Jade & Stone | The specialists guide to Chinese antiques

Smuggled out just 4 years ago, a rare Tang Dynasty sarcophagus returns to China

No wonder customs is so difficult when it comes to exporting antique stone these days…..

The return of a smuggled Tang Dynasty (AD 618 – 907) sarcophagus from the United States to China may serve as a good example for international collaboration to curb the rampant pillaging and smuggling of treasures, researchers have said.

The 27-ton stone coffin of Tang empress Wu Huifei (AD 699-737) arrived at the Shaanxi History Museum on Thursday, four years after it was smuggled out of the country.

The sarcophagus is 4 meters long, 2 meters wide and 2 meters high. It features flowers and maiden figures in relief. Robbers stole it from Wu’s tomb in the southern suburbs of Xi’an, capital of Shaanxi province, in 2006.

“It is a rare cultural relic with high scientific, historical and artistic value,” said Liu Daiyun, director of the research department of the Shaanxi provincial archaeological research institute.

Xi’an police found out about the sarcophagus in February 2006 during an investigation over a tomb robbery. They seized a computer containing a number of its pictures in a suspect’s house and local archaeologists soon identified the relic’s origin.

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Woman finds out her father’s jade collection is worth over a million USD.

18th-Century Qianlong Jade Collection from Qing Dynasty

Appraised Value:

$710,000 – $1,070,000

Watch the appraisal video here on the Antiques Roadshow website. Or even better, watch this interview with the owner in North Carolina.

GUEST: My father was in China two different times– I think in the late ’30s and sometime during the ’40s, with the Army, and he was a liaison of some sort. He was just a Kentucky farm boy, but he learned Chinese and he met a Mr. Liang at number ten Jade Street, and that’s pretty much what I remember him always telling me. Mr. Liang would call him and say, “John, I have some pieces you might want to look at.” As children, we heard that some of them had imperial seals, and then I just always have been curious.

APPRAISER: Well, that Mr. Liang must have been a very, very good friend of your father’s, because he led him down the path of great collecting. Generally you see people who purchase things in China at that period of time, and they purchased things that were very, very poor quality. These things are all of very, very fine quality. Did you have any idea about the value on these things?

GUEST: This dragon bowl, as we’ve always called it, we’ve always heard that it may be worth a lot of money, but no, I don’t know the value.

APPRAISER: You start with, basically, the runt of the litter in terms of these groups is that bowl there. And that’s a bowl that’s based on a style from India that they refer to as Mogul style. And it’s Chinese, 18th century. Very, very thin carving, really beautiful, crisp workmanship. This one here is the same style, but only a little more ornate. This is also Mogul style, also 18th century.

GUEST: So 1700s.

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