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Subject:Guangxu
Posted By: beadiste Wed, Jul 22, 2015
I agree, Bill, the Christie's vases have a less sleek, more old-school appearance in the enamel color combinations and less precise wire work.
Kristjana's vase is so well done that at first I thought it might be a contemporary reproduction, such as the Beijing Enamel Company is manufacturing now. I wondered if a contemporary cloisonne artist took note of the Christie's sale, and did some elaborations on the theme.
However,
1) Kristjana's story eliminates any production within the last 15 years
2) The motifs are just too similar, and I couldn't convince myself that a modern copier could so exactly capture the style of them. The Christie's vases seem like a simpler, perhaps earlier or cheaper design, while Kristjana's vase looks as if the artist had more liberty to do a more elaborate, elegant piece. These things often take weeks or months to create, remember.
3) The post-WWI Deco era was so chaotic, I don't see the match between wealthy clientele and highly skilled workshop that Katjana's vase would require. And in 1937, remember, the Japanese invaded and cloisonne production seemed to go to hell in a handbasket.
4) The later Guangxu reign seems to fit better - imperial patronage, fine cloisonne being made. So late Qing seems likeliest to me.
The link shows a well-crafted pair of vases with a Guangxu seal, perhaps useful to compare style and craftsmanship with Katjana's piece. They don't exactly match, which makes the Guangxu attribution more likely, it seems to me. Better contemporary pieces look as if they were rolled off a machine assembly line, and cheaper pieces feature sloppier wirework. Nice works from the 1920s seems to favor the Qianlong character seal - guessing that at the time, so close to the 1908 demise of the Qing dynasty, the Guangxu seal had zero cachet. So the seal on these pieces might well be authentic, as nobody thought it worthwhile to fake.
URL Title :Pair of Guanxu cloisonne vases
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