Chapter 28: Bell of Awakening

  Soon, Zhou Ming Luo arrived in front of the second impression's booth.

  On this stall, there are many kinds of ceramics on display, including plates, bottles, cups and so on. However, what left a deep impression on Zhou Ming was a gourd-shaped bottle. The body of the bottle is just like a pumpkin, with each gourd ridge surrounding it, the belly protruding, the neck slender, and only at the mouth does it bloom like a flower. The whole thing is also pumpkin-colored, looking very beautiful.

  Under the gaze of Wenfu, this gourd-shaped vase has existed for a considerable number of years, at least two or three hundred years to settle that kind of thick and deep color of the years.

  He had also been fortunate enough to see similar bottles before, but only in museums.

  He followed Uncle Fang to rush about for more than three years, he not only shuttled between various places to purchase and inspect, but also visited museums in various places when he had the chance. After all, knowledge is not just about reading books, it's necessary to see real objects, accumulate experience with a large number of real objects, in order to have a deeper understanding of what you've learned from books or others' mouths.

  At that time, Zhou Mingluo took a quick look at this melon bottle and made a judgment. It should be the official kiln porcelain of the Song Dynasty.

  It is the famous Ru, Guan, Ge, Jun, and Ding five great Song dynasty official kilns, second only to Ru kiln porcelain in terms of official kiln porcelain.

  If this melon-shaped vase is indeed a genuine Song Dynasty official kiln porcelain, then it belongs to the same type of porcelain as the Guan vase purchased by Ren Hongshan for 300 million yuan, and its value is absolutely extraordinary.

  But when he first saw the melon-shaped vase, he didn't stay to appreciate it carefully either, because he didn't dare believe that he could find a Song Dynasty official kiln porcelain on a street stall.

  Although this is not absolutely impossible, a long time ago, a British collector was strolling through a flea market in the UK and happened to discover a Ru kiln porcelain, which he acquired for just a few pounds. He later donated it to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1971, where it became the first item in the museum's collection, numbered 0001. This is what you call being truly lucky.

  But this probability is absolutely lower than winning a big prize in the lottery by countless times.

  So Zhou Ming Luo didn't dare to believe it was true from the beginning, and he didn't stay to take a closer look. It wasn't until this time when he came to the stall that he carefully picked up the gourd bottle and began to observe it.

  Just a few minutes later, he was thoroughly convinced that the melon-shaped vase in his hand, which should be a Song Dynasty official kiln porcelain, was indeed a fake. A genuine official kiln melon vase has a flared mouth, goose neck, drum belly, and an outer foot, with a surface full of open pieces, thin along the mouth, and fine observation can see the brown embryo, and the exposed embryo at the bottom is also iron-brown. However, this fake in his hand does not quite match the shape, the overall melon shape is somewhat rough, and the foot is very shallow, the goose neck is a bit too large, and it looks like it's a notch lower than the real thing just from an aesthetic point of view, especially its glaze color is too bright, while the iron-brown color exposed at the bottom is too light.

  The characteristics of "zi kou tie zu" are obviously artificial counterfeits.

  Many times when looking at Song Dynasty official kiln porcelain, the most important thing to pay attention to is the purple mouth and iron foot feature. This refers to the thin glaze on the mouth revealing a purplish-colored body, while the foot ring reveals a reddish-brown color. This is a natural characteristic that appears due to the firing techniques used in official kiln porcelain at the time. However, many counterfeit pieces intentionally pursue and fake this feature.

  "It's indeed a fake, although it should be an ancient imitation, but the craftsmanship is a bit too rough, looks like a folk kiln work, basically not worth much money."

  After the Song Dynasty, many emperors of various dynasties pursued the five great kiln ceramics. In the late Ming dynasty and during the prosperous period of Kangxi and Qianlong, there were bursts of folk collection craze. Whenever a collection craze appeared, there were always counterfeit products in the antique market.

  This gourd-shaped vase is an antique, but it's probably a fake made by some antique dealers in the late Ming or Qianlong period to deceive people. It has almost no artistic value and it's hard to believe that such a forgery could still be circulated in the 21st century.

  Because he had been mentally prepared for a long time, Zhou Ming Luo didn't seem particularly disappointed at this moment, but instead calmly put down the gourd-shaped vase and walked towards his next goal.

  The third stall had a target that caught his eye, which was a pink and green glazed Qilin and Phoenix pattern plate from the Qing dynasty. The shape of this plate was truly beautiful, with a golden phoenix painted along the inner rim, four different colors, and a pair of Qilins spreading their wings and flying among flowers, exceptionally gorgeous, making one want to exclaim "beautiful" at first sight.

  But this stall owner is not a vegetarian either, when Zhou Ming asked for the price, he opened his mouth and said one million.

  Zhou Ming fell directly, such a plate is genuine, but the market price is only around 200,000 yuan, his opening price is even darker than the first boss.

  The fourth goal is still counterfeit.

  The fifth goal, the sixth goal...

  Until he had looked at six or seven, Zhou Ming's heart gradually felt a little disappointed. When he came to the eighth stall, he picked up his long-targeted target and examined it carefully, and he couldn't help but feel excited.

  Great stuff!!

  He has already reached the eighth goal, among dozens of ceramic stalls on the entire antique street, and thousands of ceramics were placed. He initially relied on the [Mò Wén Fú] transparent vision ability to find only nine goals.

  The previous seven had all been proven to be not worth taking out, but this eighth one really moved his heart.

  It turns out that Zhou Ming had also seen this thing early on, but at the first glance, he didn't pay much attention to it. The shortest time he spent on this thing was just a glance or two, and then he let it slip away, because when he saw it for the first time, he knew at a glance that it was a broken piece.

  A broken piece of porcelain was shattered into over a dozen pieces and then glued back together by someone.

  Even this porcelain piece is not very beautiful when it's stuck together, or the person who stuck it together was too unskilled. Even with the naked eye, you can easily see clear cracks.

  Using the "Mò Wén Fú" to gain X-ray vision, Zhou Ming Luo naturally couldn't be wrong, so even if he could see that this porcelain should have existed for at least one or two hundred years, but among the nine porcelains he didn't care about, it was precisely this one.

  After carefully excluding the previous seven pieces of porcelain, he finally came to this piece and carefully appreciated it. He was shocked to discover that this thing seemed to be a Qinghua glaze red peony flower sawtooth pattern bell-shaped vase. Judging from its style, it was also a polychrome work of the Kangxi period.

  "Is this a Qing Kangxi period blue and white glaze red peony patterned vase with serrated mouth? I remember seeing one at the Beijing Museum last time with Fang Shu, he said such porcelain is worth at least 3.5 million yuan or more. If this thing is real, it's really valuable, unfortunately, unfortunately it's broken, and it broke into over a dozen pieces, what a pity."

  A dealer in antiques most often does is to pick up leaks from others and then sell them at high prices to big collectors. To become a qualified dealer, the two most basic points are that your eyesight must be accurate and you must understand market trends.

  Your eyesight is accurate, but if you can't tell the true from the false, it's naturally not going to work. Understanding market trends is just as important. If you only have eyesight and can only distinguish between the authenticity of an antique, but don't understand its market price at all, then you won't be able to do this business either. After all, what you're doing is buying low and selling high to make a profit. If you don't understand the market price of an antique, how can you guarantee that you'll have money to earn?

  It's like that pink porcelain vase, if you can only tell whether it's genuine or fake but don't know its market price, the boss quotes 100,000 yuan, even if you haggle and buy it back for 30,000 yuan, you're still losing money.

  So in terms of ceramic appraisal, Zhou Ming Luo is also very proficient, this is a necessary basic skill.

  Looking intently at the bronze bell in his hand, Zhou Ming's heart was both excited and sorrowful. This was probably a genuine antique from the Kangxi period, worth 30 to 40 million yuan, enough to be classified as a mid-to-high-end antique, but it was just a fragment, what a pity!