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Good advice for married collectors

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Peter Bentley 彭达理
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« on: August 08, 2014, 03:15:20 am »

Good  advice   for  married  (  especially   recently  married)   collectors :

      1. Save  up   a lot  of   money privately

      2.  Buy   your  girlfriend / wife   a  diamond  ring   suddenly / out  of the  blue ! 
           It  will  knock  her  out   for   at least one  year

          Note  :   YOU MUST  BUY  THE   RING VOLUNTARILY  !         
  l
      3.  During  that  year  use the  rest  of the  money  you  saved  to buy  some
          lovely bottles , but  keep  them  secret

When  she  eventually  finds  out  you  spent  more  on   your  bottles   than   her diamond  ring she  will still  forgive  you

( Pat  :  Do NOT  laugh..........  )


PPS :  I am  very    happily  married  and VERY   happy to  obey   Smiley

         [   ...  well, maybe  sometimes   Wink]

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Joey Silver / Si Zhouyi 義周司
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« Reply #1 on: August 08, 2014, 03:30:50 am »

Dear Peter,
    Was the "PPS:..." part a "Rumpole of the Old Bailey" reference?  Cheesy
Joey
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Joey Silver (Si Zhouyi 義周司), collecting snuff bottles since Feb.1970

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« Reply #2 on: August 08, 2014, 11:59:15 am »

Peter

Sorry.  Laughing anyways.  Grin Cheesy Roll Eyes.. this is why they should stay girlfriends.
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Best Regards

Pat
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Zha Shang Jie

Peter Bentley 彭达理
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« Reply #3 on: August 08, 2014, 02:36:49 pm »

Hi  Pat  ( and  all  other  Married  collectors, particularly  if married  to   Chinese  ladies)

 !!!


I have   used  every  possible   trick  to  keep  my recent   aquisitions  a   secret  from my  dear  wife

Of course   I  never  openly  advertise  new  bottles    when  I   bring them  home.  I  just  smuggle  them  in and  number   them  disctreetly  under  the  base  of their   little   wooden  stands.  Thus  far  I  have  got   to  number  320    from number    roughly   280   without  Her  noticing

But   when  I  approach  400 +  I  sense  a  crisis  will  finally   happen  and  I  will be  forced  to   explain   to  "She-who-must-be obeyed"  of  Rumpole  fame  the   recent  100 + bottles

But  gladly  I can justify  the  last  100  +  bottles  because  I  finally  learned    WHICH     artists    will  make  the  big-time / all-time  List   and , more  important  WHY   they  will  make  the   All-time List

So  WHO  these  days  are  the   real  Modern-day   "Zhou Leyuans "    -  the   modern-day "ZLY"   artists   who  never  repeated  a  bottle  and  always   created   new  works  of   true  art   from  scratch ?

That's a conundrum which  I  can never  answer.  Same  as  the  question  Ian  Hardy  posed   in my presence    (when I  was  accidentally   bumped  up to the  head  table next to Ian and  Kay  and  Wang  Xisan  at  a  lunch  in  Shijiazhuang in  2011) :

 "Why did    ZLY   suddenly  stop  painting  in  1894 ? "

Master  Wang, as  I recall,   had  no  answer

Neither  do  I

But  I  DO have  an   answer  to  Pat et al.

Be  true   to  your   Chinese /  Thai  /  Asian  (whatever  Eastern   or  indeed  ANY   nationality)   wife  !

As  I  told  my   wife   when  she   went  to bed   tonight, and  I meant  it   : I  would  happily   swap  my entire   bottle  collection   for  just  one  night   with   you,  let  alone   the  rest  of  my   lifetime  of  nights   with you

BingBing  I  love  you!

Cheers

Peter

PS:  If / when   any  Forum  participants    ever  come  to  our  tiny  home  in Wanchai,  Hong  Kong,   please  be  ready  to  embrace    the  love    that   overflows.  The bottles   are  just  minor  decorations








« Last Edit: August 08, 2014, 02:53:31 pm by Peter Bentley 彭达理 » Report Spam   Logged

Joey Silver / Si Zhouyi 義周司
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« Reply #4 on: August 08, 2014, 05:51:16 pm »

 Quoted from Peter:
  Same  as  the  question  Ian  Hardy  posed   in my presence    (when I  was  accidentally   bumped  up to the  head  table next to Ian and  Kay  and  Wang  Xisan  at  a  lunch  in  Shijiazhuang in  2011) :

 "Why did    ZLY   suddenly  stop  painting  in  1894 ? "

Master  Wang, as  I recall,   had  no  answer

Neither  do  I


Dear Peter,
    Zhou Leyuan didn't stop painting in 1894; he stopped in 1893.
Why did he stop in 1893, you ask? Because he died. It is quite hard to paint inside bottles, when you are dead. Something about holding the brush, I believe...  Grin   Wink
Shabbat Shalom,
Joey

 
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Joey Silver (Si Zhouyi 義周司), collecting snuff bottles since Feb.1970

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« Reply #5 on: August 08, 2014, 07:36:23 pm »

Did'nt you guys know that wives have eyes at the back of their heads?.....they grow them when they become mothers  Grin So maybe its not that they dont see your new bottles, but let you think they dont.... they indulge you because they love you,  Grin Kiss Kiss
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Joey Silver / Si Zhouyi 義周司
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« Reply #6 on: August 08, 2014, 08:13:07 pm »

Sounds right to me, but what do I know?  Wink Cheesy
Shabbat Shalom,
Joey


Did'nt you guys know that wives have eyes at the back of their heads?.....they grow them when they become mothers  Grin So maybe its not that they dont see your new bottles, but let you think they dont.... they indulge you because they love you,  Grin Kiss Kiss
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Joey Silver (Si Zhouyi 義周司), collecting snuff bottles since Feb.1970

Peter Bentley 彭达理
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« Reply #7 on: August 08, 2014, 09:19:22 pm »

Hey  Joey  All

As  an  old- timer  I  thinks  I was  pretty    clever  to  get  it  right  by  +/-    1  one  year   going  back  one century    purely from memory 

Not  even    google   search !

 Cheesy

________

More  to the  point  ...

1.  I  am  in total  awe  of  ZLY's  originality  as  I now  review  the  recent   history  of  VMIPBs  and   CREATIVITY  versus  PAINTING - COPY  SKILLS

This  subject   will be  the  climax  of  my  Xian  presentation

2.  I  think I can now  date   every   WGY  and  LYZ  bottle  pic  to the  exact  year   at a  glance  ( well  ,  just  about  so)

I  have  done  nothing except    shift  around  bottle  pics  on my  computer  screen  for the  past  4  weeks

During the  course  of  that  I  found  that  at least a  couple  of  "Grand" Masters  have  painted  nothing of  merit  in the  past  20  years    !  Extraordinary .

3.   I  forget  what  was  my  point  3 ....  if there  ever  was  one

I  need to  take  reality  check and   drink a  cold  beer  with  Geoff in HK

Cheers

Peter

PS:  Oh  yes    Point  4 :      Bill  Gates  has  'generously'  stopped   service  on  Windows  XP  which I have  dutifully   carried  across from every  lap company-employer-paid-for-lap-top    in the past  decade.    Now  I'm retired  I  had  to  buy  my  own  lap  top  for the  first time  in my  life , and  my  own  software  licence. 
Cost me  over  US$2 K

I have  heard  horrible  stories  about  Windows  8  so  I bought   Windows 7    to  go  onto my  new  Lenovo X240  .  But  - and I  kid  you  not  -  I  bought  into a  home  system  with an   web-based  2    TB  home   server   (not to mention a  home-based   wireless  accelerator)  .   So I can now  run  both  my old  and new  computers    in parallel  and   switch between them  at the  click of a  switch.  Amazing !

Except that yesterday  I   changed  my  home  desk  top  glass   and  had  to  un-hitch  the    huge  web  of  wires   and  cables   tucked  behind  my   dual  lap tops   Angry   

SH1T  !

But  I  did  it  , and   got them  all   re-connected  OK. 

" Zee  leetle  brain cells,  zee   still are  working"  :  Hercule  Poirot   1920  - ish ( or   sometime   around  that date

We  just  'celebrated' the  beginning  of  WW1   when  3  of  my  Great  Grand  Uncles  died  in the  trenches

Cheerze

Peeeeter

_______________

From  e-Yaji / Hugh Moss  :


Zhou Leyuan (whose home-town was Shangyin, in Jiejiang province according to one of his seals) is the single most important artist in the entire field of inside-painted snuff bottles.  Artistically he has peers, none who surpassed him but a few who attained his lofty standards of technique and art (Yiru jushi, Gan Xuanwen, Chen Xuan among the artists who preceded him, and Ma Shaoxuan – at his best – Ding Erzhong, early Ye Zhongsan, Ziyizi among those he inspired). What makes him so important is his crucial position in the history of the art and the immense influence he exerted over all the artists who followed him, right up to the 1960s.

Although painting on the inside of a snuff bottle was first conceived of in the dying years of the eighteenth century, along with so much other innovation in the snuff-bottle field, after the Lingnan School of Gan Xuanwen in the first two decades of the nineteenth century, the art devolved into commercial craft which, by the third quarter of the century, resulted in a Beijing school producing badly painted, cheap bottles with no artistic merit. Zhou seems to have been trained in this school, perhaps in the 1870s, but by the 1880s was already in the process of bringing artistic dignity back to the art form. Between then and his death, or last work, in the Spring of 1893 he single-handedly lifted the art back to its lofty origins and inspired a large school of followers in Beijing.  He may have been a commercial painter, selling his art and taking commissions throughout the height of his career, but he acted like an artist. He never painted a hasty or sloppy work, never repeated a composition, and maintained the highest standards of artistic integrity. The same cannot be said for all of his followers, but several of them rose to the occasion, including the scholar-painter-calligrapher, bamboo- and seal-carver Ding Erzhong. Many others, who were more commercially inclined and tended towards decorativeness in their art, were still capable of producing masterpieces when they chose to do so (Ye Zhongsan in his early years, Ma Shaoxuan, Meng Zishou, and others). What Zhou had was a complete command of the medium and aesthetic credibility – the two pillars of great art. One only has to look at his works that remain in reasonably good condition to grasp this. Zhou was a Master, with a capital ‘M’.

For consistent mastery and integrity he was matched only by Ding Erzhong in the school he inspired, although we should perhaps include Ziyizi.

What is also important, from the point of view of the collector and student of the subject, is that he left a large body of works. He obviously painted full-time from the late 1870s until he ceased to paint in the spring of 1893. In some years he was more prolific than in others and particularly between 1882 and 1885 he didn’t date so many works so we are left to guess at what was done in those years, but his output was prolific during the height of his career from the early 1880s to 1893. As a commercial painter, however, his output would have matched the demand for his works, and it is obvious from the dated works that he hit the height of his fame between about 1885 and 1893 – with demand steadily increasing throughout that period.

The connoisseurship of inside-painted snuff bottles in terms of differentiating between the artistic and the decorative is greatly aided by one simple exercise: remove the bottle. If we take the painting away from its ‘ship in a bottle’ novelty so that the painting stands apart from the artist’s skill in being able to paint it backwards on the inside of a tiny bottle, and it still looks good as art, then we are probably dealing with a master. If this is consistently true across a body of works, then we certainly are. In the case of Zhou Leyuan, it is true of every single bottle he produced after mastering the art.

We have blown up a selection of images to treat them as Chinese paintings to demonstrate the mastery of Zhou Leyuan.

Judge for yourselves: to me, as a once and future collector – well actually a present collector, for I have always kept a few snuff bottles tucked away – Zhou Leyuan represents the pinnacle of the art form. For that reason I have always collected his works. The first collection was sold to the Blochs in the 1980s, the second I have formed since with a piratical lust for being able to acquire the best for peanuts in what I felt was an uncomprehending marketplace. Zhou represents, to me, the bee’s-knees of inside painting and I have always followed my instincts, for which I am now grateful.
« Last Edit: August 08, 2014, 09:25:15 pm by Peter Bentley 彭达理 » Report Spam   Logged

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