is that fewer and fewer people today are accustom to homemade baked goods, so they honestly can not tell the difference in taste.

In fact, most people would consider buying cookies made at bakery in their local supermarket the same as homemade (spoiler - they're not using real vanilla extract, either).

Generationally, we are loosing touch with how we define art (and baking is both a science and an art), standards slip, and eventually it is lost until some future generation rediscovers it.

Can't happen?  Sure can... look at how long it has taken for China to recooperate from the loss of their art and culture after Mao.  In fact, it is in many ways the driving force behind the Chinese effort to repatriate their art, and prohibit its export.

And to point out, we've done this in the USA, too, but not as a result of political ideology.  American school painting, as an art form, has essentially been replaced with cheaper forms of graphic reproduction and computer imagery, such as Non Fungible Token (NFT) art.

Although NFT's are widely being supported by the art world as a true artform, the reality is that it is relatively easy and inexpensive to create, so talented artists creating NFT's are faced with overwhelming competition of an abundance of inferior NFT work at a fraction of the cost, which drives the market down.  Sound familiar?

I might dispute that an antique had to be high quality, although  old antique dealers would probably sell better quality items as your man on the street probably didn't have the money for such luxuries. 

Personally, I collect because I love old things.  They don't have to be expensive, perfect, desirable but they have to speak to me of a life lived.  Like Sharon, I have a compulsion to touch them.

Reflecting more on this discussion.... It seems it comes down to how much people prioritize rarity and refinement. Perhaps some of you have had similar discussions with friends or family, but I have experienced telling people about some successful sales results in the Asian art world, and have seen how some people just cannot fathom WHY anyone would pay so much for a bowl/plate/vase, etc. To them these objects are utilitarian and decorative. They have no connection to the history of these objects. So really, interest in antiques is significantly effected by how historically engaged people are.

Oh well, if you are old, in the early days of computer science and the internet, creators wanted it to be free, but then intellectual property entered into the mix, so it goes.

@julia i've seen 500 year old pieces that are genuinely old, but ultimately feel like a reproduction.  If you can figure out what it actually is, the piece is sort of cool as an example of commercial history, but not "fine" art.

Friends:

There is a big difference in where we live.  In the years I lived in Brussels there were many Chinese pieces in every junk store I passed by.  And there are tons of Chinese porcelain still in Europe. Here is an example of a dealer in Holland to scroll through (The Bob and Freek collection) He is a well known expert on the European Chinese trade pieces.

David Coles

https://bobfreekcollection.com/collection/

@rahawkins Things always become esoteric when defining art. 😊