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Not sure what makes people feel like these are fakes, both the larger discs are copies of each other and could have came out of the same tomb. Quality of them is not superior, but without provenance I'd put $125 each on them and let them fly. "Cloud" type of carving on the field of the bi's is very typical for that era and for a grave good- it's not going to be completely finished and smooth and made from the best of jade. Part of what they were going for was sheer mass and volume- if the emperor orders 300, you deliver 300- and these bi's were just one of many in a tomb that were made by a maker who perhaps did 30,000 over the course of their extremely hard lifetime for various family's burials in the area. Then there was his son that carried on his work and... This is perhaps whey other people think they are fake- because you see this same type of discs this size again and again, but that was the kind of people the ancient Chinese were. Over the top. Had so much they took Fort Knox to the grave.
I don't see any reason the jade pig at the bottom wouldn't also be real, the ancient people actually used a variety of stones, many of them not even jade and that don't leave salts over time, but without provenance- that is knowing exactly where it was dug up from and the course it has traveled since then- I'd sell it as a $70-$350 dollar fake that could be real. I find the face on it to be rather unique for a fake, something that the Hongshan often did to show off to one another is have some variation. By looking at the surface wear and scratches underneath a dissecting scope, you may be able to get a better picture of whether or not it is real, but without finding other pieces that match this type of stone and exact carving style in a museum already, its impossible to say for certain.
These Hongshan pieces don't exist by themselves, at the very least it was part of a pair, and most often the creator had a big supply of the same rock and did a number of similar carvings from it. If the tomb that this pig dragon was robbed from is officially excavated- the matching pieces of this set could be found at a museum, but then the Chinese have been cleaning out their museums (check Ebay), so we could find similar pieces show up anywhere that belong to this specific set that was probably owned by a prominent family who had commissioned the very first pieces of art in the world. Just saying.
Tis' a sad travesty to see China's history sold for just pennies everyday while greed and ignorance are the only ones to ever speak up.
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Re: Re: ancient jade? - Ernest Wilhelm - Feb 04, 2016 (09:20 PM)