Hi Charll
Glad you got the DB at last. Hope you find it useful .
Version II DB will come out in late 2012 / early 2013 and it will have at least 2 x the number of pics and will be 16GB
Please return the USB stick in the fullness of time - if possible with pics ( even badly taken pics) of your collection on it so I can upload to V II ( with due credit to you for your bottle pics , if you so wish - some collectors prefer to remain anonymous)
Re the artists you mention who are not in my DB ,
David Osborne's name is the key .I only recently got to know David Osborne, but I can say is that - IMHO - he is GREAT GUY . He was/ is a real pioneer in promoting Hengshui / WXS junior artists from the early 2000's via his Snuff Bottle Club. His auction system is
unique (
"winner only pays $0.5 more than 2nd highest bidder" ) Now, it seems, David is closing down his residual collection and selling off his best remaining pieces: some by really top class VMIPB artists like Suo Jing and Suo Zhen Hai . I have bought a dozen superb bottles from David this past year - all at very fair prices ( indeed - far below market prices because no-one bid higher than me for the bottles I went for : I focussed only on my preferred theme of Chinese landscapes , with a very few exceptions, in order not to "spoil the field" for other collectors of other themes)
DAVID : if you are reading this I have in ANY way mis-represented you, please forgive me and post a correction.
I think you have really done a great service to the VMIPB field in the past 10 years , and my regret is that I did not discover your website much soonerCHARLL : Back to your 'UFO' Bottles ...
As I understand it, David bought a lot of bottles by junior WXS students in the early/ mid 2000's . Most of these students never went on to "greater fame" so they came and went , although they painted superb bottles in their brief few of years of glory. I myself have several bottles that I bought in WXS's Hengshui Museum/ Shop by artists of whom I have never heard again. So, to put it bluntly , there are many "flash in a pan" VMIPB artists these days.
Therefore I guess that most of the artists you list below were in that category - almost certainly if they were bought via David. With due deference (and reverence) to Bill, I see a small number of artists listed in his website as " flash in the pan" students of some masters in Hengshui . That's my only conclusion , because I cannot find ANY reference to their paintings outside Bill's amazing website ( check all bottles with ONLY the source reference "B" )
And that's also the case with my own collection ( when I finally photograph it all and put it on my DB - you will several artists ONLY with source reference "P")
Generally speaking, any artist name with 3 parts eg " Kang Xian Feng" is almost certainly a real name. But most names with only 2 parts is more likely to be a pen name , and if the FIRST name of the 2 is NOT one of the 300+ Chinese family names then it's CERTAINLY certainly a pen name ( but I cannot see any such obvious pen names in the list you have below)
Typical pen names start with "Yi" = one or " Xiao" = little or "Da" = big
So my best guess is that nearly all the bottles you have listed below fall into this category - certainly of they were bought via David who was only operative from about 2000 onwards
Pat's collection goes back much further in time, so I would expect several non - DB artists in his collection to be in a different era ( pre- 2000) , but still - probably - in the " flash in a pan" category
( I also have a few pre - 2000 Jing school "flash in a pan" artist bottles )
The great thing about collecting VMIPB bottles these days is to spot the REAL up-coming masters before they become famous ... and prohibitively expensive.
I think I hit right so far in two cases : Hu Xiao Ran and Zhang Li Min ( aka "Spiderman" ). In both cases, as soon as I first saw their works I instinctively felt they had true genius - in "Spiderman's" case unsigned and it took me 2 years to track him down.
And my biggest find of all was Song Yi Ming aka " Da Cheng" , my HERO !, , several of whose most amazing landscapes ( never to be repeated) I bought in the mid 2000's , for much less than US$1K , and which now form the backbone of my collection.
I don't a fig what the rest of the world thinks about these three top artists ( but in fact the RoW seems to be fast catching on to their genius - certainly in the case of SYM and HXR) .
I only buy for LOVE, as long as I can afford. Never for investment value.
Cheers Peter