Word: qing
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There's no genie in a Chinese snuff bottle, but it's easy to see why these exquisite little phials - the height of fashion in 18th century Beijing - cast a spell on collectors today. Handcrafted from every material known to the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), including copper, glass, porcelain, jade, ivory and amber, each one is a miniature masterpiece of the applied arts. Rich in symbolism - achieved through decorative techniques such as enameling, stippling and relief carving - they served as courtly gifts and good-luck charms. And their social significance wasn't to be sneezed...
...status. Like endowing a university or hospital, it wins official gratitude. But more deliciously, it can make headlines as the world oohs and ahs over sums spent. In 2006, Hong Kong petroleum executive Alice Cheng paid $19.4 million for a prized decorated bowl, shattering the previous world record for Qing dynasty porcelain. In late September, Macau gaming tycoon Stanley Ho spent $8.9 million on a bronze horse head looted by British and French troops from Beijing's old Summer Palace, or Yuanmingyuan, in 1860. He then donated the artwork, which fetched the highest price ever paid for Qing sculpture...
...bought them along with a vase for $4 million. Those purchases helped spur patriotic interest in cultural artifacts among wealthy Chinese, who began bidding in auctions in New York City and London as well as Hong Kong. In 2003, mainland tire manufacturer Lu Hanzhen paid $1.5 million for a Qing vase, while Ho bought another Summer Palace bronze, a boar's head, from a U.S. collector for $723,000 - less than a tenth of what he paid to buy the horse head from an unidentified Taiwan seller...
...there already. Two are in a private European collection, and five are missing. But plenty of China's past is being hawked in the meantime. The Sotheby's auction that was to have included the horse head will feature items not necessarily looted but at least traceable to Qing palaces, including a jade seal worth up to $2.5 million and two paintings worth up to $1.9 million each. Those are high prices, but patriotic tycoons are happy to pay them...
...sale has calmed what threatened to be a highly controversial auction in Hong Kong next month. Sotheby's originally planned to sell the bronze - which was previously owned by a collector in Taiwan - at auction along with 30 pieces that were mostly traced to Qing palaces. A Chinese government-linked organization responsible for recovering looted cultural artifacts opposed selling the head at auction because there was no assurance that it would end up in China...