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What is it about these stained looking bottles

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George
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« on: February 02, 2011, 09:58:09 am »

I see these mostly on eBay. They are not attractive to me at all.

Curious what these bottles are all about. Why are they so stained on the bottles interior ? Is it it mask the poor quality painting, or is it to give the appearance that the bottle is old.

Here is an example of a small vase I purchased a while back that is stained in the same way. Paid something like two dollars for it and a couple dollars shipping.

I can only imagine that snuff bottles with the same appearance look somewhat the same inside as the vase I purchased.

Here is a random pic of a bottle from eBay followed by some pictures of the inside of the vase I mentioned.



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« Reply #1 on: February 02, 2011, 10:09:39 pm »

The black lines of this bottle are probably printed. The staining of the inside helps diminish the "print" look while making the bottle look old. It is amazing how many times I have been shown this style bottle, or the similar painted ones that also have been made to imitate Peking glass, when asking Chinese in various markets to see any antique bottles. Many Chinese (not near the "real" painting circles mind you) actually think these are antiques as well.
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« Reply #2 on: February 02, 2011, 10:29:18 pm »

I wondered about the lines. Thought they actually looked pretty good if they were painted.

I am not familiar with how they apply a print to the inside of the bottle.

Off topic, but also not familiar with the camera process used to place images of people on the inside either.

I think the staining also helps diminish the sloppy paint applied within the lines.

That is actually pretty funny about how some Chinese people could believe that these are antique.  Cheesy
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« Reply #3 on: February 03, 2011, 12:56:12 pm »

One of these days I hope to get into a factory where this is done .... one of these days  Smiley
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« Reply #4 on: February 04, 2011, 09:53:04 am »

I have seen these mostly on eBay. Just looking at them they appear to be cheap imitations of a painted bottle.

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« Reply #5 on: February 08, 2011, 01:10:06 am »

After making a little fun of those who really believe these to be antique, am feeling like I am being fooled too .

There is something about the drawing that makes me believe it is actually painted, and not a print.

Just seems to have a good look to it.

Not so sure it is stained like the ones above, but it has been treated in some way that leaves me the impresion that they are possibly trying to make it appear antique. Maybe it is a print ?





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« Reply #6 on: March 18, 2011, 12:51:46 am »

Hi George

As to your bottle here with the glass overlay... I have about 20 or so different ones like this in my collection, some being very ornately cut glass.... etc... Just like you, I have the same questions and thoughts, but over time I have begun to change my mind about this, for several reasons:

1) some of the Chinese collectors I know swear by the fact that some of these are in fact old (does not mean original, however... ) and some of them are displayed in some older Chinese books and publications I have ...

2) the 'printing' as some of us know exists.. would be difficult to do with the glass overlay.  I am told that to do the 'printing' or 'transfer' (I am not an engineer, so excuse my use of words) needs a homogeneous surface (like the cheap bottles we all see on ebay or elsewhere...

3) an older artist told me once that these bottles had several advantages or reasons for existence. a)  They were quick to produce b) resembled monochrome Chinese paintings c) were the early predecessors of the commercial, i.e. not for snuff bottle use that we see today. 

4) i have several bottles that have similar pictures but u can see that the brush strokes are different and pics are different, or have different front or back pics and different signatures. i have magnified these and come to the conclusion that they are different...

5) it seems (i am told, and based on my collection...) most of the artists (or their pupils) at one point painted these bottles

I can not guarantee (and frankly who really can..) that these are originals and painted by the purported artists, but I do believe they are 'older' and not fakes... it would take an awful lot of work to do this.  Just my opinion based on my own experiences.... reactions welcome... anytime...

Pat
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« Reply #7 on: March 18, 2011, 03:09:08 am »

Thanks for sharing this Pat..

Good information and appreciate you sharing your expertise and experience with these.

Funny thing.. The thought about these resembling monochrome Chinese paintings did cross my mind..
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« Reply #8 on: March 18, 2011, 06:13:51 am »

You are welcome!  That is what this forum is for, right?  I have actually tried to do some research on the paintings used as inspiration for these, but as yet unsuccesful...  In any case, if you do some good magnification on good size/resolution pics and cut out the rest of the area, you might be a bit shocked as to the fine detail on these.... I certainly was... and IF (just if) this was done using transfer or other methods to accomplish... then 'hats off'  and I am still happy to have these ;-)  They are really not commonly come accross, even in my neck of the woods.  Enjoy it... Happy collecting! 
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« Reply #9 on: April 10, 2011, 11:14:59 pm »

Hi  George, Pat

That first  stained  bottle   you   showed  was  just like the  " antique "  I bought in GZ

Cheers  Peter @  HK
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« Reply #10 on: April 10, 2011, 11:26:34 pm »

Yes indeed. These are the ones I talk about with the electrolysis (sp? i am not an engineer).  There are loads of them.....
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« Reply #11 on: April 10, 2011, 11:52:10 pm »

Hi All.  This  has  got me  thinking .... Roll Eyes

We  know that   snuffbottles were  primiraily  used for  SNUFF, just like  mobile  phones these  days  are   used     to  talk to each  other.  I use  just the   cheapest  Nokia,  several  years  out of date. But my  PA  only   buys the  latest  iPhone ! When  we give  gifts  to our  customers  in China  we use  the  latest  iPhones and  iPads   It  was  only    when   snuff bottles developed  in to   19th  C  business  gifts that    ther  arose  a  generation of    true   artists  whose  bottles  were never  used  for  snuff,  but  just  for  display. " Hey   ! -  my  i-ZLY  is  a later and  better  version  than  your  i-MSX"
So alongside the   few   acknowldeged   "greats"  there must  have been   a  whole  cottage  industry  turning out    commercial grade  bottles   with some minimal  decoration   for   real  snuff use. ( Pat  tells  me  he  has  bottles  which actualy do contain  residual   snuff  particles !    QED)   As usual  with commercial grade  stuff, it's never  valued  at the   time  do finally very  examples   finally  survive . Thus the   3   - rail  Hornby  00  gauge  toy  train  set  I   palyed  with  as a kid   50 years   ago  is  now  very rare and sells  for  several  hundred  USD  on ebay. Very  hard  to fake that  !
So doubtless there  are  many   genuine   commercial grade bottles 100 years  old,  unsigned  but    very  beautiful, and therefore a  collector's genre in their  own  right.   The  only  problem is the   Chinese  innate ability to copy  ( did  you know  that    there  even fake  chicken EGGs  for sale  !!!!!  )   so   as soon as    antique   commercial  grade  bottles   become popular  there will  surely be a  factory  turning out  copies  which  are  ( almost) as good as the  original.  I don't know  how the experts   differentiate  between a  fake and real  ZLY  or  MSX,  but they can  do so  ( but also  provenance   surely  counts  heavily, especially when     these bottles    change hands  for  USD  tens  of  thousands )  . But equally, there   is a   group of  collectors  who   collect the    genuine  antique    commercial  grade  bottles  as  an art form in its  own right, and rightly  so , because they are collector's  items  and often  very  beautiful, as  well as   comparatively  rare.   
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« Reply #12 on: April 10, 2011, 11:59:53 pm »

I am sure you are on to something here.  I have collected at LEAST 50, probably more that either had remains of snuff in powder form or caked on due to moisture, and some not bad at all as evidenced by the pics we shared here (one of the bottles I talked about is in the Gallery, the unsigned - unsealed one).  I also found that the area of IP between 1915-1949 is one of the least documented of the IPSB area because so many 'collectors' only wanted the old/master/expensive/show off ones, however, the styles changed drastically in that period to more use of brown/sepia, and the use of oil paint.  However, some are incredible too... I have yet to find anyone or any documentation focusing on that period
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« Reply #13 on: April 11, 2011, 12:16:15 am »

Oh.. before I forget, I talked about caked-on snuff due to moisture.  Chinese sellers learn - very - fast, so watch out.  Some of the sellers that noticed I liked/preferred these somehow, they used finely ground brown sugar to resemble caked on snuff for next time I came around, if they did not have any real snuff or could not procure any to properly fake it. However, fortunately, under a good magnifying glass you can recognize the crystalized structure of sugar! So please also dont let that fool you into thinking it is an older bottle, especially if you can not examine the bottle (i.e. internet...)
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« Reply #14 on: April 11, 2011, 02:13:44 am »

What better way to continue this thread than to find all these on Ebay... This is an example of one of the bottles that I suspect has been 'worked' over in a better way with more colour AFTER the initial 'draft' of the outline has been achieved in the bottle.  The oil paint coverage turns the grey of the 'transfer' (for lack of a better name) into more 'black' and then the colors are used to give it a more complete and older look.  I have some better examples that I bought early on in my novice collecting days that will rival some of the 'real' better oil painted older ones I have.  This example here is signed and sealed Ye Zhong San, 1934 (or 1994).   If it all dated correctly, which is at the very least doubtful or up for discussion, then the Ye Zhongsan is certainly wrong or Ye Studios... anyway... for learning, sharing, and for discussion purposes, folks...

http://cgi.ebay.com/Chinese-Hand-Inside-drawing-Snuff-Bottle-person-/380331594230?pt=Asian_Antiques&hash=item588d8791f6

To the unknown and uninitiated, and to people who have chinese friends for translation, the 1934 date could be credible...a little chemical aging (yes, there are factories and workshops who do just this) to the bottle applied... and voila... anything is possible, as well as this just might be an 'older' bottle.  Hard to get to the bottom of this without someone who has seen and observed my theory.
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« Reply #15 on: April 11, 2011, 04:25:15 am »

Hi   again Pat  and  All

VERY  interesting thread  !  And  please  bear in mind that  anything / everything  I write  on this  thread  is  just  guesswork, because  I  have  ZERO  collecting  history  in  this pre-Modern period .

However I would    say   very  confidently that  price is the   guideline .   If a  website  like the  one  you  link  to   has any credibility at all  the owner  would  have some  knowledge of    the value  of  bottles   he sells and if  he  knows a bottle  to be  genuine   he  would  put  a  high  reserve  price on it.  I  will not even begin to use  commonsense  testing of that  bottle is    genuine Ye  ZhongSan , eg  delving  into the   many books  I have of  famous   Middle period collections,   but   any genuine   Ye  Zhongsan  would  be  worth  USD 10 K  at mininum.  Not  USD60  !

Cheers  Peter @  HK
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« Reply #16 on: April 11, 2011, 05:22:58 am »

Sure.... I agree.  However, this post was about how to tell fake(d) bottles, not whether it was a genuine Ye Zhong San.  We seem to divert back on genuine/not genuine.  Most of us know the answer without looking, hard anway, and if anyone can find a YZS for 60 USD, they should play the lotteries, every day, allover the world, but the rest of the world out there does not, and that is what this forum is for, no? Or ?  Second reason (my own motive) was to be able to find out why/how/where/when/by who these were done, ...

So questions to ask ourselves:

1) is it genuine... NO....----> this one sure is not
2) is it older, and just a tribute to... ----> HM....to first question, i dont know, to second, probably not, but who knows...
3) it is an older copy of another genuine? ---- > hm.... if so, of what....
4) it is a intentional recent forgery? ----> by whom, when, where... how and why

It is 3 and 4 I am most interested in, but we seem to get back into this 'real artist', real 'made by' discussion

FRANKLY ... i dont care.. because I will NEVER shell out 10-20k USD or more for some expert telling me a certain bottle I want is the real thing and then after i spent my money and have the bottle, then act like most others in the ICSBS community, and hide it only for me to see, or display it in museums to show it off, or AFTER i am dead, my beneficiaries putting it for sale to the highest bidder

BECAUSE I want or would like to know whom, when, where, how..and why

AND I want to alert the new and future collectors on this forum (and whoever is lurking in) that this is what is going on

If i am lucky enough to have some genuine old master bottles, great (I think I have, but that is me, and that is most important, even if i am wrong) but i would rather spend the money on 50 or 100 commericial grade older ones that no one knows why they even exist and who they were made by.  If I am wrong about a master painted bottle I own, I dont mind because I have never and will never pay a half fortune to own one. But that is just me...

Lets face it, the new new new master bottles (X3) sell for the same price that some of the master bottles sell for.  I am interested in what is in between:

WHEN, WHY, WHO. WHERE, HOW, ... between 1915-1950 ----> fake, copy, replica, tribute, genuine... i will be happy to learn it all, and more of it
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« Reply #17 on: April 11, 2011, 06:08:30 am »

Just to add a few more examples that are along the same lines of applied prints as the bottles within the original post here.. Sometimes the prints are applied and then blotches of paint are applied in a very sloppy manner by hand.

We see examples like the ones below ( and above ) in one fasion or another all the time on eBay.. I never see these at a reputable auction.

It is my humble opinion that yes.. The intent is to fraud and present as an actual inside painted bottle.

I do not believe them to be old and or a tribute of any kind..

I have seen these with scenes copied from actual painted bottles. Both old and new.

I don't think of these as copies. More along the lines of a "gimmick" That might sum up the "why". There must be enough room for profit between the process, labor, shipping, etc to make it marketable.

I believe we know the how ( applied prints ). The by whom, when, and where.. I do not have any direct knowledge. Maybe it is safe to say China, very recently ( last week ! ), and a result of cheap labor. The actual process of how the prints are applied is still a bit of a mystery.


 



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« Reply #18 on: April 11, 2011, 07:48:41 am »

Hi Pat
Apologies  ..... I   did indeed  lose the    thread !   Cry
Cheers, Peter  @ HK
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« Reply #19 on: April 11, 2011, 08:03:16 am »

No worries Peter !
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