Hi Folks
This morning I took my Photo- Enhanced ( P-E) bottle and another similar bottle painted by a Hengshui artist Wang Sijia whom Bill and I know personally : a senior student of Li Shouxun. Check out Bill's website www.snuffbottlecollector.com for numerous examples of WSJ's works, and the bottle I own I bought from Bill (beautiful !)
Superficially, both bottles look similar in quality side by side. The WSJ bottle is a copy of a Chinese oil painting, while the P-E bottle is obviously also a copy of some Chinese painting .
I photographed both bottles in detail at max res / fine quality with my Nikon P1000 , thus producing 3 -4 MB pics. Then I cropped down and if the final pic was > 1.5M ( max for postings ) I compressed . So all pics were taken under the same conditions.
It's obvious that the WSJ pics break down under hi- res to individual brush strokes . Whereas the P-E pics become more and more fuzzy the greater the resolution , which would absolutely indicate that a photo had been somehow pasted inside the bottle ( I really don't know how ! ) . It's surely impossible to create that fuzzy out-of focus effect by inside painting .
The P-E "artist" has touched up the girl's hair a little in balck , but very crudely. Also the base of the bottle has been manually darkened. Finally, someone has added the leaves, and bamboo sprouts + signature by hand on the back side .
I'm now going to post the two bottles side by side and close up this posting to make sure it works OK
Then I will post all the WSJ pics, and, finally , all the P-E pics.
You can judge for yourself and draw your own conclusions.
But for me it's quite clear that George was 100% correct to immediately spot a P-E bottle when he saw it and mea culpa ( caveat emptor !) for having been fooled all this time
Thanks George !
Cheers Peter
