Yes, thank you. It is also good to see the process unfold; I wouldn't get to see this otherwise and it is so interesting.

Hi all - 

A short update … 

I visited my restorer earlier today with two friends, one of whom was collecting a finished piece …

Two images attached of the basin undergoing third stage cleaning …

The box containing the large number of fragments are mostly finished, although he wanted to asked my thoughts regarding tight hairlines that can still be seen on two pieces …

The cleaning of the single large piece, second image, is undergoing extensive treatment, especially to a very tight break running through the mark. The cleaning of this single crack has been ongoing for over two months, just to give some impression of involved time scales, and continues still …

Stuart 

Hi all - 

An early Christmas present …

I have just received these images from my restorer. He has finished cleaning process, and has bonded the sections back together … 

The next stage will be to fill in all losses along the break lines, then colour code and retouch all damage areas of enamels and underglaze blue, including the mark …

Again, due to the lighting or brightest, not the best images but, compared to the original condition, he’s doing a superb job …

Stuart 

Very nice Stewart like me damaged is not important with fine art.

Dear Stuart,

I come a little late to the party, and also feel somewhat impertinent about offering a view on a Ming-period piece, but in spite of my reservations, I have a couple of observations that I will venture anyway.

First, I wonder why the auction house in which you found the basin thought it to be later than its reign mark would indicate. This strikes me as curious, since the auction house was clearly aware that the mark indicated the Jiajing reign; it was therefore not utterly unacquainted with matters Chinese. (I note that you did not mention the name of the auction house in which you found it. Someone's judgement obviously lay behind the opinion expressed in the catalogue; I found myself wondering whose this may have been, whether it was the product of in-house expertise, or whether it had come from an external consultant.)

Second, some of the photographs you supplied of the basin in its disassembled state suggested to me that the porcelain might be thick enough to withstand TL testing. The samples taken by Oxford Authentication, as I know from my own experience with them, are quite discreet, and though the testing process is unavoidably invasive to some extent, the traces it leaves on more substantial pieces are hardly noticeable. Such testing is necessarily impractical on finer porcelains, but possibly not in your particular and more thickly potted case. It has now in any event become impractical, because the basin has been reassembled in the course of its restoration. But it occurred to me that a TL test would almost certainly have concluded definitively what the results of connoisseurship would suggest.

And in that latter regard, the diligence of your research is quite excellent. From what I can see - although as I said above, my acquaintance with Ming-period pieces is not as wide ranging as it is with the Qing - your case appears to be a very strong one indeed. 

If this proves indeed to be a mark and period basin, you have done exceptionally well to have acquired it at the price indicated in your catalogue annotation. Even though heavily restored, it is such a rarity - possibly a unique rarity - that that fact alone should be enough to counterbalance substantially the drawbacks posed by its damaged state.

One of the morals arising from this story is, keep looking in those secluded spots! And your experience here shows how even gems may occasionally lurk hidden in plain sight if they are wrongly assessed and described.

All good wishes,

Alan

@ming1449 Looks great - how exciting!

@kaishul 

Hi Alan - 

Never feel any reservations regarding ‘venture observations’ on this, or indeed, any other forum post! We are all here to learn from one another’s experiences, thoughts and opinions …

Out of discretion and respect, I do not wish to name the auction house where offered. I will, however, relay what I was told by the head of there Asian department when enquiring about this piece …

When initially offered by the consigner who, I understand is a dealer, they were unsure whether to accept it for consignment due to the obvious damage and condition issues. After deciding to accepted, there were some discussions and uncertainty regarding how it should be described and catalogued, so the ‘safe option’ was taken. 
Let me elaborate;

The provincial/smaller auction houses have to catalogue a wide range of numerous objects in differing media from several different countries. Therefore, department heads to have a very wide, broad knowledge range and, by implication, means they can lack specific, in-depth knowledge in specialist areas …

As you may be aware, auctions houses sometimes have to be cautious when cataloging. If, after conducting preliminary research no authentic comparisons are traced, this could suggest the object is later then initially thought which, may, imply it could be problematic and therefore difficult to sell. Also, the last thing they would wish to incur is bad publicity or, possible, litigation if the cataloguing proves incorrect …

Regarding the Jiajing base mark; One must know the differing writing characteristics of that found on both Imperial and private kiln period pieces, those written in honour or veneration in later reigns and periods, and those added to deceive. Marks, if applicable, are the last feature you should look at and examine closely, as it merely confirms whether the piece is, or is not, of a specific period …

Thank you for your suggestion and opinions on TL testing, something which I have already thought about and discussed with others. It can be very useful but, unfortunately, the dating range supplied would be too broad in this particular case …

Stuart 

Dear Stuart,

Yes indeed, the provincial auction houses, with a few notable exceptions, do not have the depth of expertise required to arbitrate with any confidence on the authenticity of some of the lots they offer, especially in this particular area of the market where the fakes as we know can be very skilfully done. Such auction houses will, as you note, take the safer course of being noncommittal in the way they describe things, and I have all the more respect for them when I find them exercising caution in this respect. Yet sometimes, knowing their in-house limitations, they will call in external expertise. I had wondered whether this had been done in your case, but evidently not, they had simply exercised caution. This caution can be handy from the point of view of the buyer if that buyer knows what s/he is doing, as you evidently do. Less knowledgeable buyers might be deterred from bidding by the auction house's caution, knowing that they would have no recourse if the item did indeed turn out to be a modern copy. So the motto here is that the caution of the auction house can sometimes work in the knowledgeable buyer's favour. Competition will be deterred.

Allow me to clarify a little about the potential value of the TL test. Again in your case, had you been in a position to go down the TL route (less practical now because your item is undergoing restoration), I imagine that the route might have proceeded like this: you would have told Oxford Authentication that, by all appearances and belief, your basin was created between 1522 and 1566, and could they test it to either confirm or refute that belief. This, I believe, they would have been perfectly capable of doing. We know that the date ranges they are able to establish are not exact, and that these ranges have latitude of a few hundred years either side of the median date that the laboratory testing arrives at. However, mid Ming is a period that, all things being equal, they would be able to express a scientifically defensible opinion on which would have been useful from your point of view; Oxford Authentication ought certainly to have been able to confirm that the basin was indeed not a modern fake, and if not a modern fake, when else outside of Jiajing could it possibly have been made (we know of course of early Qing examples of retrospective reign marks, many of which chose those of the Jiajing emperor, but none of these early Qing examples would coincide with what is on the base of your item)? So by a process of elimination, the TL test would, I think, have clinched it, that if the item walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it is indeed a duck, especially when science says there's no reason either why it shouldn't be!

Thank you again for this most interesting thread.

Alan