Chapter 7 A Porcelain Plate

  Entering the antique city, what comes into view is a wide and flat main road. On both sides of the main road are low-rise buildings, no more than three stories high, with elegant decorations. In front of the shops along the road, there are also many people setting up stalls along the street.

  It's almost noon now, but in front of the stalls or various shops, people are still coming and going, which can be said to be lively.

  Steadily stepping forward, Zhou Ming quickly arrived at the first stall on the street corner, slightly bending down, and turned his gaze to look at the stall. The entire stall was filled with currency.

  All kinds of ancient coins, many of which are rusty and few are well-preserved, including knife coins and ge coins from the pre-Qin period, as well as square-holed round coins after Qin's unification.

  One by one, Zhou Mingluo carefully examined the entire stall and found that among this pile of ancient coins, at least a dozen or so were very old, judging from their material.

  "More than ten old coins? That means these more than ten coins may indeed be genuinely passed down from ancient times."

  At this thought, Zhou Mingluo's heart was slightly moved, but he didn't take immediate action. Because in the field of ancient coins, he wasn't very skilled!

  One of the popular counterfeiting methods in today's ancient coin market is the "qi zi fa" method, which uses blank ancient coins to imitate genuine ones by selecting corresponding ancient coins based on their size. This type of counterfeit still uses ancient coins and cannot be identified as authentic or fake simply by looking at the material.

  It's like using old paper to fake a celebrity's calligraphy, you absolutely can't determine authenticity by material.

  Once it's a forgery, even if the material is genuine antique, the cultural and artistic essence contained in it is fake, and it will definitely not have "wenqi", after all, "wenqi" comes from the cultural and artistic essence of antiques.

  Of course, this is not to say that the cultural art of modern people is all fictional, but rather that the hint given by the Yellow Book shows that it can only absorb the "cultural energy" within ancient objects and cannot directly absorb modern things. Zhou Ming Luo doesn't understand the reason, nor can he change anything about it.

  So when selecting genuine antiques, he must choose his strongest area of expertise, which requires strict professional knowledge.

  And his best aspect is porcelain, because Fang Shu Tong's expertise lies in porcelain appraisal.

  After some thought, Zhou Ming Luo continued on his way, passing by other antique stalls selling furniture and calligraphy along the way. He was just taking a casual glance, even when he saw some old antiques with good materials, he didn't have any special feelings.

  Only when he walked in front of some stalls selling ceramics would his pace slow down.

  Whether staying for a minute or two, or just walking away in tens of seconds, each stall flashes by one after another. The items inside, regardless of their category, are all presented with great appeal, making it easy to mistake the fake for the real. If an average person were to come in, they would likely get lost quickly, but for Zhou Ming Luo, this is not a problem. Although many modern antique collections involve old imitations, such cases are relatively rare after all.

  Let's take a simple example, if a genuine calligraphy is buried among 99 fake ones, how many of them can be made from old paper? The majority must be new paper, after all, old paper can be found but it's impossible to mass-produce.

  Those that can be forged with old paper are absolutely the best among the counterfeit goods, and it's not bad to have three or four of them out of 99 fake ones. Most of the other counterfeit goods use various modern means to create an appearance of aging and antiquity on the surface, but inside they still use new materials.

  So ordinary people want to find the true work among 100 pieces of calligraphy and painting that are almost identical at a glance, it must take an extremely terrible effort, which is one in a hundred.

  But for Zhou Ming Luo, as long as he scanned it once, he could rule out all the newly created fakes and just lock his target on three or four targets. Although the remaining ones still needed to be identified by himself, but that was already convenient enough.

  Very soon, after a few minutes passed, Zhou Minglu hastily walked through one-fifth of the street. Along the way, he passed by several ceramic stalls, but what made him depressed was that these ceramic stalls didn't even spare any expense to fake it, and almost all the ceramics were made from new clay.

  There isn't even high-end counterfeit goods inside.

  A few minutes later, when he arrived at a new ceramics stall again, his eyes suddenly lit up and his gaze fell on a ceramic plate that was more than 20 centimeters in size.

  The plate is very beautiful, with a diameter of more than 10 inches at the bottom. The shape is elegant and refined, with a gentle and flowing beauty, and the thickness is just right.

  However, these are not the reasons that make Zhou Ming's face change. At this moment, everything in the ceramic plate under his gaze is as transparent as glass. From the outside, the entire plate is seamlessly connected, like a perfect ceramic plate. The problem is that when you look through the surface, the internal structure of the bottom plate and the surrounding ceramics are obviously different.

  The bottom of this ceramic plate is old earthy color inside and out, but the rest of it except for the bottom is new ceramic material, two colors are completely different.

  The old part of the ceramic plate is a roughly square-shaped object with equal length and width. Zhou Ming fell in love with it at first sight, but he was certain that the plate was fake. Except for the square base, all other parts were newly made ceramics attached to it.

  But the base in the center of that section, which was fired from old earth, should be truly handed down porcelain, and has been preserved for a long time.

  However, this still piqued Zhou Mingluo's interest, which was the first somewhat old ceramic he found after using "Mouwenfu".

  He slowly crouched down and picked up the disc to take a look.

  This gaze is just aimed at that square base, under silent attention, the rough outline of the base is clearly visible to Zhou Ming. If you only look at the pattern on this base, it's not complete, like a complete picture torn apart by someone, no matter which piece is held in hand, it's incomplete.

  The pattern is incomplete?

  Zhou Ming's heart sank instantly, and he was greatly disappointed. Even if this base had been around for some years, it should still be a defective piece, no wonder it would be used with new ceramic pieces to make up a complete ceramic plate.

  Even if it's a genuine antique, its value is still limited.

  However, Zhou Ming Luo did not immediately put down the plate, but instead continued to watch it seriously, the entire plate had strong coloring power, bright and vibrant colors, stable color presentation...

  Various characteristics made his heart suddenly move, this should be Qinghua porcelain.

  The entire base is even more delicate and light, with fine patterns and a glaze without orange peel texture, carrying a hint of Yuan dynasty style, and the workmanship is extremely fine. Qinghua porcelain, with a hint of Yuan qinghua style, it's probably Ming qinghua.

  At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the porcelain produced in China was still prevailing in the Yuan style. After all, it was only then that the Ming Dynasty had just snatched the world from the hands of the Yuan Dynasty. It wasn't until the Xuande period of the Ming Dynasty that Qinghua porcelain completely got rid of the residual wind of the Yuan Dynasty and created its own style and charm.

  "The blue and white flowers have the style of the Yuan Dynasty, it should be a Qinghua from the early Ming Dynasty. This is also an antique, a real Qinghua, unfortunately, it's a damaged piece, otherwise, it would have some value."

  His face was calm and peaceful, but Zhou Ming's mind was racing with all sorts of thoughts, and he was about 80% sure that this was Qinghua.

  What's wrong with the remaining device? The remaining device is just being acquired at a low price in modern people's hands, but don't forget that he came to find antiques to find [wenqi] to let the yellow skin book absorb.

  Is there no "wenqi" in the remaining device? He's really not clear about this. If there is also "wenqi" in the remaining device, then if we buy this Qinghua now, it can be a good experiment.

  Blue flower, after all, this is blue and white porcelain.

  The great name of Qinghua porcelain may not be known to everyone, but it is absolutely renowned.

  On July 12, 2005, a "Ghost Valley Down Mountain" Yuan Qinghua large vase was auctioned in London, UK, with a transaction price of RMB 230 million, which could buy 2 tons of gold at the international price on that day.

  And this can is 27.5 cm high, 33 cm in circumference, and weighs about 20 catties.

  In terms of volume, this Yuan Qinghua is the most expensive porcelain in the world, and the highest price for a single piece of craftsmanship was also created by this Yuan Qinghua.

  Even if this base is not a unified Jiangshan Junlin Tianxia period of Yuan Qinghua, Ming Qinghua is still a very important period in the history of ceramics. The other day, at Sotheby's Hong Kong 2011 autumn auction, a Ming Yongle Ru Yi Chuijian Zhezhiflower and fruit pattern plum bottle was sold for HK$168 million, refreshing the world record for Ming dynasty ceramic auctions.

  Although it is impossible for every piece of Ming dynasty porcelain to have that price, it also belongs to the rare and precious. Generally speaking, many genuine Ming blue and white porcelains still have a good value. Since they are valuable, this base of Ming blue and white porcelain should possess "cultural charm" when intact. This thing is so valuable, isn't it because it owns the thick humanistic artistic crystallization? If it has when intact, then the damaged condition doesn't necessarily not have it either.

  This period of observation time also quietly slipped away, and when Zhou Ming picked up his phone again, he found that nearly ten minutes had passed, and the time limit for finding the text was also rapidly slipping away.

  "Never mind, I'll just buy this broken device for now and study it carefully when I get home."

  Just as Zhou Ming was about to make a purchase, he suddenly changed his expression and took out the ceramic plate in his hand again. He suddenly remembered that he had overlooked one thing, and it was possible that the blue and white flower on the bottom of the plate was not a fragment, but an intact blue and white flower.