Recently acquired a set of five ink stones with their original boxes from a dealer in Singapore. Clearly they were covered with an ugly purple dye. He was honest about the purple dye, thought it was an inferior wood like blackwood dyed to make it look like zitan and therefore not so valuable etc. I bought the 5 boxes with oirgnal ink stone intact for Singapore dollar 1000 which is cheap even for blackwood. So I take them home and start cleaning out the dye with some water and soap. It comes off relatively easily. Under the ugly purple dye, lo and behold the boxes are actually zitan. I get them valued And it is suddenly about 10x what I paid for them. Why would you stain zitan to look more like zitan? Can someone enlighten me about this practice? Seems somewhat silly to me to cover zitan with a purple dye. The best explanation I heard is since most collectors in Singapore and Hong Kong had never ever really seen zitan only heard about it, and its famed purpleness and blackness. They found real zitan too light. Dealers obliged by dyeing it darker and it made it easier to sell. However this is pure speculation on my part. Any insights would be welcome For your pleasure are attached pictures of two of the boxes which have great mother of pearl work. The other three are just finely carved. All this beautiful pure grain was hiding under uniform black stain
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 15:55:52 +0000
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