Private Antique Collectors in Singapore

There is a visitor from Singapore searching for “private chinese antics collectors in Singapore” and my only answer is that I have not heard of any. South East Asian Ceramic Society was founded by some people in Singapore and Malaysia then.  However I would treat case to case by trying to search for collectors in this not only in Singapore, Malaysia but elsewhere like Hong Kong and China. The saying goes “among the blind, the one with the one eye is the king” with so far no good knowledgeable collector has been found. Another two visitors from Kuala Lumpur with one searching for “nyonya ware prices” and the other searching for “antique Malaysia”. Nyonya ware prices depends on Bandung nyonya ware or Jing dezhen nyonya ware and also the items like saucer, spoons to tell the price and not just guessing. It is easy to give a price without looking at the items anything below Rm5/-. Antique Malaysia may have been there for a long time but no longer existing, failure due to collectors’ attitude. Many claimed to be mighty but doesn’t know how to authenticate their own items and wanted to claim that dealer is selling Bandung copies or fakes which is commonly spread around.

Many collectors have claimed to be good and when question on the judgement in authenticity most of them fail. I do not want to share this kind of action and I have mentioned in my earlier blog about knowledgeable collectors which means any persons who can give good answer or answers to the judgement in genuine or fake artefacts.

Being a dealer is a problem because if you tell customers that this is of this age and straight away got a shout at as bullshit which makes dealers do not know what collectors wanted. The sale condition “Take Notice Goods Sold are not returnable but returnable on the condition that the Goods Mentioned above are proved that they are modern copies. The proofs must be sufficient and must have written remarks from experts.” is to protect the buyers/collectors and dealers from being cheated and also to help collectors to be more knowledgeable in authentication by writing down the characteristics on the artefacts or keeping journals for their items but was totally ignored. Collectors prefer to buy with “rumour buy, rumour sell. The balls are all in the collectors’ court. Antique dealers find this business difficult because profits to cover overheads made it very difficult to sustain. At present collectors from the People’s Republic of China has been searching for reliable dealers and many has been visiting Malaysia with the view to buy good Chinese antique porcelain which was sold out once upon a time to be taken back to China.

 Many years ago I tried to get rid of the genuine and fake problems but was looked down by local collectors and experts. With the long existing problems bringing me down I would not want to burden myself with wanted things anymore. At the food court in Taman Desa, I met a man call Johnny who also sells antiques and I invited him to join me for tea and I told him how to authenticate porcelain and why are old porcelain items worth collecting, he was so happy that in return let me know that somebody told him that I am a proud and arrogant chap, I then told him that why are we talking for hours if I have been arrogant type, he smiled and after all the truth has prevail and I am not interested who that liar is after all I have met up with many liars including collectors and experts who are liars in authenticating Chinese Antique Porcelain. Experts who cannot tell genuineness can only say “imitations can be made exactly the same as originals” which means they are condemning the items in the museum. The word “Ming” character in Chinese was said to be wrongly written in http://www.taimantis.com/chinese/fakes.html#UPD and the wrongly written Chinese character was found in one Ming dynasty piece belonged to Mrs. Alfred Clark and also a piece in a museum in Paris which I do not know whether is the same piece that is ex- Mrs. Alfred Clark. I am yet to find out whether the piece is genuine or fakes because I have my ways to find out instead to jump in wrong conclusion. Artists can paint beautiful motives but may not be good at writing beautiful Chinese characters. This was shown in a book that finely written Chinese characters in reign marks was also copied later or by Japanese potters.