Treasure Hunt America

After collecting the celadon flower bowl from the Song Dynasty, Jin Muchen continued to move forward. You must know that there are more than a few exquisite Chinese porcelain donated by Yokogawa Minsuke to the Tokyo National Museum.

These are just a few representative pieces among the more than 1,000 pieces of fine Chinese porcelain donated by him.

Among the porcelain he donated, there are many top porcelains from the Ming and Qing dynasties. For Jin Muchen, these porcelains are also not to be missed.

For example, he saw this Qing Yongzheng pastel-colored plum tree plate that he saw next, and the employment was the top Chinese porcelain donated by Yokogawa Minsuke.

The Yongzheng pastel plum tree plate is extremely exquisite in workmanship. The plate depicts the plum tree in full bloom, the plum blossoms are in pink and white, and the remaining white part is inscribed with smooth running script, and the seal is also painted with pastel paint.

The painting style of this work is extremely delicate and meticulous, and the style is very elegant. It can be said that it is one of the pinnacles of painted porcelain in the Qing Dynasty, and its artistic value and collection value are very high.

If such a porcelain plate is obtained in the Chinese auction market, Jin Muchen estimates that it can fetch a price of 30 million to 50 million yuan.

In fact, there are many collectors of Chinese porcelain in Japan, but these people have very strange tastes and can be said to be very specific.

Just like I said before, they all like the Chinese Song Dynasty, or ceramics before the Song Dynasty, so most of their collections are works from those eras.

On the other hand, the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the peak era of Chinese porcelain, and the Yuan Dynasty porcelain, which opened the peak of Chinese porcelain, are not particularly fond of these people.

The collection style of Yokogawa Minsuke is different from these Japanese collectors.

Although there are some mediocre works in his collections, one of the most special features of his collections is that there are more material collections representing various eras.

This is of course also related to Yokogawa Minsuke's idea of ​​collecting. He hopes to show the development history of Chinese ceramics by collecting porcelain works of various periods in China.

This is especially reflected in his collection of official kiln porcelain from the Ming and Qing Dynasties in China.

In the turbulent years of the late Qing Dynasty, many of the royal family members of the Qing Dynasty were due to the revolution in China. And lost the hard-core crops, because they were usually a group of Eight Banners children who flaunted the market every day and did not do production, so once the imperial court was overthrown. They even had a problem eating.

So they had to sell the family wealth that their ancestors had saved for hundreds of years. During that time, the overpasses in the capital, Liulichang and other areas could often be seen. Trace precious porcelain from the Ming and Qing dynasties.

During this period, a large number of Chinese Ming and Qing official kiln porcelain entered the antique market, but the Japanese at that time did not like this kind of porcelain, because the cultural import of China's Tang and Song dynasties had a huge impact on Japanese culture, so the Japanese have always been There is a feeling of the Tang and Song Dynasties, so they prefer the porcelain works of the Tang and Song Dynasties.

On the other hand, it was also because the Ming Dynasty was weak, and the later Qing Dynasty was a court established by Manchu, and the Japanese did not like it even more. They think that they are not the descendants of the Tang Dynasty culture, and the Ming Dynasty is the main culprit that caused the loss of the Central Plains civilization to the hands of the Tartars, so they dislike the porcelain of the Ming and Qing Dynasties very much, and it can even be said that they hate it. level.

So at that time, although there were many precious porcelains from the Ming and Qing dynasties in the Liulichang area of ​​the capital that flowed into the market, the Japanese showed a lack of interest for the first time, and not many people were willing to buy them.

But Yokogawa Minsuke is different from those Japanese collectors. He believes that this is a necessary part of the study of the development history of Chinese ceramics, and should give a proper evaluation of the likes and dislikes.

It was this decision that made Yokogawa Minsuke frequent trips between the capital and Japan during that time. He has made many purchases, those precious porcelains from the Ming and Qing Dynasties, which is the main reason why there are many extremely exquisite official kiln porcelains in his collection.

Later, before he died, it was already after World War II, and the Japanese also had a deeper understanding of Chinese porcelain. The disgust for the Ming and Qing dynasties has long been forgotten by them, and Yokogawa Minsuke's collection has become the coveted treasure of many Japanese political and business predators.

When Yokogawa Minsuke was alive, it was easy to say, because he was highly respected in the Japanese antique collection circle, and everyone did not dare to be presumptuous, but if he stretched his legs, everyone would sharpen their knives. After all, the descendants of Yokogawa , but not his status and fame.

And Yokogawa Minsuke also realized this before he died. He knew very well that if he died, if all his collections were left to his descendants, it would not be left to their wealth, but to them A curse, so he simply donated the fine porcelains of the Ming and Qing Dynasties in his collection to the Tokyo National Museum. It was his donation that greatly enriched the Chinese ceramics collection in Japan. , built the skeleton of the Tokyo National Museum's collection of Chinese porcelain.

After collecting this, Yongzheng pastel plum tree pattern plate, Jin Muchen did not stop too much, but continued to move forward.

Among the porcelain boutiques Yokogawa Minsuke donated to the Tokyo National Museum, the most elite ceramic works have already been in his pocket.

He was not in a hurry for the rest of the porcelain. On the one hand, it was because of the limited capacity in his Purple Jade Space, so many exquisite porcelains would definitely not be able to be taken away.

Therefore, he could only pick out a few of the top and most essential pieces to take away. On the other hand, it was also because the top-notch fine ceramics donated by Yokogawa Minsuke had already been searched by him.

However, another collection giant with the same reputation as Yokogawa Minsuke, Hirota Matsushige, has not visited the fine Chinese porcelain donated to the Tokyo National Museum.

Speaking of the Chinese ceramics collection of the Tokyo National Museum, in addition to Yokogawa Minsuke, another name that cannot be ignored is Hirota Matsushige.

Hirota Matsushige entered the Tokyo area when he was a teenager, studying and working part-time as an apprentice in a famous antique shop.

At the age of twenty-seven, because of the accumulation of some wealth, coupled with years of hard work in antique stores, the technology has achieved small achievements.

So he independently established an art store with a few like-minded friends, called Huzhongju.

Of course, although the name of this shop is called an art shop, it is actually an antique shop dealing with antiques, and the main products are Chinese ceramics.

It is for this reason that he traveled to China many times to receive goods. During the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, he was active in many well-known Chinese antique markets, such as Liulichang in Beijing and Dalian in Tianjin. Hutong Antique Street area.

Even where, he has made a certain reputation, because his eyesight is accurate enough, and he is also insidious enough. He often uses some indiscriminate methods to rob Chinese buyers. He also has a certain reputation in China's antiques industry. Of course, it is not a good reputation. This can be seen from the nickname the Chinese gave him. The Chinese antique dealers who dealt with him at that time did not have a good impression of him. Well, I gave him a nickname called Evil Dog.

Because if he makes a price for something he likes, and you are not satisfied and are unwilling to do business with him, he will collude with some local hooligans and go to you to take it by force.

If those local gangsters can't hold you down, then he will contact some Japanese b-society, or ronin to start.

Because the Japanese had a lot of power in China at that time, many people did not dare to offend these oriental little noses easily, so if they suffered under his hands, they could only recognize it by pinching their noses, but over time, the reputation of this guy in China would also be stinks.

As soon as many people heard that he was coming, they simply closed the door and did not do his business. In the end, this guy was good, so he didn't show up directly. He just used some agents to make acquisitions for him, but the methods were still the same dirty. despicable.

However, although this guy is a swindler in China and commits all kinds of crimes, in Japan, he is a law-abiding citizen, because he is just an ordinary antique dealer in Japan, and Takashima, and the society of well-known industrialists like Yokogawa The status is incomparable at all, so in Japan, he has always been a man with his tail between his legs.

And because of his despicable methods, he also scavenged a lot of good things from China, so that in the end, he was able to achieve the same status as Takashima and Yokogawa in the Japanese collection circle, and became a leader in Japanese Chinese antique collection at that time. One of the three outstanding representatives~www.wuxiaspot.com~ But like Yokogawa, he also realized a clear understanding when he was about to die. He knew that if his collections were left to his descendants, it would be a curse, so he could not forget himself. Many fine items were selected from the collection and donated to the Tokyo National Museum.

When he was dying, he donated a total of 294 pieces of Chinese porcelain to the Tokyo National Museum. Although the porcelain he donated was not as comprehensive and systematic as the collection donated by Yokogawa, from the perspective of the history of ceramic development There are a lot of blanks, but there are not a few high-quality products.

As an antique dealer, Hirota Matsushige had no plans to collect Chinese porcelain on a large scale from the very beginning. After all, he did not have the financial resources of Takashima and Yokogawa. He just bought some while running his antique shop. your favorite works.

But even so, as an antique dealer, he has the aesthetic vision and experience that collectors like Minsuke Yokogawa do not have. Therefore, the Chinese porcelain collected by Hirota Matsushige has all the artistic achievements in terms of artistic achievements. Has a very high standard.

For example, the porcelain that appears in front of Jin Muchen now is Hirota Matsushige. Among the Chinese porcelain collections donated to the Tokyo National Museum, the most famous is a Southern Song Dynasty official kiln porcelain: celadon cong-shaped vase. (To be continued.)