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Good morning Bill: Thank you for responding to my message and yes, I did mean Bill H. I just typed a message but I think I lost it so here goes again.

I don't want to sell the Flying Tigers memorabilia. I will keep that for my son. I want to sell what I think is jade, ivory, porcelain & wood.

I don't know anything about Asian art. Some kind of dogs (or other animal) seems to be popular in the jade carvings. Some of the porcelain looks to be very old and some looks to be very fine and thin. It is so thin you can see your hand behind it. Did the Chinese make thin porcelain years ago or would this type be newer?

I remember my father saying that he carried one vase on his lap all the way back from China because he thought it was so valuable. I don't know which vase that was or if I still have it. I know at least one vase was broken over the years. I also remember him telling me that once when he was in China he was looking for old porcelain but couldn't find any. He then ran into an old priest who took him down to his basement, showed my father what he had & my father did buy someting from him. Did China have priests?

Last story. My father made a crash landing in China during the war and traded some food rations for 2 rubies. When I turned 21 my father gave me one of the rubies in a ring. At the time I was dating a guy whose father owned a jewelry store. When this jeweler looked at my ring he told me it was a fake ruby. I related this to my father and he told me that was impossible. He had landed in a remote part of China where they had never seen a white man before. I went back to the jeweler and told him this. He then looked at my ring again and keep changing his jewelers loupe for a stronger loupe until he looked up, stunned. He then told me that it was almost a perfect ruby. He said it had one tiny inclusion and offered me $25,000 for it. This was many years ago. Of course I didn't sell it. I still have it and I also now have the second ruby that was set in a necklace for my mother. I know this has nothing to do with my father's Chinese collection, but I think it is an interesting story.

I have been taking pictures of everything. When I finish I'm going to have the pictures put on a cd. I don't know how to post pictures on the internet but I'm sure my son could teach me. After reading some of the posts I am worried. It would be heartbreaking to find out that what my father thought were treasures turned out to be worthless.

Thank you for your time.

Terry

Hello Terry,

The forum has some contributors who are well versed in the things you want to sell. The message board would be the proper spot for posting photos if you're seeking an idea of value. I imagine you might get offers on some things you post here for comment, but I'd keep the auction houses in mind for second opinions. They don't cost anything but your time, and you're under no obligation to sell via them even if they like what you have to offer.

Eggshell porcelains were largely an innovation of the Qing dynasty's Yongzheng period (1723-35) and continued in production through modern times. However, there is a class of paper-thin porcelain that came along circa the end of the dynasty in 1911 and continues to be made primarily for the novelties market. Fine Chinese 18th century eggshell porcelains can be quite dear today, but as you can imagine the stuff don't take well to heavy-handed treatment and is hard to find in good shape.

Before 1949 China had 'priests' both of the foreign missionary type and in the form of monks who led the ritual services of indigenous religions. The missionaries would have been more likely to have possessed valuable porcelain, because it was common for their converted parishioners to make gifts of it in return for favors. Buddhist monks and perhaps those in other local religions as well were proscribed from amassing wealth or symbols of it.

The story of the rubies rings a bell with me. I acquired some myself in Burma around 1984 which are shown here. Not perfect stones, but at least as good as those I've heard of in the crown's of some maharajas, which often weren't cut and polished. I don't have a photo handy of the sapphire, which is a ruby-related corundum gem, but I also acquired a five-carat Ceylonese blue cushion-cut stone at the same time I picked up the rubies. Before I finally got it into the hands of a good US gemologist, I had a couple of opinions from jewelers that it was fake or cooked. The ultimate appraisal ran to five figures in the teens.

If your son has Photoshop or a similar program, he shouldn't have much of a problem sizing the images correctly for use here. No single image or group of images in a single uploading can exceed 99 kilobytes. But you can upload several so long as they accompany separate 'replies' to your original query. A single image of maximum size usually works out (for me on Photoshop) to an image of about 720 X 930 pixels at 72 dpi, with an image quality setting of 5 (which can be adjusted down a bit if need be)

I wish you luck and look forward to contributing as best I can to your queries here in the forum.

Best regards,

Bill H.

Terry,

Some people put decades in study of specific areas of art (say, Song Dynasty ceramics) and still not think they know what they need to know.

I know a Western antiques dealer who grew up very poor and in the 1960s was dazzled by gaudy Chinese and Japanese factory-made export wares for the same reasons that Westerners were amazed by them some 50-75 years before that. He was not happy to find that these items did not have much value to collectors of fine ceramics in more recent time.

A novice could be lucky, but more likely for the untrained to believe a good story.

Experienced dealers, curators and collectors have been fooled, or have not understood what they look at. It is learning experience.

If you are near a branch of famous auction house, you can invite to see the collection if you want to sell. They would be as eager to find a treasure as you.

Good luck
Cal

Hi Terry,
You can also upload your photos to an online photo hosting site like Webshots or Photobucket, both of which offer free online storage of your photos, all that is needed is an email account, a username, and a password.

This allows you to have the photos viewable in a higher resolution format, and you can link the photos to a post by using the Link URL feature when you post a reply.

I find your stories of your Dad's adventures very interesting, as my father was also an aviator during WWII, flying bombers in the European theater.

While I am definitely not interested in buying your items, if you need assistance in setting up an account for your photos online, I would be happy to help. It doesn't take long, and as I said it is free.

Once the photos are up online, if you needed some to be resized according to the size limits for the forum, it wouldn't be a problem to download them and resize them for you.

I would certainly like to see photos of the Flying Tigers items as well, very cool stuff!

Best regards
Gman

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