The specialist guide to Asian antiques and exotic home decor from the far east.

Note: All images are clickable.
During our treks and travels, we come across all sorts of rare, unusual and interesting things. Like this 300 year old temple table we stumbled across this past summer. Or this Chinese ancestor painting which eventually wound up permanently wall-mounted in a friends living room. But this cache of Han Dynasty earthenware, [...]

[Read more →]

Another super quick post but a link worth including here: http://www.oxfordauthentication.com/
One thing to be aware of is that thermoluminescence testing works only with fired items, in other words items like porcelain, earthenware or bronze. If you don’t know what thermoluminescence testing is have a quick read of the snippet below from their website:

Thermoluminescence
A [...]

[Read more →]

(This is a section from a previous post which I think is worth separating out here, since I am asked this question quite a lot).
Where can I find more detailed information on Chinese porcelain, pottery and ceramics?
Chinese porcelain, Oriental ceramics and Japanese porcelain and pottery are all unique entire subjects of their own [...]

[Read more →]

I recently was looked over a friends personal collection of Chinese porcelain wares, which I have been meaning to post photos and descriptions of here for quite some time. For now, I have included a slide show below which pulls the images from ACF’s page on Flickr.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
The hi-resolution images can be viewed [...]

[Read more →]

 
Nice little article here which explains what Cloisonné is, (Cloisonné is a form of enamelware) which a surprising number of people are unfamiliar with. Another article on the The Antique Marks Blog entitled “Antique Cloisonne Ware – Collectible? Popular? Profitable?” also gives a bit of the history associate with Chinese cloisonne and also Russian cloisonne.
I [...]

[Read more →]

Porcelain garden stools continue to remain extremely popular. They seem to add a nice touch to either the living room or the garden which makes them quite versatile. And there is quite a lot of variety in styles. Which may explain why they are selling so well out on the web. They were [...]

[Read more →]

Here’s a nice post on another blog that I happened to stumble upon today:

Rose Medallion Porcelain – An Antique Chinese Import

Very informative overview of how to recognize and collect 19th and 20th century rose-medallion china. While not necessarily Chinese porcelain, he also has a nice explanation of what Flow Blue China is.

[Read more →]

Probably one of the smallest, yet most sought items in Chinese antiques is called the snuff bottle. Snuff bottles were used by the Chinese during the Qing Dynasty to contain powdered tobacco. During the mid- to late-16th century the use of snuff and snuff bottles spread through the upper class, and by [...]

[Read more →]

Another excellent youtube find.
[http://youtube.com/watch?v=742wDih0ySI]

[Read more →]

There are some good youtube posting on porcelain and ceramics, starting out with this interesting eight minute long academic video overview of the history of Asian ceramics put out by the “Minneapolis Institute of Arts.“
“Ceramic production in Asia dates back many thousands of years. The Chinese have always been regarded as the undisputed masters of [...]

[Read more →]

Here is an excerpt from an interesting article I found on yahoo about Hong Kong’s Hollywood road:
“On Hollywood Road, Hong Kong’s famed strip of art and antique outlets, the shopfronts provide a veritable tour of Chinese and Asian history, selling everything from Tibetan temple carpets and centuries-old Chinese wedding cabinets to giant Cambodian and Burmese [...]

[Read more →]

This is yet another interesting youtube find, and this particular one deals with the making of Tang dynasty style tri-colored glazed pottery figurines. Its actually quite good – showing you the entire process from rolling out the initial clay to the sculpting of the figurine.

Here is a snippet from their youtube posting:
Tang Tri-color ware was [...]

[Read more →]

We don’t normally deal in extremely high-end pieces but nevertheless this video I stumpled upon on youtube is quite interesting if you want to see real Chinese porcelains. It seems this was taken at Southerbys
If the embedded version does not work, then try this direct link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0hK34uG_yA

[Read more →]