Message #45641

[forestman]

George put up a recent post "Did one of our members win this bottle" and wondered who the artist might be. As I recognised the seal on the bottle I sought to help. My bottle with the same seal also had a signature the same as the part signature on the bottle George was asking about, a fake Ding Erzhong one.

The seal is one I know I have seen on other bottles for sale and also appears on a 3 other bottles I own which are all in relatively good bottles and are "Belle" style, ladies in traditional clothes. Some of the artists on Bill's site seem to have painted in this style before developing their own style.

Is it as Inn suggests, that the seal represents one studio that requires some of it's artists produce copies of past masters. Are the artists offered more for these copies by the studio than they may be for their own works. It would be interesting to identify the studio if only to be able to give something in a description for all these bottles going forwards. Perhaps over time artists that fake other artists may become known.

From my limited knowledge of Chinese art, I believe that traditional art schools in China teach their pupils by having them copy old paintings until they can reproduce them very accurately. The same can be said of past IP artists and their students. This may stop some artists from having faith in their ability to develop their own style so they only ever feel confident to carry on copying.

These copies that we see now will one day become part of snuff bottle history, we can dismiss these fakes or try and find something to link them to better our understanding.

Regards, Adrian.