bone and bamboo

Previous Owners in Chinese Art and Mahjong • 2 Comments

Kuan Yin • May 14, 2014

This magnificent horse is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum. It was done in pen and ink sometime around 750.

From the Metropolitan Museum website

"This portrait of Night-Shining White, a favorite charger of Emperor Xuanzong (r. 712–56), may be the best-known horse painting in Chinese art. The fiery-tempered animal epitomizes Chinese myths about imported "celestial steeds" that "sweated blood" and were really dragons in disguise. The painting has been attributed to Han Gan, who was known for portraying not only the physical likeness of a horse but also its spirit. Although Han is said to have preferred visits to the stables over the study of earlier paintings of horses, the profile image and the abstraction of the animal's anatomy clearly derive from ancient prototypes."

It is amazing that such an old work, on paper, still survives. What is also interesting is the presence of all the red and sometimes black square, round and oval characters surrounding the piece. These are all seals representing ownership, and they trace the history of who owned the painting through the years. The first one, located just to the left of the calligraphy on the right, dates from the Southern Tang Emperor Li Yu, who reigned from 961-975.

We have traces of history on Mahjong sets as well. Who hasn't been happy when opening up a set and finding bits of ephemera left by previous owners? Who knew how close this was to actual traces of ownership we see above?

Sometimes we find typed up instructions:

Sometimes we find traces of where the set might have been, in this case on the Blue Funnel Line:

Or what happened to the set along its journey our way:

and this valiant attempt to recreate a lost One Bam

or this round dark 8 Dot substituted for a lost blue floral one

And indications of who found the set for friends:

and who owned it

For the Chinese and the antiquities market, provenance is very important. Many treasures were lost through the years for many different reasons, and forgeries exist, including, as some of us think, in the area of Mahjong. So being able to trace ownership is very important.

For those of you who have not clicked on this article about a Chinese vase, which was first posted in March, here is another chance. It just goes to show that ownership papers, even dating from the 1960s, can be very important.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/443251/Old-Chinese-vase-found-on-chest-of-drawers-of-oblivious-owners-sells-for-3m

Have any of you been delighted when you found traces of previous owners? I have a set I refer to as Jeanne's, because she was the previous owner, and I am happy that I am taking good care of it for her. Of course we also have very strong emotional connections with sets that belonged to our relatives, and playing with them gives us a feeling of connection with them.

Do any of you have similar feelings about sets, either from your own family's collection or from that of a stranger? BTW, I was going to have the One Bam singing bird recarved, but I am going to keep it just the way it is. It is part of the set's history, and I have decided it's charming.

Rocks in Chinese Art and Mahjong Part 3 • 1 Comment

Kuan Yin • May 12, 2014

The Museum of Fine Arts Boston has wonderful scholars rocks that were collected by Richard Rosenblum, a sculptor, which he and his wife Nancy donated to the museum. Here is an excerpt from the catalog introduction to the Exhibit:

"For more than a millennium, the integral relationship between nature and art has been a highly revered belief in Chinese culture, particularly among the literati (scholar-gentlemen). These men had great respect for nature’s ability to create its own "works of art." They avidly collected intriguing specimens, ranging from large eroded and calcified rocks that they positioned in their urban gardens to smaller "scholar objects" of wood or stone that they placed in their studios for aesthetic enjoyment."

Here are two rocks from that collection.

This one was found in the Qing Dynasty, and mounted on this stand. If you look carefully at the stand, you will see it looks quite organic, and ruyi cloud shapes have been added.

And here is another from that same museum with a similar type of stand, with a stand that looks more like those taihu rocks we looked at the other day.

This one also dates from the Qing Dynasty.

Many of you probably remember the following tiles from previous posts, but there is a reason we are looking at them again.

This unusual tile is from a set we've seen before. It represents a fisherman, one of the four important occupations, the others being farmer, wood cutter and scholar. You can see the umbrella the fisherman could use to shield himself from the sun, the basket for fish, and the fishing pole and line. There's also a smooth rock, at the bottom left, about the same size as the basket; given that its size is the same as one of the main objects in the work, the rock obviously has a great deal of importance.

Again we see the need to feature beautiful mostly smooth rocks with flowers.

The other night we happened to come across some fabulous new takes on the classic interest in rocks in Chinese art. The very talented Li Hongbo has produced his own version of beautiful stones, and they are seen here in front of a flower pot, half cut off in this photo because I was not paying attention to the pairing of stones and flower pots!

These really look like beautiful smooth stones, don't they?

But there is something else going on:

They are actually made of paper!

Christina showed us the inside of the "rocks", made by a process based on Chinese paper lanterns

Li Hongbo is truly amazing, and the process he goes through to make these creations is incredible. For a visual treat, please do click on these links:

http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-artist-paper-classic-sculptures-2014-2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gttdbqX4SWA

Li Hongbo's work can be seen at the Klein Sun Gallery.

http://www.kleinsungallery.com/artist/Li_Hongbo/works/

CURRENTLY SEEKING PHOTOS OF MAHJONG TILES AND BOXES SHOWING CHILDREN AT PLAY AS WELL AS FLAGS/PENNANTS/BANNERS, FOR UPCOMING POSTS. PLEASE EMAIL ME PHOTOS IF YOU WANT TO HAVE THEM FEATURED. IF THERE ARE OTHER SETS YOU THINK MIGHT BE OF INTEREST, PLEASE EMAIL PHOTOS TO ME.

KuanYin@MahjongTreasures.com

Very Unusual One Dot Bone and Bamboo

Kuan Yin • May 8, 2014

A guest submission compiled by Katherine Hartman about a fabulous set in her collection, with very unusual One and 7 Dots and One Bam tiles. This set always makes me smile.

Katherine makes every effort to learn as much as possible about every set that comes her way.

Meet WILSON! I saw this set about a month ago on Ebay and had to have it. My son named the set, Wilson after Tom Hank's friend, Wilson the volleyball, in the movie, "Castaway". See the one dot, those of you have seen the movie will understand.

Michael Stanwick and Ray Heaton have had a very long look at the set. There was a very long discussion regarding the one flower that has the coin markings between the two of them. For all of you who are familiar with Michael's research, he has classified this set as a 1.1. Here are some of his thoughts:

"If you look at the way the 'West' and 'North' character are solidly engraved, and the position of all the cuts/strokes, you will see that they are identical to those seen in the 1875 Glover sets, the 1901 Laufer set and the 1909 Culin set. Compare these two characters to those found in the 1889 Wilkinson set and you will see they are different. Indeed, most sets have the N and S tile engravings that do not look like these old sets but look more like those in the Wilkinson set. (If you haven't got copies of The Playing-card journal you can see these sets on my web site.) Most of the sets in my collection that are in this 'old style' have these types of engravings and they tend to go hand in hand with the so-called pointed leaf shaped bamboos and with a String of Cash on the 1 bamboo. But what happened later was that these sets began to show hybridisation and so began morphing into unusual combinations of engravings - but still with these tell-tale N and S tiles AND the Seasons. Look at the Seasons in these pics. The engraving is bold and the characters are pretty large and in the middle vertical line of the tile. These are all indicators that this set was engraved by an engraver/manufacturer of the old style tradition or someone using the old style to engrave the set. My opinion is closer to the former... If you look at the red sinograms for the four seasons, you can see that they are fairly large with bold strokes (heavy strokes but with gusto! as opposed to the more restrained type of strokes seen in many other 1920's sets). In the Glover type sets you usually get the four seasons sinograms bang in the middle of the tile and with a frame of sorts around each one. In your case, we have pictures of plants sharing each tile but the sinograms are still on the centre vertical axis but not on the centre horizontal axis (since the picture has forced the sinogram up to the top. So there is still an acknowledgement that these sinograms should be in the centre of each tile and they made an effort to do so."

Ray THANK YOU for these translations of the flowers! From Ray:

一統山河

These are Yi Tong Shan He, or (word for word) One, Unite, Mountains and Rivers. Mountains and Rivers together is a way to refer to "the whole country", and so this phrase translates to "To unify the whole country" or a little more simply as "A united country". The other four show 春夏秋冬. These are Chun Xia Qiu Dong, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter (I suspect you recognized those!) And on the 1 Tile, reading top, bottom, right, left 民元 Min Guo Yuan Boa, Republic of China Silver Ingot. Such characters appear on coinage from the ROC period, but I don't see why this relates to the tiles.

Birds in Trees in Chinese Art and Mahjong

Kuan Yin • May 6, 2014

This lovely work of art was done by Ren Yi who lived from 1840 until 1896, and it is part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.You can see a bird with a crest on its head, perched on a tree branch. It is believed this is a kingfisher, also known as ribbon-tailed bird, prized for its beauty.

This scroll, also in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum, was painted by the Chinese artist Shen Nanpin who taught art in Japan during the Qing Dynasty. You can see the long tail feathers which give the bird its name.

On One Bams we usually see standing birds, or swooping birds, usually pheasants, peacocks, cranes and swallows. The following are more unusual birds.

Above is a rare One Bam. We see a bird with a crest on a branch. It is not so dissimilar to the one above, and it is believed to be a kingfisher although the tail is not as long as we would expect.

This one above is also believed to be a kingfisher, sitting on a thin bending branch.

This one is too, also sitting on a stylized stalk of bamboo. A kingfisher on bamboo may mean birthday wishes: bamboo is a pun for "congratulate." (Bartholomew)

Although this one obviously is not a bird, but a bamboo sprout, it too is seen "perched" on a bamboo stalk.

Our thanks to Mahjongmahjong for some of these images.

Birds on Rocks in Chinese Art and Mahjong

Kuan Yin • May 5, 2014

This magnificent fan in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art was painted by Ren Xun who lived in China from 1835-1893. You can clearly see the bird, perched on a rock resembling what probably could be called a scholar's rock. We can see those wonderful holes, created by the movement of water over thousands of years, going through the rock.

On this lovely porcelain featured on Live Auctioneers, we have another bird, this time standing on one leg, as we often see on Mahjong tiles. The following interpretation was applied by Terese Bartholomew Tse about an eagle standing on one leg, it might be also true that "any bird standing on one leg shows independence of spirit."

We have a lot of birds seen on rocks in Mahjong.

This One Bam is from a miniature ladies' set, a fairly typical scene of a peacock standing on one leg on a rock.

It is not so different from this One Bam above, from a more recently carved set, probably from the late 1960s or early 1970s.

This One Bam is perched on a rock too, one foot raised in a bit of a balancing act.

And this recently carved One Bam from a tri-color lucite tile continues the same tradition.

We thank Mahjongmahjong for the use of some tiles seen here from their collection.

Rocks in Chinese Art and Mahjong Part 2

Kuan Yin • May 1, 2014

This lovely painting, dating from the Ming Dynasty, is in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. If you look closely right under the lilies, just to the right, you can just make out a rock, with perhaps another just to the back left. Terese Tse Batholomew says the pairing of a daylily and a rock symbolizes

"May the daylily and rock extend your years, or May you have sons and live long"

We often see rocks paired with potted plants on Flower tiles.

Above, each rock is beside each plant here, each one almost the same size as the pot.

In these two tiles the rocks have a bit more irregularity, more like scholar's stones that we will discuss in a future post.

Above we have a Flower tile made by the Imperial Company of France. (The black gold-flecked material is Ebonite, a hard rubber.)

You might have noticed there is a bit of green on all the rocks seen above. This is a bit confusing, but there might be answer here, provided by Patricia Bjaaland Welch:

"The appearance of moss on a longevity stone intensifies the idea of seniority.."

Zhuge Liang in Chinese Art and Mahjong

Kuan Yin • April 25, 2014

As many of you know, Flower tiles can be wonderfully varied, ranging from flowers in pots, to landscapes, to scenes from literature, etc. The tiles today represent a scene from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, when Liu Bei met Zhuge Liang. (Zhuge Liang was the brilliant military strategist who fooled the attacking enemy when he appeared relaxed as he played the qin on top of the wall surrounding his empty city.)

Today's post was made possible by Ray Heaton who translated these four tiles.

Ray suspects

"these tiles refer to Zhuge Liang (or Kongming, the great military strategist) being recommended to Liu Bei, but the four characters shown are just part of a longer 6-8 character phrase.

The name Zhuge Liang should be three Chinese characters, but on these tiles his name is abbreviated to just one character, the "ge" part!

(On tile 4 it shows the 'ge' part (葛) of Zhuge (諸葛), itself all short for Zhuge Liang (諸葛亮).)

"Portraits" of Zhuge Liang are plentiful, as he was very important in Chinese history.

above photo courtesy of Laurie

The following shows the meeting of Zhuge Liang and Liu Bei, from Oriental Discovery

The love of Zhuge Liang and his story continues to this day. This poster is from a recent film

Red Cliff, featuring Zhuge Liang portrayed by Takeshi Kaneshiro.

Here follow some excerpts from wikipedia:

"Zhuge Liang (181–234),^[2] courtesy name Kongming, was a chancellor of the state of Shu Han during the Three Kingdoms period. He is recognised as the greatest and most accomplished strategist of his era, and has been compared to another great ancient Chinese strategist, Sun Tzu.^[3]

Often depicted wearing a robe and holding a hand fan made of crane feathers,^[4] Zhuge Liang was not only an important military strategist and statesman; he was also an accomplished scholar and inventor. His reputation as an intelligent and learned scholar grew even while he was living in relative seclusion, earning him the nickname "Wolong" (literally: "Sleeping Dragon").

Zhuge is an uncommon two-character Chinese compound family name. His name – even his surname alone – has become synonymous with intelligence and strategy in Chinese culture....

According to historical texts, Zhuge Liang was eight chi tall, roughly between 1.85 metres (6 feet and 1 inch) and 1.95 metres (6 feet and 4.75 inches)...

The Temple of the Marquis of Wu inChengdu, Sichuan, a temple worshipping Zhuge Liang.

Service under Liu Bei[edit]

....Liu Bei resided at Xinye while he was taking shelter under Jing Province's governor, Liu Biao. Liu Bei visited Sima Hui, who told him, "Confucian academics and common scholars, how much do they know about current affairs? Those who analyse current affairs well are elites. Crouching Dragon and Young Phoenix are the only ones in this region."^[11] Xu Shu later recommended Zhuge Liang to Liu Bei again, and Liu wanted to ask Xu to invite Zhuge to meet him. However, Xu Shu replied, "You must visit this man in person. He cannot be invited to meet you."^[12] Liu Bei succeeded in recruiting Zhuge Liang in 207 after paying three personal visits.^[13]^[I] Zhuge Liang presented the Longzhong Plan to Liu Bei and left his residence to follow Liu. Afterwards, Liu Bei became very close to Zhuge Liang and often had discussions with him.Guan Yu and Zhang Fei were not pleased and complained. Liu Bei explained, "Now that I have Kongming (Zhuge Liang's style name), I am like a fish that has found water. I hope you'll stop making unpleasant remarks."^[14] Guan Yu and Zhang Fei then stopped complaining."

The Orchid in Chinese Art and Mahjong Part 2

Kuan Yin • April 22, 2014

This work by Wu Changshu (1844-1927) is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Here we see lovely delicate orchids, wisp-like in their appearance.

Mahjong tile carvers often kept to the ethereal appearance of this lovely flower. On this bone and bamboo tile we have just a hint of the blossom.

Here is a tile, from what is thought to be an unusual Rottgames set, showing an orchid which has the same delicate quality as the bone and bamboo versions.

The plant above is so abstract it is difficult to make out much about it, although it seems to be growing in front of a rock in the pot.

This russet beauty, from a rare Ashton & Rietz set, shows the same feathery treatment of the blooms we saw earlier.

We will end this post with photographs of orchids found at the Inkaterra Hotel near Machu Picchu, Peru. The hotel has one of the biggest collections of orchids (372 varieties!) in the world. Some orchids are so tiny you can only really see them with a magnifying glass. The ones seen here are bigger than that though.

With all the variety seen in this plant , it is easy to understand why the Chinese were so entranced by it.

The Orchid in Chinese Art and Mahjong Part 1

Kuan Yin • April 21, 2014

In China the orchid is traditionally associated with spring. The polar vortex has left our area, after what seemed to most of us to be a very long stay, so it is time to celebrate. And how better than to look at orchids, some created by nature and others brought to us by artists. We will look at Mahjong tiles with this pairing, and a photograph of some real beauties on display in the Bronx.

The above ink work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and was painted by Ma Shouzhen during the Ming Dynasty. Here is an orchid; a few of the delicate blooms have fallen to the ground, but some remain intact. As we have seen in some other posts, the artist has chosen to position the plant next to a rock, a very common theme in Chinese art.

In China the orchid represents delicacy and elegance. Patricia Bjaaland Welch, in her book Chinese Art A Guide to Motifs and Visual Imagery

"They are specifically associated with women, love beauty and fertility; and secondly with virtue, moral elegance" and the refinement of a superior man who stands out in a crowd because of being a learned gentleman.

Rocks were often prized as objects of beauty, and we know they are objects of permanence. And so the rock with the orchid might be a play upon visual beauty, some of which is short lived and some permanent throughout time.

Above we have a version of paired Mahjong flowers. The hand carved bone and bamboo tile flower on the left is the orchid, with a rock just below the edge of the pot. Of course a rock appears in the other half of the diptych as well.

Above a vase, holding a hand carved Mahjong tile orchid, has a rock right next to it. Again, it seems like some of the blossoms may have fallen, thus alluding to the impermanence of some kinds of beauty.

Although not hand carved, these tiles by Imperial feature a vase of orchids and the rock beside them.

Above is a photo from a set by Selfridge's, with a paper face showing the orchid in a vase with a rock in a pot right behind. Clearly the pairing of the two was important enough to feature on all tiles of Mahjong tiles.

And we'll end with a photo of some other stars of the orchid show at the Bronx Botanical Garden, these exquisite pink orchids. There is no indication of nearby rocks, but, then again, this show is not Chinese art, but rather a celebration of the beauty of orchids. Given that the show ends today, it is another indication of the need to appreciate etherial beauty when we have a chance.

Orchid: A Celebration of Spring • 4 Comments

Kuan Yin • April 18, 2014

It is finally feeling like spring in the Northern Hemisphere, and thoughts do turn to beautiful flowers; few are more lovely than orchids. The Chinese love orchids, and consider them to be among the four most important plants, the others being bamboo, chrysanthemum and plum blossom. And in China, the orchid is the plant associated with spring.

The ink drawing above is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is believed to have been done by Ma Lin around 1200. It is not so very different in design from those Mahjong Flower tiles that feature orchids. Today's post will be just a short introduction, with more next week.

These wood tiles are thought to be French-made, although the words on them are in English. They are very similar to some made by the Galleries Lafayette. You can see a very stylized orchid in the 3rd row, the third tile from the left.

Above we see a beautiful purple orchid on tile #2, top row.

We end with this beautiful orchid, one of the stars of the orchid show at the New York Botanical Garden.

We thank mahjongmahjong for allowing us the use of the photograph of the lovely Flowers just above this photograph.

Mahjong Treasures

Appreciating the Art of Mahjong; A Collector's Guide