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Hi

This pair of seals has been with our family at least since our great grandfather and we are wondering if this is real or not.

Thanks

Charles

The carving is precise, and so is the writing. I would think that we are looking at a Jade (Nephrite) carving! A specific gravity will easily verify this.
Ernest

The seal is excellent. It reads "Seventy year old Son of Heaven's treasure."

I have only read part of the inscription but it appears to be connected with the QianLong emperor. More reading will explain more.

I will post some more close ups of the seal.

Hi Ernest

As per instruction from our meeting at your shop, here are the closeups. Thanks for your looking at the pair and your great comments

I really have to see both together!
Ernest

I have posted the photos on the web

URL Title :Seals

Thanks for the additional photos. While on the basis of the base of the seal (a photo in your earlier post) I too thought the seal was of good quality, these photos suggest to me that it can't possibly be imperial as it is attempting to be, for three reasons: 1. no Qianlong seal was this large; the largest one I know of was probably a bit more than one quarter of the size of this seal. 2. the carving of the dragons atop the seal is too crude to be considered fit for the emperor. for just one example, the line showing the underside of the dragon's whiskers or whatever they are bisects the dragon's nostril. 3. the carved inscription on the side of the seal is also too crude for an imperial object. for example, the characters are not well aligned in their columns, the individual strokes of each character are not completely or well formed, and the two seals at the end are poorly rendered. sorry to be so negative, but you've illustrated the value of good quality photography.

sorry, i should have been clearer: both the vertical crowding of characters and their horizontal alignment are not of imperial quality. although calligraphy with a brush on paper or silk could and did vary in the size and number of characters per line and their spacing, on ceramics and other objects of art, inscriptions almost always followed a grid-like pattern of regular spacing that is not the case here. finally, the calligraphic style does not match with what we know of Qianlong era inscriptions on art objects.

These are in the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, on display through October 2011 or so. Look familiar?

Hi

Yes, I had an appraiser look at our seals back in 2010 and she has commented the seals you mentioned. She noted that many seals were created for the Emperor at that time and many are quite similar. She compared the writings, the style and carvings with our set and felt that our set of high quality. As you can see, we are by no means experts and rely on the likes of experts such as you and Ernest.

We did a lot of research on this appraiser and she's highly accredited having spent her academic career at Princeton University and Northwestern University and was involved in an archaelogical dig in China some 15 years ago.

In addition, we were referred by an agent in China to the curator at AGGV in Victoria, BC. We went to see him and he had a chance to examine our pieces and were quite impressed with the quality of the jade, style and carving as well. The curator spent many years in Asian art (teaching and research). He suggested I contact the National Museum in Taipei but couldn't offer any names as he's semi-retired now and his contacts were from over 20 years ago.

Thanks for your comments.

The picture posted by "rat" shows material which could very well be BC (Canada) Nephrite. The Jade of your carvings is far superior to this one.
Ernest

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