Hi Pat,
Seems we have some concensus on numbers of artists
I reckon that, although a good VM artist in his mid -late 30's can paint a good bottle in one week working non-stop, his actual productivity is only 2 bottles/ month because of planning a bottle, family matters etc. If he can get RMB 4 - 5K net per bottle, which I think is the going rate that makes RMB8-10K / month ( I assume tax free) which is a pretty good salary in Hengshui. That translates to at least double that in terms of salary vs cost of living in the big cities ( maybe almost treble before tax) , which puts him on a par with our top sales staff in China who bring in USD 2 - 4 Million / month sales
RMB4-5K net/ bottle means final sale price in the USD1K range via a dealer
All this is at current prices , of course. It seems a few years ago the artist's expectation per "good" bottle was much lower
Re collecting : I think you have a moot point . I guess 100 years ago IPBs were exclusively the playground of Chinese collectors. But inevitably eventually they become international collectors' items ( even so, many of the "great" Early and Middle school collections are in the hands of Chinese collectors )
Now for the Modern school : again it's the Chinese collectors who have lead the field : J.H. Leung, the S'Pore Nanyang group, and other collectors in Spore like Yeo, Richard etc . And probably a handful of discrete , rich Chinese collectors who have not published their collections yet. Even you and I have strong Chinese connections ! It seems Bill is the "exception that proves the rule" ( if I may say that in the nicest possible way
)
The VM school may turn out to have a wider audience worldwide because of dealers like Jill. But - as I mentioned before - I recently heard that
80% of all good VM bottles are now sold within China So where does that leave the future of this art-form ? BIG QUESTION !
Cheers Peter
