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Fresh Asian Antiques @ Moorabool

Chinese & Japanese Antiques at Moorabool Antiques, Geelong

Welcome to the first of a series of Asian Specials.
We’re amazed at the Asian items that turn up in Australia. From Ming Bronzes to Japanese Cloisonné, there’s a wealth of fine Chinese, Japanese, Korean & other South-East Asian works to find. This is due to two things; we’re close to Asia, and Australians are great travellers. Naturally, they bring things back with them!

Chinese & Japanese Cloisonné at Moorabool Antiques, Geelong
Chinese & Japanese Cloisonné at Moorabool Antiques, Geelong

This week, we have a group of Japanese & Chinese Cloisonné – including a remarkable piece, an oversize Japanese vase notable for the pair of ferocious dragons dramatically writhing their way around the vase. This vase is giant – 61cm high! – and dates to the later 19th century. The bright enamel colours and glossy black background make it a dramatic display piece.

Antique Japanese CloisonnéDragon Vase
Dramatic Japanese Dragon…..
Antique Japanese Cloisonné Quail
Antique Japanese Cloisonné Quail




On the opposite extreme is a tiny – fits in the palm of your hand, so actually life-size – quail in cloisonné, also Japanese & super cute!

Cantonese Enamel dish set c.1900
Cantonese Enamel dish set c.1900
Japanese Horn dragonfly sculpture, Meiji Period
Life-size Japanese Horn dragonfly sculpture, Meiji Period 19th century

There’s also a selection of interesting Shipwreck items. We’re always looking for these, as they have the allure of being under the sea for hundred of years – and are therefore ‘guaranteed’ to be authentic. Compare this to items that just turn up out of nowhere without a rock-solid provenance like a shipwreck: they’re much harder to be certain about authenticity. We have a selection of pieces & shards from various known & dated shipwrecks as our pieces for direct comparison & learning.

Antique Chinese Ivory Children

Coming Soon!

Delightful band of Chinese Musical Children, late Qing Dynasty

Fresh Asian Stock

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Asian Special – Chinese Ceramics

Welcome to our 2022 Special Gallery of Fresh Chinese items.

We’ve always stocked a good selection of Chinese items, and at present, we have a large number of items to share.

Of particular note below are the Ming Dynasty blue & white pieces. Part of a collection we are selling, the highlight is perhaps the Jiajing period dish, 500 years old and complete with a mark. This 4-character mark misses the important part – the name of the Emperor during the period it was made – but is also found on a very similar example in the British Museum. They have linked it to an example that has the complete mark, revealing it to be made in the time of Emperor Jiajing, who reigned 1522-66.


We have some quality Chinese Hardwood furniture to offer. A pair of cabinets make excellent display cases for any collector of Asian Antiques, and are available as a single or the pair. The long low table has handy compartments beneath, and is an excellent shallow size for small spaces, such as a hallway.

Below are some lovely examples of the Tang & Ming dynasty pottery models. These items were buried as offerings, to ensure the deceased had a life of luxury in the afterlife. They are accurate models of everyday items, and allow us to vividly imagine everyday life in their time: in this respect, they indeed meet their purpose by bringing the past to life!


Monotone Chinese ceramics are beautiful in their simplicity, relying on the colour and form rather than decoration.


Blue and White porcelains have been the most popular Chinese Ceramics in Europe since the Ming Dynasty, and the same aesthetic is still popular today. The following examples are all Ming, dating from 500-


Vast amounts of Chinese Porcelain was made purely as Export Wares in China, with England, Europe, and America as the main destination. The shapes reflect this, as they are usually European rather than traditional Chinese.


Chinese Art

Works on paper – or ‘pith’, the thinly-shaved core of a fast-growing tropical plant – are beautiful, rare survivors. The larger pieces are on linen, and were intended as ‘scrolls’, to be brought out and displayed when needed. The large example with the multi-figures is a family tree, an ‘Ancestor Scroll’ set in the interior of their house.


More Chinese Items

Looking for more Chinese Art & Antiques? We have a large number of quality Chinese pieces entering stock – see them all together in this gallery.

More being catalogued to add, drop back for more!

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Antiquities – Recent Additions

Hoi An Shipwreck Ceramics 1480
Antiquities
Antiquities – thousands of years, and surprisingly inexpensive!

We go back to the beginning in this stock release of Antiquities.
We’ve stocked Antiquities at Moorabool for many decades, beginning in the 1990’s when a young Paul Rosenberg studied the subject at University. When he lived in London and studied at Christies, he discovered the amazing world of the Antiquities Trade in London. Through good fortune, he befriended an elderly dealer who took him under her wing and taught him the ropes. This was a time when the Middle-East was opening up, and masses of items were flooding into Europe: one of the first lessons was to avoid such sources!
Firstly, they were illegal; the items had been ripped out of the ground and sold without provenance. The funds were flowing back to undesirable causes….
At the same time, there were workshops making ancient artifacts: many were very convincing, with even the large dealers being caught out by cunning fakery.
The best way to ensure authenticity, he was taught, was to find pieces from old collections. The thing about fakes is that they were pretty bad in historical times: there was not much understanding about technique and style, and things such as materials used and techniques of construction were not ‘faked’ – the fakers used materials at hand, and modern tools & techniques. They often look pretty bad when put alongside a genuine piece.
This all changed in the latter 20th century: publications explaining how to tell a genuine item – and then the internet – meant there was a resource for fakers to learn how to fool the experts. This is particularly apparent in the world of Chinese Antiquities.
Moorabool follows these lessons today – sourcing pieces from old collections when possible – and Melbourners of the past were great collectors of Antiquities.

Today’s Fresh Stock release is a fine selection of interesting ancient artifacts.
All Guaranteed Genuine – we provide a certificate with each, and they prove to be very popular gifts.

Their fascination is universal, and the age alone astounds young & old: to hold one of these pieces is to hold a small part of our humanity. It’s where we all came from, and really puts the present into context.
Enjoy!

Roman Bronze Mirror

Mirrors on the Ancient World

The discovery of Bronze working gave rise to the introduction of the first mirrors: the shine of newly spelted bronze allowed the onlooker to see their image reflected, and so it was only natural that flat bronze surfaces were polished for that purpose. Egyptian mirrors emerged 6,000 years ago, and Chinese bronze workers independently developed very similar products shortly after. The Greeks followed, and then the Romans. During their empire, they were made all over Europe, and the example we have dates to this period, 2nd-1st century BC. As the Roman Empire faded into the so-called ‘Dark Ages’, mirror technology was forgotten in Europe – but never in China, and the Middle East. Their re-emergence in Europe coincides with the expansion of the ‘Viking’ trading networks across the continent, and their interactions with the Middle East. Mirrors appear again in the early Medieval period in Northern Europe, 9th-10th centuries AD. A topic for another blog!
The mirror in today’s Fresh is from the Roman period, dating to the first few centuries BC.

Chinese Antiquities

As you will notice, we have a good stock of early Chinese pieces.
These were purchased by Paul, mostly in Hong Kong, in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. At that time, there was a vast amount being uncovered in China, due in no small part to the rapid investment by the government in infrastructure: the network of roads, railways, and entire new cities throughout the regions that had 5,000 years of history just beneath the soil led to the inevitable destruction of a vast number of archaeological sites.

Han Dynasty Mill, 206BC-221AD
Han Dynasty pottery model of a Mill, 206BC-221AD

Case point: the Three Gorges Dam, the largest project of its kind ever undertaken, began construction in 1994. It flooded a very important part of the country, the river valleys where Chinese civilization had taken root from the Neolithic period 6,000 years ago through to the present. Over 2,000 modern-day towns and villages were destroyed, with the water level rising 91 meters to create a lake 600km long…. the quoted number of archaeological sites destroyed by this is 1,300, but this is unverifiable, and depends on the definition of ‘site’: an area as well populated for so many thousands of years would have been saturated with cultural remains. Some buildings were relocated, but the vast majority was left to the floodwaters – or recovered & sold. This process repeated itself all over China as their market capitalism experiment took root: the vast number of factories alone that were constructed, and the towns to house their workers, required a huge amount of land, which was often full of cultural artifacts. The scale of it meant that while archaeologists were involved with some – and hopefully the most important – recoveries, it was the developers and contractors who were responsible for collecting items from a project. These items were then sold, and made their way to the West.

Tang Dynasty Figures, 8th century AD
Tang Dynasty pottery Figures, 8th century AD


This all changed by the end of the decade. China introduced strict laws, and Chinese Culture – which had been despised by the previous mindset of the ‘cultural revolution’ (responsible for the destruction of vast amounts of Chinese Art & Artifacts) – suddenly became a focus. The export of such items was halted, and Hong Kong suddenly became bare of Chinese Antiquities…
That is, until the fakers got to work. With the original Chinese source ceasing, the gap in the market became lucrative for brand-new antiquities. Ironically, many of these are probably made in China, and perfectly legitimately exported as copies. Unfortunately, they are often sold as original in the West; to see examples of this you have to look no further than the popular online sales platforms, awash in recent copies and impossible to tell from a photo in most cases.
We have a stash of good original pieces, put aside over 20 years ago and only recently brought out to be catalogued.
The best of these pieces is the duck below: he had a chipped beak, so had not been offered for sale – now his beak is fixed, he’s a handsome, large rarity, straight out of a Chinese farmyard 2,000 years ago.

Han Dynasty Tomb Model - Goose
Han Dynasty Model Duck (or Goose?), 206BC-221AD

Hoi An Shipwreck Ceramics

Back in the early 2000’s, a sensational shipwreck recovery hit the market. Under the sea for 500 years, these desirable little pieces of Annomese – meaning Vietnamese – ceramics are actually not even ‘second hand’ – they didn’t make it to their destination when originally made!
They were produced at Chu Dau, near Hanoi, where an excavated kiln site of the period matches the shipwreck finds exactly.  They were, of course, entirely hand-painted, and it is the calligraphic style of this brushwork that attracts the eye of the collector. They come from the ‘Golden Age’ of the Annamese ceramics tradition, a short period at the end of the 15th century when opportunity favoured the Vietnamese potters. China, with its immense trade network, had collapsed into civil war, and overseas trade was shut down for a period by decree of the Emperor.
Vietnam, with many Chinese traders & potters, already in place, was in the perfect position to take on this lucrative production & trade, with South-East Asia and the rich kingdoms of present-day Indonesia being the markets where there was high demand for ceramics. It is no coincidence therefore that they borrow heavily on Chinese design – and yet there is a distinct individuality to the products.

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A Ming Dynasty Dragon roof tile, 16th – 17th century

Ming Rooftop tile Dragon

Ming Dynasty Roof Tile

A fresh item to Moorabool is this quirky Ming Dynasty roof tile figure. As the name suggests, these were part of the roof decoration on Chinese buildings.

Ming Dynasty Roof Tile
Ming Dynasty Roof Tile

 

Many different ‘characters’ appear as roof tile figures, each with a symbolic purpose. Our Dragon is actually a water dragon, and he would have been the chief character in a whole line of little figures down the crest of the roof junction. He was given this position due to his ‘wet’ nature: he would ensure protection from fire for the wooden building beneath.

Ming Dynasty Roof Tile
Ming Dynasty Roof Tiles at Beijing’s Forbidden City

Ming Dynasty Roof Tile
A similar Dragon, Forbidden City

 

 

Ming Dynasty Roof Tile

A very familiar installation of a similar dragon is in the Forbidden City in Beijing. On the roof of the Hall of Supreme Harmony (circa 1406) you will see 10 small figures (the more figures, the more important the building) – and at their top, a larger dragon – complete with the same toothy grin as our example. He’s done a good job as fire warden, protecting the structure for the past 400 years…. Scattered around the acres of other buildings in the complex are numerous other examples of the same.

Forbidden City Rooftop Dragon
Forbidden City Rooftop Dragon

What’s interesting are their intact  ‘horns’, missing from ours. Examine our head and you will see the two holes they were once inserted into.

Another pair reside in the Victoria & Albert Museum, SouthKensington (London). Their pair entered the collection in 1912, and could well be from the same building as ours – all the moulded details are identical, as is the glaze, the only differences being due to the inscribing of details.

One of a pair in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London
One of a pair in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London

 

 

See our toothy character here >>

 

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A Valentines Curio from the South Seas….

The ‘back-story’ behind some pieces can lead you in all sorts of unexpected directions. This was the case with a lovely little Worcester milk jug, known as a ‘sparrow beak’ due to its triangular spout.

A Worcester sparrow beak jug, Valentine pattern, circa 1760
A Worcester sparrow beak jug, Valentine pattern, circa 1760

Painted in colours with a rather niave pattern, it is known as the ‘Valentine’ pattern due to the obvious depiction of kissing doves on cupids bow, and the two hearts on the altar of love. Looking deeper, we find a tale that leads to one of the remarkable stories of exploration in the mid-18th century.

A Worcester sparrow beak jug, Valentine pattern, circa 1760
A Worcester sparrow beak jug, Valentine pattern, circa 1760

 

Its origins are in a Chinese Export pattern, and was produced at Worcester in the 1750’s and early 60’s. It appears on a range of Chinese Export wares just prior to 1750. The Chinese artists got the design from a special commission, which is well documented: it was designed by Lieutenant Piercy Brett for Commodore Anson, during their voyage around the world, which lasted 1740-44. Anton set off with 8 ships to disrupt the Spanish in their South American colonies, but things did not go well. He succeeded only at great cost – of 1,854 men setting out, only 188 were to return.

Born in Staffordshire in 1697, he is notable as the first British officer to visit mainland China.   Previous visitors had only been allowed at the British trade ‘factory’ in Canton. While at the British factory in Canton that he put in his order for his ‘Valentine’ service – was he thinking of impressing someone back home on his return? It is said the 206 piece service was a reward by the Chinese Merchants Guild at Canton for his quick action in using his crew to extinguish a devastating fire that was spreading through the foreign factories zone. It was this quick action that also allowed him  an audience with the local officials, who in reality were probably very happy to see him sail away: his ship bristled with cannon, and he was letting them off daily as a show of force – the Chinese had nothing to compare with a British man-of-war at that time.

 

1stLordAnsonSMALLThe Chinese probably thought he was a pirate looking for a base, and in a way he was. He came up with a scheme to capture a Spanish treasure ship he had intelligence about, and set a trap for it as it sailed from Mexico to the Phillipines in 1743. This ‘Manila Galleon’ was the Nuestra Señora de Covadonga, and it held more than one million pieces-of-eight, a vast amount of money at the time. This prize meant the redemption of his otherwise disastrous voyage, the wealth being very welcome back in England. His share of the loot set him & his family up for life.

 

 

A Worcester sparrow beak jug, Valentine pattern, circa 1760
A Worcester sparrow beak jug, Valentine pattern, circa 1760

A fascinating feature of the pattern is the slightly bizarre tree, with an entwined vine. This is in fact an impression of the encounter with the Polynesian ‘wonder food’, Breadfruit, encountered as Anson and his surviving crew members sheltered on the small Pacific island of Saipan in 1742. A sketch from this encounter was used in the original Chinese commission design; many copies later and it has emerged as something most definitely unique – although nothing like a breadfruit tree!

His ‘success’ on his voyage soon led to promotion  – in 1745 he was promoted to Rear Admiral. He almost immediately resigned the position when Admiralty refused to confirm Anson’s promotion of his First Lieutenant, Piercy Brett, to rank of Captain while on the voyage. A few months later, and a change of Admiralty board brought about the acknowledgement of Captain Brett. He was, of course, the one commissioned to design the Valentines service for his Captain.

 

Promoted yet again, he becomes Vice Admiral and commander of the Chanel Fleet in 1746; he was raised to the Peerage in 1747 as Lord Anson; in 1761 he is promoted to Admiral of the Fleet.

 

He married in 1758 to Lady Elizabeth Yorke; was this the lady of whom Anson was thinking when he had the service commissioned? His wife was related to his mother through marriage, so they would certainly have been aware of each other before his great adventure in China and around the world. Perhaps she enjoyed using it in the years before they were married; in any case, it was a short marriage as the Admiral sickened, and died in 1762.

 

This interesting piece of Dr Wall Worcester will be a part of our 2015 Exhibition – and Sale – to be held later in March.

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Exhibition Action

Exhibition Action!

Moorabool is getting ready for an amazing 2015, begining with our ‘Recent Acquisitions’ Exhibition. With over 500 fresh items, this is an event not to miss.

Over the next few weeks, we will post a number of ‘previews’ of special items on this page – starting with the enamel snuff box shown above.

Perfectly fitting in to your hand, it is a scallop sell form; what makes it exceptional is that rather than the usual English or French enamel we are used to seeing, this is a rare Chinese piece from circa 1760.

Many more special items to be featured, remember to drop back – or join up to our email list.