This post was written for us by Tony Watson. He has tackled one of the big questions in Mahjong: How did the One Bam develop? How did it change over the years from its earliest shape to the ones we are familiar with today? Most of you readers are aware that we probably will never really know what happened because records just don't exist, but this certainly gives us all a general guide as to what well may been the case.
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
Often we see creatures and we have a hard time identifying them; they just don't seem to be any type of animal we are familiar with. One such creature is seen above, a qilin on an official's badge from the Qing Dynasty in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum. Because it is horned, it is sometimes referred to as a unicorn.
Welch writes
"The Chinese mythical animal known in Chinese as the qilin is sometimes erroneously referred to as the "Chinese unicorn" or even a chimera (although this is a specific Greek mythological animal with a lion's head, goat's body and serpent's tail) The qilin is not a unicorn as it has two horns and can be identified by its green (or blue) scaled deer's body (which has become more horse-shaped over time) dragon's head, horn and hooves...(and) bushy tail."
We can certainly see the scales, and the hooves on the creature above, as well as the prominent horns. The background shows some ruyi shaped clouds, waves and flames.
According to Welch
"Mythical animals usually have flames surrounding or emanating from their legs to emphasize their powerful and supernatural nature."
The qilin is a benevolent creature, and represents many positive attributes. And qilin sightings are rare, as can be seen by this post.
Qilin appear in Mahjong as well but they might be hidden. We don't have any records or write-ups by the craftsmen who made these works of art, so we really won't know for sure what they are. Sometimes we just have to guess. We'll start with the biggest stretch as to what creature we are seeing.
Above we have a detail of two creatures made of inlaid bone on a Mahjong box. We don't know if they are qilin, but they might be. Behind their ears you can make out another protrusion which may well be a horn. They each have a very bushy tail, just like the one we see on the qilin. If they are a qilin, they certainly are very benevolent.
Above is a detail of a leather embossed Mahjong box. At first I thought that if you looked carefully, you would be able to make out two qilin, on either side of a globe, with flames surrounding them, a scene not unlike the one we just saw on the inlaid box. But a sharp-eyed reader told me these probably are lions, because he was able to see the five toes on their feet! So no qilin here.
But we do have a qilin on another set, actually called the Qilin Mahjong set:
Many of you have probably seen this advertised. You can see the qilin proudly strutting, his bushy tail up and his hooves. I won't make that mistake again! He is surrounded by round ruyi shaped clouds.
Here follows a real treat: an ivory Mahjong tile qilin:
Isn't he fabulous? It is interesting how the crosshatching of the ivory works well with the scales on the qilin.
Our thanks to mahjongmahjong for the use of their tile.
The book I wrote with Ann Israel is being published by Tuttle. To see more about it:
www.mahjonggtheartof thegame.com
To order it click here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/mah-jongg-ann-israel/1118759459?ean=9784805313237
or here from Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Mah-Jongg-Collectors-Guide-Tiles/dp/4805313234/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1414844427&sr=8-7&keywords=mah+jongg
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.
Today's post is about a rare French Ivory set that was owned by Katherine Hartman. Many of you know Katherine has been studying Mahjong and its history for quite a few years, and she has a lovely collection of sets and ephemera. This is a set she sold several years ago.
French Ivory is made by layering two slightly different colors of plastic on top of each other to mimic real ivory. If you look carefully at these tiles you can see these lovely striations on the tile faces. The Flowers are unusual in that there are as many as 16, and they feature somewhat quiet looking vignettes of ladies having tea with much more active and wild scenes of combat, as seen on the bottom tiles. The carving on all the tiles in this set is especially lovely and delicate.
Following this photograph are the translations and related research for the Flower tiles, provided by Ray Heaton. You will notice the tiles read from right to left.
The first row are 蓮花公主, Lian Hua Gong Zhu meaning "Lotus flower princess". I don't know who this is referring to, but I came across a Chinese play with Princess Lotus Flower as the title. In the early 1900s Chinese theatre developed "Chained-sequence plays", or Luanhuanxi, which was a programme of alternate live theatrical performances and film screenings, with 5 or 6 transitions. The requirement of having the same actors on stage and on film was logistically complex and too expensive and so they went out of fashion. Princess Lotus Flower was one such chained-sequence play from 1925 and is mentioned in the book Chinese National Cinema by Yingjin Zhang.
Second row are 文明世界 Wen Ming Shi Jie meaning "A Civilised World", and seems to be a fairly common phrase on various MJ sets.
Third row are 春風得意, Chun Feng De Yi, (May You Rise High with the Spring Wind).
This can be translated along the following lines; "to be pleased with oneself", "be flushed with success" or "be proud of success" and is a phrase that may be used when referring to the passing of exams, for instance.
The fourth row are I think, 深山鬥法, Shen Shan Dou Fa. A rather challenging set of words for me to understand when placed together! The first two mean "remote mountains" or "deep in the mountains". The second two have two distinct meanings, either "the exercise of magic powers against each other" or "to use stratagems"! So if we use the images on the tiles to help, maybe this is about practising military strategy or martial arts deep in the mountains. I haven't found other references to this phrase anywhere else.
HI, the 深山斗法 mean someone challenge in mountains
Make sure to note the ladies are smoking cigarettes! You can see this row 2 tile #1, and Row 3, tile #3! Many collectors have to deal with cigarette damage on tiles, but here the tiles themselves have smoking scenes, probably to make the ladies seem more elegant and cosmopolitan, as they thought at that time. Interior design elements abound, including tablecloths and fabric patterns on the chairs.
A completely different kind of location is shown on Tile 1, Row 1: a lady is standing on round circles. These circles refer to clouds, meaning the scene is taking place in the Heavens.
These are typical of the remaining tiles from the set. You must have immediately noticed the beautiful White Dragon, seen here as four butterflies.
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.
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.
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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.
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.."
This lovely work dating from the Song Dynasty is in the collection of the Cleveland Art Institute. We see two figures surrounded by trees, with mountains in the background. In the foreground, we have a huge rock. As mentioned before, the Chinese have a great appreciation for the natural beauty of rocks. According to Patricia Bjaaland Welch,
"interesting rocks ("strange stones" known as guaishi) were collected as early as the Tang Dynasty (618-906), a practice that was firmly established by the Song (960-1279)..."
The most valued rocks and stones were those that resembled sacred mountains or which were believed to embody inner energy. Many of the larger rocks or stones found in Chinese paintings, gardens, still lifes and floral arrangements are "longevity stones" but not all."
Certainly, in the work above, the rock would have leant itself to contemplation.
Many of you have noticed how difficult it can be to identify images on mahjong tiles, and it is very easy to make mistakes differentiating stones from lingzhi.
We saw these tiles the other day. The lingzhi has a rounded organic look to it, and, in this case, is shown with its stalk.
These birds are seen with rocks. Rocks in Mahjong often have a bit of an angular look to them. At other times they have holes going from one side to the other, such as the one below.
As you can see, this Mahjong rock has a porous quality to it, similar to the real one in the photograph just below this. The red Chinese character on this tile translates as "mountain." It is a character you will often see on Flower tiles.
This rock, from the Ralph M. Chait Gallery, is of the Taihu variety, limestone found at the foot of Dongting Mountain near Taihu Lake. The continuous movement of the water produces this porous effect. You can see how similar it is to the one on the Mahjong tile.
Here we have a piece of fabric dating from the Ming Dynasty in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Here you can see stylized phoenixes and ruyi, the scepter based on lingzhi, the herb of immortality, that oval organic form that looks like it is folded in on itself.
This is a scepter auctioned off by Christies. It is a ruyi, and thus is associated with immortality, good luck and power. This shape can appear in many aspects of Chinese art, including Mahjong.
The box above was auctioned off by Kaminski Auctioneers. Its handle is shaped like a ruyi. The set was owned by Marla Maples, the former wife of Donald Trump. It is now part of a major private Mahjong collection.
This exquisite dragon Mahjong box also features ruyi, certainly toward the lower left and right center, but probably above, hiding part of the right side of the dragon as well.