ON 7 April, as part of its spring season in Hong Kong, Sotheby's sold 77 lots of Chinese imperial porcelain from the collection of Meiyintang. The announcement, last month the day on which the auction house held a sale of modernist art record in London, has attracted little public attention. But Chinese, news of the auction in Hong Kong followed the market of works of art were of a beam. For Meiyintang is regarded as the largest collection of Chinese treasures still in private hands in the West, a classified name along with Alfred Clark and Sir Percival David, passionate scholars, whose collections were among the most important ever made outside of the major museums in Beijing and Taipei.
Not long ago the Chinese were by the Communist Party celebrates the achievements of their ancestors. But with new fortunes by creating all the time now in China, dealers and collectors of Hong Kong and the Mainland have become enthusiastic buyers. They are thirsty of his own history, especially for anything that connects modern China with the glories of its imperial past. For the first time last year, according to a report published on 14 March, China has overtaken Great Britain to become the largest market of art in the world after America.
The demand for works of art Chinese has boosted prices, which in turn fresh treasures in the market. The traffic is almost entirely in a way. Chinese art in America and Europe is returning to China in the largest migration of culture from works European teachers traveled inexorably westward to America in the 19th century. Purchasers award rarity, quality and origin above all.
The Meiyintang collection will generate considerable Chinese interest for its quality and the secrecy surrounding its creation. Despite his fame, the collection of 2,000 rare pieces times has seen in its entirety and then only in private. Some works were exhibited in the British Museum in 1994 and at Monte Carlo two years later. The only public register is a monumental catalog by a German scholar, Regina Krahl. Although it extends to seven volumes, the catalog says nothing on which to join the collection.
Sotheby's, Ms Krahl and Giuseppe Eskenazi, distributor based in London who serves as Chief Adviser of Meiyintang, refused to identify those behind him. But The Economist has learned that the guiding hand is that of a Swiss businessman in 93 years of age, Stephen Zuellig. Born in the Philippines, Mr Zuellig and his brother, Gilbert, who died in 2009, spent 60 years building small Manila trading house based his father. Today the Zuellig group is a leading provider of services of the health care and pharmaceutical products in Asia and one of the largest companies in the region, with an annual turnover of about $ 12 million. The group, which still belongs to the family, has created a considerable fortune to the brothers.
The Zuelligs began to buy works of art Chinese in the 1950s by Helen Ling, the American wife of his partner of Singapore, which commercialized the Chinese porcelain in Shanghai. It was she who introduced them to Edward Chow, dominant Chinese coleccionista-distribuidor of post-war which was based in Hong Kong and later in Switzerland. At an early stage, the brothers were interested in the range of Chinese art, ancient to end of imperial porcelain bronzes. But they split their specialties by date: Gilbert concentrated on early ceramics from the Neolithic to the Song and Stephen dynasty porcelain of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties.
They chose the name Meiyintang, which means "Hall between rosebeds" in Mandarin, but also is a play on the Meienberg in Rapperswil, Swiss roots Southeast of Zurich which his grandfather purchased in 1912, where both brothers maintain a home and Stephen Zuellig shows its treasures in an underground Gallery for a long time.
The Zuelligs sought the best specialty stores, including Priestley and Ferraro for first works. Mr Eskenazi focused in later periods, and over a quarter-century, sold (or acquired on your behalf) pieces of more than 160. But it was Chow, a collector who inspired affection combined with a degree of astonishment, that he was influential in the Zuelligs.
Three fundamental criteria guided purchases: rarity of the work, the quality of its decoration and the condition of the piece. As a general rule, particularly with the treasures of the Qing dynasty, three complejos-dimensional pieces, such as vases, takes precedence over more utilitarian cups and bowls, with flat, being smaller and less desirable objects plates. Of course, the Zuelligs were not only collectors to implement these principles, but he is said to they have been particularly rigorous in the application. It is not enough that a work is rare or important; each piece that bought also had to have a personal aesthetic. "They bought both with the heart as the head," said Nicolas Chow, Sotheby's director in charge of the sale, which is also the grandson of Edward Chow.
The auction of next month is expected to be the first of many that focus, at least for the moment, the Yuan, Ming and Qing ceramics collected by Stephen Zuellig. Select what to include in this initial sale, Mr Zuellig has chosen pieces that represent a microcosm of the entire collection, ranging from the Yuan dynasty that began in the 13th century to the glories of the reign of the Qianlong emperor and his hijoJiaqing who died in 1820.
Most important are the early Ming goods cobalt blue and red copper decoration under the enamel, the monochrome Ming and Qing pieces and porcelain enamel early Qing if famille - Verte and famille - rose. Many of the works are unique. When Mr Eskenazi held an exhibition of seven ships of "peachbloom" of the Qing dynasty in 2006, Mr Zuellig bought two more rare pieces, a waterpot, and a "glass of three strings". He had examples of others. The Group of Meiyintang (pictured above) is estimated to sell next month for 50 million dollars HK-70 m ($ 6. 4 m - 9 m). Blue and white of Mr Zuellig Chenghua "Palace Bowl" can have a clear white interior, but the exterior decoration, with its large clusters of vine of melon, all painted in a watery blue and each subtly different, is the work of Chenghua at its best. Small surprise that Sotheby's estimates the bowl will be sold for 80 million dollars HK-120 m.
Similarly, the glass of eight inches (20 cm) painted with pheasants seems quite normal until compared with others of the same type. Each example is different, but only in the Zuellig Mr pheasant vase see you the combination of cream enamels, birds placed looking by far one of the other and yet a large part of an entire landscape and the subtle coloration as if became the painting on silk, instead of porcelain. Purchased in Hong Kong at the height of the Asian crisis in 1997 for HK$ 9. 9 m, and then a record for Qing porcelain, the Meiyintang pheasant vase now estimated 180 million dollars HK-300 m.
Every primary auction starts a new collection. With rare exceptions, Chinese purchases during the last decade has been a case of buying what is fashionable and expensive instead of collecting aesthetic passion and scholarly knowledge. Zuelligs Meiyintang porcelain is much a European collection of a particular flavour. China has some museums extraordinary, but not old collectors for new buyers to emulate. This will change over time, and the new private collections in China soon may be so unique in its way, as the Meiyintang is now.
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