The Flowers here are flower pots with plants, each pot different one from the other. Continuing the one color look, they are all blue with only the Chinese characters painted in green and red. The designs on the pots include mountains, seen on Green 2, and some diaper patterns on Red 1, 3 and 4. The flowers include a lotus seedpod on green 4, (a lotus symbolizes purity, and the seedpod fecundity, according to Patricia Bjaaland Welch).
The use of the single color on the tiles continues to the Dragons and Winds.
The Dragons are like those normally seen in some of the old bone and bamboo sets, as well as some bakelite ones. The presence of the P for Po (blank) is there to differentiate the front from the back of the tile. When White Dragons were made of bone and bamboo, it was easy to tell the front from the back of the tile, but when made of plastic, people could not tell the front of the blank White Dragon from the back. (When sets were first made of plastic, manufacturers did not think that they needed to mark the White Dragon. You can see how people would have a problem knowing front from back as you can see between the White Dragon and the blank back of a tile to the right of it. The companies soon demarcated the White Dragons, probably after receiving many complaints!)
The Winds have a bit of style in the carving.
The top of the box it came in.
Flowers will be shown March 16th.
This rare set was made by the Mah Jongg Company, Ltd. in England. The tiles are a white shiny substance which did not age very well; these have all been cleaned! The colors on some of them have faded, and some color transferred to the backs of other tiles when stored. The carvings are shallow, which explains why so many have lost their color. Most tiles are painted with just one color.
Note the unusual design on the 7 Dot, and the use of black on the 4 and 8 Dots, although we do see black 8 Dots from time to time.
The pheasant standing on the rock is very like others we have seen
The other Bams are rounded, and unique in their slightly squat designs, making this Bam a hallmark of this set. The One Dot is cog-like, and the other Dots circles within circles. The Craks are the simple Wan, with the Wan looking like a runner caught mid-stride.
And for those of you who are not familiar with a wonderful collector, here is a link to Tony Watson's collection. You will see the same set there.
https://picasaweb.google.com/100646309012123960905
These Flowers are from the hand carved Chinese Bakelite Mahjong set we saw yesterday. The top Flowers show a female musician and three other ladies, perhaps dancers with long sleeves. The Chinese symbols are those of the seasons: Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. A wall background is carved behind these ladies, as we often see on these type of Flowers, though the author misplaced those four tiles which should read 4321 to have the wall work! The lower set are the Singapore capture tiles, the Rich Man and the Pot of Gold, and the Cat and the Mouse.
The color silver, seen above, is rare on Mahjong tiles.
Many scholars, including C.A.S. Williams and Wolfram Eberhard, acknowledge that owls were not looked upon favorably in China in the 1900s, and rather were harbingers of ill fortune and death, unlike the phoenix which is associated with good fortune. Clearly, though, the Western market did not have those thoughts about owls.
And for a bit more about the owl in early Chinese history, Ray Heaton provided us with a link to a Sotheby's article.
Here is an excerpt I thought was interesting:
"The myth of the origin of the Shang people is found in The Book of Songs (“Heaven bade the dark bird”) . Of course, this song cannot be regarded as an original record of the Shang dynasty. It is more likely that it was transmitted orally through the Shang into the Zhou period, with slight variations over time. In Shang and Zhou lexicography, the word xuan (black) can also be understood as “mysterious” or “divine”8, and in Shang oracle bone inscriptions, we find a pictograph depicting a beaked owl with round eyes and plump torso, which is the name of a star, or it can be rendered as the character standing for the owl itself (Heji: 522, 11497, 11498, 11499, 11500). In other cases, it is used together with the ancestral names Fu Gui and Fu, and can be interpreted as “Father Gui of the Owl clan” (fig. 11) and “Lady of the Black Owl clan” (fig. 12). Thus, the evidence from Shang archaeology and historical literature render it quite possible that the Shang people believed in some mythical relationship with the owl. Liu Dunyuan has argued that the Shang people perceived the owl as the god of night and dreams, as well as the messenger between the human and the spirit world – on account of its silent flight and hunting in darkness9. If so, this would explain why the owl is employed repeatedly in Shang ritual art and is found in a burial context, as we have seen in the examples previously discussed.
The conventional explanation is that the black bird is a swallow (yanzi). This was the view of scholars of the Han dynasty, and Han paintings and murals did indeed present the swallow as the black bird (or sun-bird, taiyangniao) and the owl as the bird of the underworld. For example, the silk funerary banner from the Mawangdui Han tomb (no. 1) depicts a black bird (swallow-like) in the sun, and an owl-like bird near the entrance of the heaven, and moreover, on left and right sides of the earth platform are two owl-on-turtle images. Their meaning, according to Eugene Wang, is to signify “the sun setting at dusk in the west and re-emerging from the east at dawn.”10 Han ideology favored the association of the swallow with filial piety (xiao) – after all, the swallow faithfully returns every year – and the owl was conversely portrayed as an evil bird that ate its mother11. We however do not find such opposition in the earlier period, and in Shang archaeology, while there are a few references to the swallow, the owl is clearly more prominent."
Who (WHO? WHO?) can resist an owl, especially a horned one? Certainly the owl on this hand carved rare Chinese bakelite Mahjong set was one of the key reasons the set was bought, both recently and when it was first carved.
The Dots go from being the flower within a flower on the One, to being a flower center in the others. The Bams are the simple rounded Bams usually seen in Chinese Bakelite, and the Craks are the elaborate Wan.
One of the charms of these hand carved sets is the little differences in each tile.
Enjoy!
The Flowers will be discussed tomorrow.
This post features the hand carved Dragons and Flowers for the laminate mahjong set discussed on March 9 and 10.
The unusual writing style we noted on the Winds continues here on the Green Dragon which is deeply carved. The color palette continues with the gray Green Dragon and the pink Red Dragon.
You can easily see the varied depth of the carving, most apparent on the tiles on the top row with gold paint, especially on tile 2. These images are also highly stylized. The top row features the Arts of the Scholar, and the bottom flowers.
Ray Heaton has once again provided the translations. The characters on these tiles are stylized as well, making for a translation challenge.
"We need to use a bit of knowledge of the likely characters helped by two or three which are reasonably straight forward.
The top row are the arts of the scholar, and are versions of the simplified characters, 棋琴书画.
Qi Qin Shu Hua; chess, qin (the zither), calligraphy and painting.
The last two characters are the give away for me and are close enough to 书画 to allow all four characters to reveal themselves.
Although first two are "educated guesses", you can just about see the first character as 棋, (especially the second element of this character, 其, excluding the radical).
Bottom row are 梅兰竹菊, Mei Lan Zhu Ju; plum, orchid, bamboo, chrysanthemum. The second tile uses a character close to the simplified character for orchid, 兰. I don't see what else tile three could be other than 竹, and tile four is reasonably close to the expected look of the character."
For those of you who have an ipad, ipod, iphone or android device there is an app which can be helpful with the straightforward translations of Chinese characters. It is Pleco, and it allows you to write on the screen the symbol you see, and it will translate it for you. It often seems easier, though, to guess at the word on the tile and get the Chinese character for it, and see if that character bears any resemblance to what appears on the tile.
The One Dot in this Mahjong set has the bright blue we saw on the One Bam peacock's tail. The center, with its four small ovals, is similar to some we have seen before. The colors in this set, with the use of gold and other brilliant colors, are reminiscent of those seen in some of the Viennese Secessionist art, such as paintings by Klimt. To see works by Klimt in Wikipedia, click here.
The other Dots are deeply carved, with circles within circles. The innermost circle just has a dot of gold paint. We saw that here.
You can quickly see how different this hand carved set of Winds are than what we are used to seeing, with the South and East very different indeed. Compare the above with the hand carved bone and bamboo set seen below.
The Flowers and Dragons will appear on March 11.
This delightful hand carved Mahjong set is very different from those we are used to seeing.
The white plastic laminate is on top of a purple plastic back which is three times its depth. The two pieces clearly were made separately and then glued together.
The Mahjong One Bam peacock is outstanding. Who can resist that bright blue tail and the two feathers atop its head? As is the case with many of these unusual laminate sets, many of the details have carvings of different depths.
On the One Bam the tail circles are quite deep, and then painted with gold paint.
Note the number of dots in each tail is different, and the outline of the bird is either blue or gray.
The other Bams have a peppermint stick look to them with their coloring, with not even a glimpse of the greens we are used to seeing.
The Craks are quite wonderful too. The Arabic numbers were carved with a bit of flair, as were the Chinese numbers. The Wans are the simple form.
It bears some resemblance to another set we examined earlier.
More of the set will be posted March 10.
These hand carved Flowers are from the Chinese Bakelite Mahjong set discussed March 7th. This set came with 16 Flowers. The top row is a courtship series, and it is completely delightful. Don't you love the details of the clothing: the high heels she is wearing, the floral arrangement on tile 3 echoing the flowers on her dress, the buttons on the man's jacket and the pleat on the front of the pants' legs? On tile 4 the woman's raised leg, poised in mid-step, adds to the fun. On tile 3 she looks out a curtain, probably expecting her suitor's arrival.
The bottom tiles introduce volleyball to the list of leisure activities we saw yesterday: tennis, swimming, and playing with swords, dogs and balloons. The girl on tile 3 seems about to hit a volleyball serve.
Once again, Ray Heaton has provided an translation.
We are all familiar with these hand carved Mahjong leisure sets. The Flowers represent what the Chinese craftsmen thought people did in their free time.
In this set it makes a difference in terms of how the tiles are arranged. They had to be laid out 4321, or else one misses the linked scenes.
These tiles show adults in the top row. The left features two ladies playing tennis, at the net; note the short socks and sneakers. And the ladies at the pool have on those long-legged swimsuits that appeared in the 1930s. Don't you love the woman caught mid-dive?
To see more of swimsuit fashion at that time, click below
http://www.fashion-era.com/swimwear.htm#1920's%20Athletic%20Tank%20Suits
The lower row shows children at play. The ballerina, the boys playing with a sword and running with a balloon, and the little girl has a dog nipping at her dress.
Ray Heaton has translated the tiles, and feels they may be Japanese in origin.
This Chinese bakelite set is backed with a black wafer. The One Bams are the peacock with two feet planted, and the other Bams are rounded. The One Dot has meanders inside, and the other Dots are floral. And the Craks have the elaborate Wan. The Dragons have the symbols for Prosperity (Green) and Center symbolizing China (Red).