ESOTERIC COLLECTING

Fig. 18. J & J jet, no. 91. Like so many works of art, but particularly those involving the literati themselves as artists or direct patrons, this unpretentious little bottle carries an extraordinary amount of coded information that can be decoded by ule creative au– dience and transformed into mean– ing at many levels. The toIly eso– teric collector, the creative coUector, would follow all of these pams of meaning on each bottle acquired, exhaustively researching every as– pect of meaning and, at the same time, honing individual conscious– ness on the whetstone of art. We published anomer similar bottle, also wim a painting in typi– cal Jiangnan nineteenth-century style, in the J & J Collection cata– logue 4 and, it being unsigned, we were at the time unable to identify it further, almough we did associate the style wim the mid-nineteenm centuty painter Wang Su from Yangzhou (fig. 18). Since then an– other aspect of esoteric collecting has allowed us to see it in a new light. This aspect is anomer basic tool of esoteric collecting. It is ex– ploring cross references between works of art, which leads to what we call connoisseurship. It is the art of identifying style or artistic nu– ance, the personality of an artist, place or period. In the Franz Col– lection in Hong Kong, acquired since we published the J & J exam– ple, is a closely similar jet bottle painted in identical style, which is signed with the art name Zhubin. This was the zi or adopted given name of Zhao Qi, of Yizhen in Jiangsu province. More excitingly we find here the corroborative de– tail needed to cement an identifica– tion. Zhao Qi is listed as a pupil of the artist Wang Su, to whose style we attributed the J & J bottle. This allows us to read the cyclical date on Ule Franz bottle as 1876, thus providing a vety likely identity for the artist and approximate period for the J & J bottle. There are many other examples in both me J & J book and me Bloch series we are working on at presentS where we have explored me names mat appear on individ– ual bottles and published the re– sults so I won't continue down this path here. Indeed these books are intended for the esoteric collector in us all which is one reason why tl1ey are Sb long-winded, a diticism gently leveled at us by a number of people. We have tried to explore all aspects of meaning in the alt form for this series of books so that mey act as both well-lighted pauls to the esoteric core of our hobby and Signposts to as many other possible paths as we can identify. I mentioned before that we would return to me reliability of the various biographical dictionar– ies. We published this jade bottle (fig. 19) from me Bloch collection in the first volume of his catalogue, identifying it with the Jiaqing Em– peror, as listed in the Zhongguo meishujia renmin cidian, the most useful and comprehensive of the biographical dictionaries of artists. In me recent catalogue of an exhi– bition of part of Humphrey Hui's collection at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Peter Lam published the results of some extraordinary and exciting research into various Imperial hall names and individu– als, among which was evidence that the source we used was wrong and mat tilis hall was in fact the hall of the Daoguang Emperor who suc– ceeded Ule Jiaqing emperor in 1821. Ah well, we all make mistakes, it is part of me process of learning and certainly part of the process of reaching for inner meaning. In any field of endeavor the discovery of past mistakes indicates progress. In 14 Fig. 19. Bloch jade basketweave. the same article, Peter Lam pub– lished proof mat me Guyue Xuan (the 'Old Moon Pavilion') was, in fact, a subsequentiy destroyed hall built by 1767 as part of a retirement home for the Qianlong Emperor in the complex of gardens known col– lectively as me Summer Palace. This is vital new information that will allow us to review the whole subject of Guyue Xuan wares and perhaps resolve the outstanding anomalies and the most important discovety in this complex mystety for more man a century. This infor– mation raises some questions aboUl what I wrote in the J & J book about ti,e su bject, but that is Ule nature of research and the excite– ment of it. If we don't learn from our mistakes we will be in serious twuble, and if this sounds like a rather Clintonesque apology there is a good reason for it. What the discovery of me Guyue Xuan demonstrates is that there was an lmperial hall of mat name. It com– plicates the conclusion I came to of the ·splitting of the name Hu Xuan to form the hall name Guyue Xuan, but it doesn't necessarily contradict it. There is still a body of wares, all datable to me immediately post 1767 period, which bear Guyue Xuan marks, and some of which bear Imperial designatirns as well. Two bear the name Hu Xuan, one combining it wim me hall name Guyue Xuan. These were made at the time the Qianlong Emperor's