Asian Arts | Associations | Articles | Exhibitions | Galleries | Message Board

A friend of mine wants me to help him sell his 3 pieces of Chinese antique. These 3 statues date back to the Tang Dynasty in China. As you may know, Tang Dynasty ( 618-907) has more than one thousand years history. There 3 statues include one unicorn, one horse, and one maid of honor individually. They are all pure gold made and they look physically sound. All 3 statues are family owned and passed down from previous generation. Attached are the pictures.

If you are interested in collecting them or you can help us to sell in the auction, please feel free to contact me.

Email: luckyhappyher@yahoo.com
Tel: 626-927-6058
Fax: 866-496-3427

Best Regards
Joanna Zhou

Dear Joanna,

They are no doubt very beautiful pieces! But, the problem your friend is going to face will be that no auction house would accept these items for the following reasons:

The items may be replica.

The items were stolen from imperial grave sites.

Some individual collectors may be interested!

Randy Li

Hi Joanna,

If those statues were real they are of Imperial class as gold was exclusively reserved for Imperial families during the Tang period.

And these are not of Imperial standard. Way too grossly executed, unrefined.

Beside, the horse is not of Tang dy style,
as for a unicorne with a rat tail???? Makes me laugh.

They might be gold, or gold plated, but that's about it. More likely made yesterday + some fairy tales to made you believe they are old.

Maybe your friend should try someone else to help him sell these fakes.
Anyway,wrong place here to convince people those are real.

Have a nice day.
Pierre.

Your comments on the gold statues are insulting and immature. Any novice or experienced collector should be able to post photos and questions without suffering the embarassment of snickering, school-yard comments.

I suggest you either grow up or start your own Muppet forum.

Agree with you: every novice or experienced collector etc...

But we are not dealing with a collector here!!!
No questions were asked either. (Please read properly)

Rather an unscrupulous seller, or unaware friend of a seller, trying to take advantage of asianart to sell fake items.

Let this happen a few times and in a week you will have hundreds of similar sales proposals from China / Hong Kong / Taiwan etc...Remember it's free here, no need to pay a few $ to post your items.

Do you think we should encourage this kind of practice?

Personally, I think this site should remain clean of ripp off merchant.

Pierre,

I agree with you to the point that it is possible this posting was from a dealer. Not to many people leave their phone & fax numbers without a reason. But I believe even you have posted your site of wares here and on the forum.

Like Roger, I feel insulting and ridiculing of a posting is not necessary. It's enlightening to all to better grasp and understand objective criticism of different art. But being to demeaning may also scare away legitimate people with interesting posts.

I do appreciate points which you present on different items, even if I may not be in total agreement, because it gives me the chance to look at it through different eyes.


Jim

Hello Jim,

I'm sorry if my comments were interpreted as an intention of insulting the person who posted those objects. It was, and is not the case.

That those 3 objects are an insult to the extremely high level of craftmanship in gold work from the Tang dynasty, yes, I think they are.

But what interest me in your comment is, and I quote: "even if I may not be in total agreement"

So please, I would be greatfull if you could explain your point of view regarding those 3 pieces, I'm not infaillible.

- Gold and silver objects were symbols of high rank, exclusively reserved for the royal households and officials of the top three ranks.
Therefore one can expect high degree of craftmanship. Specially when we know that Tang gold and silver pieces were made in the Imperial workshop.

The Horse:
No finesse overall and no finesse in the details.
A rather dull position + way too agressive mouth.
Also, the horse's tail is not of style of that period.

The Fat Lady:( No insult intended ;)
Again, no finesse overall and no finesse in the details.
To me it looks like she is definitely wearing a hat.
I have not yet seen a Tang fat lady wearing a hat. They normally are represented with the particular hair style of that period, decorated with ruban, hair pins etc...

The Unicorn:
Same as above regarding the overall look.
Supposed to be a horse with one horn, but could also be some less attrative/noble animal with 1 or 3 horns, as per Chinese representation since the BC dynasties.
But a mouse or rat tail, I have not seen before either.
This is a brief study of those objects, without having to go into an analysis of the material and corosions and without even speak about the probability rate of finding such pieces, provenance etc...

Attached, some real Tang gold for comparaison.

Have a nice day,
Pierre.

Pierre,

Very nice examples of antique gold! Are they yours? and what did you say your address was?

No my statement "even if I may not be in total agreement", was not in regards to Joanna Zhou's pieces. I was referring to some of your other posts by other members of the forum.

Without close up detailed pictures, I could not be objective enough. However one thing that bothered me from a distance was that they did not appear to be antique gold or the coloration lacks the proper patina (oxidation).
Like your "greyhound dragons" example, those peices would also be handled with gloved hands and not on a table top.

Later!
Jim

Hi Jim,

Unfortunately, the first 2 example are not mine. They are from Chinese museum.
The 3rd one is a bowl that I own.
My address? I live part time in Belgium and part time in China.
Here some more Tang gold.
One dragon, from the museum, and another photo of my bowl.
have a nice day,
Pierre.

Asian Arts | Associations | Articles | Exhibitions | Galleries | Message Board