Around 1983 a boy around nine went to a Chinese restaurant in New Hampshire. The stone lions out front impressed him, as did the chopsticks, zodiac menu, and fascinating, alien way of writing the ABCs. 西湖園=ABC? That boy had a lot to learn.
Eventually he did. Mandarin in high school, Chinese art and history in college. He moved to Taiwan to learn more, lived in Taipei ten years, studied at the National Palace Museum, back and forth to museums on both coasts and eventually to Austin, TX where he now lives with his alert, protective cool stone-lion of a dog:
Dating ancient objects isn’t an exact science, and it’s not uncommon to have estimates with large age ranges, but by carefully examining all factors we can narrow down the time and place of manufacture. If any one factor is suspect, then the whole piece is suspicious and not sold.
Every item I sell has a lifetime authenticity guarantee. Everything is guaranteed to be of the time and place stated. Every piece includes a certificate of authenticity that explains how you can know the object is of the period.
A big part of the enjoyment of collecting ancient Chinese ceramics is learning how to differentiate 20th and 21st century fakes from later-but-still-old replicas from the real deal. The overlap with the world of art forgery is slim but still titillating.
Once you understand how the object was dated, you’ll have the knowledge to understand and trust that the thing really is hundreds, thousands of years old. And that understanding unlocks the magic!
You go from holding a pretty well-made thing that feels like maybe it’s old to holding a very special thing you feel and know was made by people centuries ago. That connection to history is a feeling you can’t get any other way. And it’s based on authenticity. That’s what will drive you to learn to differentiate different clays, and glazes, and shapes and Tang from Song and Ming and Qing.
I love both.
From a Kodak Disc camera when I went to that restaurant to SLR and darkroom B&W in the ’90s, to digital in the early ’00s, then to DSLR, and these days to a mirrorless Sony, I’ve seen some things. I’ve seen them through some very different viewfinders.
Most of the photos here were taken under a single LED, high CRI spotlight, with a white paper backdrop sloping back into dark.
This lighting is dramatic, and it helps the natural colors punch you in the eye. Politely, but brightly, as assertive as a color can be without any post-processing. As true to full daylight as possible. All of these old things have earned the right to be seen in the best possible light.
Tighter apertures give depth of field and an 80-100mm lens from a distance of 3-5 feet keeps proportions and shape as accurate as possible. Short focal lengths are unflattering to shape and proportion; they’re great for landscapes and portraits of your enemies.
The “shape” or outline of an antique Chinese ceramic is often the dealbreaker or dealmaker for age and authenticity. Shorter focal lengths distort these shapes, throwing off many online assessments where cell phone pictures are the norm. Cell pics have a subtle flatness between foreground and background, and shapes are subtly distorted to fill up a rectangle that isn’t dark in the corners (from the tiny circle lens 2-4 mm from the rectangle sensor).
Thanks for reading! If you like colors and contrast and maybe pictures of things that aren’t old I have a bunch of those over here.