Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 1611 What is the status of a top collector?

Especially during the thirty years from Yuanfeng of Emperor Shenzong to Chongning of Emperor Huizong, Yaozhou Kiln produced tribute porcelain for the imperial court. Its extraordinary porcelain-making skills and free and lively style had a great influence on kilns in various places at that time and were widely promoted, thus forming a vast Yaozhou Kiln system from north to south.

The Yaozhou kiln system is centered in Huangbao Town, including Chenlu Town, Lidi Town, Shangdian Town and Yuhua Palace kilns. It is one of the main production areas of folk celadon in northern China during the Song Dynasty.

As the craft spread, it later included many kilns such as Henan Yiyang Kiln, Baofeng Kiln, Xin'an Chengguan Kiln, Guangdong Xicun Kiln, Guangxi Yongfu Kiln, and Neixiang Dayaodian Kiln.

The products of each kiln are similar to those of Tongchuan Kiln, with only slight differences in body quality and glaze color due to differences in raw materials used.

An Siyuan's collection is mainly composed of celadon from the late Song Dynasty. The body is thin and firm, the glaze is smooth and even, the color is green and translucent, and it is very elegant. It is decorated with carvings and prints, with a rigorous and full structure and free and smooth lines. The patterns are mostly all over the inside and outside of the vessels, with a wide variety of patterns, including peony, chrysanthemum, lotus, fish, duck, dragon and phoenix, etc. The style is rough and healthy, vivid and natural. The shapes include bowls, plates, bottles, jars, pots, incense burners, incense burners, cup holders, jugs, bowls, etc.

Its main feature is that the patterns are carved very clearly, with the character traits of northerners. There is a historical saying about it, called "every cut makes its way into the mud."

This feature is particularly evident in the three top-quality Yaozhou kiln porcelains collected by An Siyuan - the Taishi and Shaoshi cover knobs, the green-glazed lion statue ornaments, and the green-glazed Yaohuang Temple offering statues.

These three porcelain sculptures are lifelike, vigorous and powerful, and extremely rare among all Yaozhou kiln porcelains. Zhou Zhi inquired and found out that they were obtained by An Siyuan while he was traveling back and forth between Shaanxi and Shaanxi in the 1970s and 1980s to collect Shi Lu's paintings.

Among them, the lion ornaments are the most popular, with bulging eyes, flaring nostrils, bared fangs and straight neck, which seem to be superior in terms of craftsmanship.

Moreover, the fur on the back of the lion's head, the collar around its neck, the raised tail, the powerful claws and the distinct toe bones are all meticulously crafted to an extreme degree, and are the only ones to be seen in surviving works from the Yaozhou Kiln.

This lion was originally a component of a temple building. An Siyuan specially gave it a rosewood base and turned it into a decoration.

After Zhou Zhi got his hands on it, he felt that the size was quite overwhelming; the light gray body with fine texture, and the "ginger yellow glaze" spots revealed where the glaze was thin or shrunken, all indicated that it was from Huangbao Town, Tongchuan during the Song Dynasty.

This time, An Siyuan decided to keep only three porcelain sculptures, as well as a few authentic pieces, including a green-glazed handle-back reflux pot and a green-glazed carved peony-patterned vase, and the rest would be eliminated from the auction.

Zhou Zhi and An Siyuan do have a lot in common in their tastes in collecting, except that one is a Pixiu who only takes in but never gives out, and the other is a duck who eats and poops at the same time.

For example, calligraphy and inscriptions on stone tablets. Although Zhou Zhi did not have many collections, his attainments were much higher than An Siyuan. He could even be called a calligrapher. He learned calligraphy from Liu Gongquan, Huang Tingjian and Wen Zhengming, and also learned the skills from inscriptions on stone tablets. In the past two years, he has learned from Grandpa Qi and is no longer a layman in the study of inscriptions and calligraphy.

For example, Zhou Zhi has collected quite a few works by famous modern and contemporary calligraphy and painting masters. He also has a series of his own, the Shu Painters Series.

Shi Lu was also among them, but what made Zhou Zhi most proud was that he had completed Zhang Daqian's system, from the most common maid's words, antique landscape paintings, Dunhuang imitations of Buddha paintings, animal paintings, to the most difficult to obtain small splash-color landscapes and large splash-color landscapes, all of which were finally completed before the New Year.

There are also calligraphy works such as couplets and letters by modern celebrities, but their historical and cultural value is now greater than their market value.

In terms of porcelain, Zhouzhi started relatively late, but it has also formed several systems. The most important one is of course the five official kiln porcelains of the Song Dynasty, but this is a bit vague, with only one or two pieces of each. Among them, the Jun kiln is small in size and can only be dated to the Jin Dynasty at most. The second is the unpopular Qiong kiln system. This one occupies a geographical advantage and has collected a lot, but its scientific research value is still far higher than its market value.

The third is the Song Dynasty Hutian Kiln system, which is the earliest collection system formed in Zhouzhi. However, the items collected are numerous but not refined, and only a few batches are representative. Those that are not representative were directly eliminated to Shudu Arts and Crafts after Zhouzhi's vision improved.

The fourth is the low value area, including Yuan and Ming blue and white porcelain, especially the blank period and Chongzhen blue and white porcelain. Zhouzhi has collected a very complete system.

The fifth one is the monochrome porcelain series from the Qing Dynasty, including kiln-changed glazes such as the three generations of Jun kiln glaze. This was also a bargain picked up during the period when the value was low, but a large portion of these beautiful little gadgets were taken up by my mother.

The biggest leak is the modern and contemporary porcelain masterpieces such as Hongxian porcelain, Mao porcelain, 5060 porcelain, and Zhushan Eight Friends porcelain panel paintings.

Except for the first two things, the rest are still in a low point until now, but Zhou Zhi is still smiling from ear to ear while collecting them.

Furniture is also a large collection system of Zhou Zhi, but he did not put any effort in this aspect, and most of it came from Mr. Wang’s collection.

As for the rest of the messy collections, although they are extremely valuable, for a top collector, it is far less impressive than being able to develop a "system".

Or to put it the other way around, if you don’t have a systematic top collection, you won’t become a top collector recognized by the world.

In addition to these systems, An Siyuan's miscellaneous collections are also numerous, including various porcelains and bronzes from various periods of ancient China, which can be found in these twenty or so rooms.

It just so happened that the two had great similarities in their collection tastes and systems, so Zhou Zhi and An Siyuan, one old and one young, had no shortage of topics to talk about. Even when Zhou Zhi was counting and identifying the collections, An Siyuan was sitting on a small coffee table not far away, smoking a pipe and drinking coffee and chatting with him. Later, even interviews and meetings with guests were conducted in the same room, allowing Zhou Zhi to witness the style of many big shots.

Seven days later, the restoration tools and materials Zhou Zhi needed finally arrived. He also sorted out the catalog, determined the grades, and wrote a brief introduction to An Siyuan's auction collection, and entered the stage of shooting and producing the album.

The auction is hosted by China Guardian Auctions, and a total of 257 paintings by modern and contemporary painters, 126 pieces of porcelain, and 233 pieces of bronze, jade, lacquerware, stoneware and other miscellaneous stationery will be sold.

It is almost impossible for a world-class auction house like China Guardian, which has many clients, to sell so many collections at one time. Therefore, at Zhou Zhi's suggestion, the auction was divided into four sessions, namely the Spring Equinox, Summer Solstice, Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice among the 24 Chinese solar terms. Zhou Zhi also wrote the theme for the auction house - "The Brocade Zither Recalls the Passing Years·The Sequence of Spring Equinoxes (Summer Solstice, Autumn Equinox, Winter Solstice)·Auction of the An Siyuan Collection".

Then, whether it was calligraphy and painting, porcelain or miscellaneous items, all the items were tried to fit the seasonal theme as much as possible. This gave the auction more classic connotations of oriental culture. Both China Guardian and An Siyuan liked this tone very much, and the deal was settled.

Later, An Siyuan discovered that Zhou Zhi was not even a layman in photography, so he let him observe the shooting scene, and Zhou Zhi learned a lot.

Of course, he couldn't give up the work at hand. In addition to observing the filming, he also had to communicate with the team sent by China Guardian about the copy. Although the foreigners were very professional, Zhou Zhi found that there were errors in the translation of many proper nouns and even in the categories identified.