At Sunday flea market, I met this local Chinese man who
claimed to be an expert cum dealer in Chinese Porcelain trained in People’s
Republic of China. He started showing me the items recorded in his hand phone
which he claimed to be good and genuine and at the same time making statements
to frighten me by saying that in China there are many high class copies and his
is genuine that I should buy from him and sell. I told him that there is
nothing special when I can order high class copies and treat them as genuine
and I also asked him to prove those shown in his handphone are genuine so that
treasure does not turn rubbish and wealth will pass more than one generation. He
said carbon dating and my reply was that in scientific testing there were
confusion which lead to a cheating case in Seattle I wrote web site on a piece
of paper for him and he said that no use going into the computer and after
keeping the piece of paper, I then told him that the site written on the paper
talks about Seattle antique cheating case, I didn’t tell him that carbon dating
does not work on porcelain otherwise I will make myself a fool.
I then told him about
TL test and the machine written by Dr. Anna Bennett and the most reliable
machine to be sourced. He then ask me whether I am still driving taxi which I
replied that my age is catching up and with my knowledge, just throw shit
around for collectors and experts to clean up. He then said that my mindset to
destruction in Chinese antique porcelain collection trade has not stopped. My
answer to him is that all experts or collectors must have details on the
antique items that they owned and they should not blame on others. There are
collectors who believe that they buy it at a high price would be genuine and
this makes poor people who cannot afford will keep bad pieces. The Star newspaper
page 34 dated 8th September 2014 titled “Child stumbles upon ancient
sword” tells us that a 11 year old boy who is not rich and could not afford to
buy the ancient sword for a high price and knows the value that he stumbles was
a 3,000 years old sword and not a rotten scrap metal.
There is another man
who knows my late father met my eldest son and he has been telling me to ask my
son to start antique business. I told him that experts’ opinions are “Antiques
are manufactureable, makeable, fakeable and duplicateable” making me lost
interest and I do not want customers coming to my place to bang the table
calling old crooks as they did to my father, there are a number of such
happening and now the problems are theirs (collectors) makes me happier.
After many years that I had given antique furniture business
which can be found in my blog and this visitor request me to get for him old
furniture and not of Vietnam type. I have no time to look into whether Vietnam
or local and also having to pick up the pieces to assemble. This confusion has put dealers and collectors into
a lot of trouble. I experienced showing a pen to an old man who is a pen
dealer, this pen is by the name “Warranted” which I bought from an old timer
pen dealer in Batu Road Kuala Lumpur. The old man told me that he has seen this
pen forty years ago. It was in my lifetime that I know that everything has good
value and I did not keep all the eggs in one basket. There are no good antiques
without good knowledge.
One visitor from San
Jose,California, America searching for “original nyonya ware”, nyonya ware was
started in the late Ching dynasty and continued to produce until the 70’s where
Bandung made copies and production did not cease when Jingde Zhen started to
produce nyonya ware. An old shop in Kuala Lumpur imports nyonya ware and has
confirmed to be nyonya ware and not any other ware because this shop has
reported nyonya ware for sale in the Star Metro in colour. (I am having the
copy of this article). I need to know
what is original and what is not so that I will not be taken for a ride by
collectors or experts.
A visitor from Newport, England searching for “mother of
pearl teaset from Kuala Lumpur how much would it worth?’. The old setting of
Mother of pearl in recessed deeper than the newer ones and the newer ones will
come off easily. The teaset you mentioned from Kuala Lumpur is not known to me but
there are no fixed market prices or fixed value to old things. My late father
bought old furniture from Penang, lorry and lorry loads of them and at that
time we had a good workshop and a good carpenter to repair and getting the
pieces to modify and I spent my time in carpentry work and learn to know why
are old mahogany furniture are shaky?.