Knowing Treasure

There are a few visitors to this blog who are frogs under the nuts shells 1) From New Delhi searching for “where to buy peranakan ware in Melaka”. 2) From Singapore searching for “where does one buy peranakan porcelain in Kuala Lumpur. 3) From Birmingham searching for “antique Nyonya ware”. 4) From Milan, Umbria searching for “antique shops in Malacca, Malaesia”. Visitors like them should take the trouble to search for the places they had known. The third visitor searching for “antique Nyonya ware” should look for “Nyonya’s settlement” which is not too difficult to find. Nobody would want to share the Ali Baba treasure cave with you, so you have to look for the treasure yourself instead of being the frog. In Malaysia there are not many good collectors and I can’t tell about other countries unless I test them. There were a few proud and arrogant collectors that were brought down making them a fool on the spot. It is difficult for Chinese Antique dealers to run the business when arrogant collectors want to be good at spreading rumors at dealer/dealers for selling fake antiques and not treating case to case.

A friend of mine bought a Yi-Hsing teapot from People’s Republic of China and the seller told him that a good teapot is when you stand on top of it will not break which means that the teapot is too hard. When I told him that a good teapot must be porous and how to know a Yi-Hsing teapot is porous and good 1)When you keep water in a good and porous teapot it leaks slowly. 2) When you pour hot water into the teapot, there will be tea taste because the taste comes from the cavities of the teapot wall. These are the sensible and logical characteristics in authentication which can be experienced.

A Indian friend of mine who knows this doctor and when my friend mention my name Ronnie Ng, he told my friend that out of five items, two are correctly authenticated and three are wrong, this shows that this doctor is a knowledgeable collector because he knows the characteristics to authenticate Chinese antiques better than me so that he is able to tell my faults and this has make way for me to withdraw from authentication after all I am no match with him in authentication. Everybody has to prove his worth and not by mouth say.

Many years ago, I tried to use Chinese paper media to tell collectors to be careful of fake Chinese antiques and how to tell whether the items are genuine or not. The reporter came with this friend of mine who is a part time writer with the press but the materials were taken and not publish. The press may think that collecting antiques are mere rubbish and unimportant. Chinese educated collectors do not know much about Chinese antiques because many children of the rich families smoke opium in China in the earlier years and doesn’t pay good attention to the values of Chinese antiques which makes poor education in collecting Chinese Antiques. Till today when I question the Chinese Educated experts not many can give me proper answers and I have not met with English or of Western educated experts in Chinese Antiques.

There was a visitor to this blog e-mail me searching for pens and watches and these two items are my passions and easily kept without taking much storage space. I then told him that my late father’s shop was not far from a shop that sells pens and when I am free, I will go there to see the good items to collect and most of the pens I bought are new pens old stock. For pen collectors will know Parker Vaccumatic fountain pens which is very costly and high demand before World War Two and it was phased out and replaced by Parker 51 and Parker 21 after World War Two because American army generals used Parker 51 to sign peace treaties and for those who could not afford to own Parker 51 can buy Parker 21 which is the cheaper model and have a similar look. This shop sold to me some good quality Japanese pens of the 60’s at a very cheap price and what makes these fountain pens difficult to sell was because there was no demand for Japanese goods in the 60’s no matter how good the quality is. An Indian fountain pen collector brought some of his pen collection of 1910’s and 1920’s as sample that he is searching for. I told him to go back to India to look for such pens because importer in Malaya at that time will not be able to sell fountain pens because very few user and Chinese use Chinese brush to write and even if fountain pens were to be given to them, they will not know how to use.

Most of my father’s customers has bad behavior, they wanted something that they can sell to make profits and when their sale fail then they complain that the items are fakes or copies which means that they are profit motivated and not wanting to be  proper collectors with the intention not to keep the treasure for the next generation and further waging war against him in this antique business that he has to go to police station to settle matters which is actually a laughing matter because to inconvenienced him and furthermore police do not know how authentication is done and later I have to join him to go to court to fight a case for four years the cruel part was that they spy on what are the items my father has in stock and start to talk around that this fake and that fake. When my father died, someone known to my family was sent to celebrate his death, now that I discover the actions by collectors is only water off the ducks  back and leaving  the problems for collectors which is actually a laughter and one of the world best medicine for me.  A check with http://www.taimantis.com/chinese/fakes.html#UPD tells me, I quote “there is a sucker born every minute” and later this word sucker was replaced by the word “customer” so the answer to the truth. This war has been going on for a long time which is actually bad for collectors, not for me and it will not affect knowledgeable collectors whom I have not met.

 I am very happy with what I am keeping and spending happy hours in knowing treasures.