Dear George,
Both articles are very good, Hoffman's is more general, but the questions are very good. It would be nice if he included some answers to his question. But, very useful to use as a checklist for me in the future.
From his references, this one seems most promising. But, could not find one and even if I did, not sure if I can understand it in Chinese simplified...
Yang Boda. Zhuanshi Guyu Banwei Yu Jiankao. (Commentaries on Archaic Jades and Their Fakes.) Beijing: 1998. (Text in Chinese)
While checking him out, this one seems to be good too, but same concern and issue.
Yang, Boda. 1993. Zhenwan diaoke, biyanhu 珍玩雕刻、鼻煙壺 [Appreciating carvings and snuff bottles]. Taibei: Youshi wenhua shiye gongsi.
I read his article on glass in one of the museum catalog where the american scholar, translated it. It was really good (Chinese Glass of Qing Dynasty regarding Robert H. Clague Collection).
Especially, informative to tool marking is the Carving Technique one. (How did you even find it?
Very impressive!
) I never thought anyone will go that far/deep to do such research on antique crystals. This is so different from my image of archeology!
I enjoyed especially section 4 and want to sleep on it and read it again tomorrow. It has been a long while since I last read a good scientific paper. Thank you for finding this one.
I think reference 5, 6, 12, 17, 19 and 21 will be interesting. But, the key one I think will be 5 and 17. Unfortunately except for 5, all the others seems to be from some kind of specialty journals or research paper. I checked a few and they are pretty steep for an article.
Luckily, 5 is a book and I found some on Amazon, it also was quoted 3 time after the first reference in 5. Since it is also a subject I have interest in, I went ahead and ordered a good used copy.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007IV8EC/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A28LGL409KF3VHAnd for good measure, I bought a catalog that the same author wrote for under 7.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0571085989/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A1VL5VILF8V5J6Happily, with lots of gratitude for digging these 2 up! Very impressed.
David