Page 23 - Dr Yip April 2017 Poprtable Treasures

DR S.Y. YIP’S FURNITURE COLLECTION*
What stories must lie behind a man’s journey from physician to
internationally renowned furniture collector? From the perspective
of S.Y. Yip—chairman in 1988 and 2012 of the Min Chiu Society,
Hong Kong’s prestigious society of art and antique collectors—this
evolution was a natural one. Born into a physician’s family in 1933,
Yip spent his early school years in Hong Kong and later travelled
to London to pursue a medical degree, then to Cambridge and
Harvard to be trained as a dermatologist, returning in 1965 to his
homeland to run a private practice. Unlike other high-income Hong
Kongers, Yip didn’t take to the usual hobbies, explaining, “I lack
the constitution for athletics, so I figured perhaps studying Chinese
history and culture was a more suitable.” Under the tutelage of two
uncles, Yip, then a complete amateur when it came to antiques,
dived headfirst into art collection.
A consistent standard of “genuine and authentic pieces only;
no defective pieces” has shaped Dr S.Y. Yip’s furniture collection.
“My starting point is to strive for many pieces that would make up a
complete and formidable collection”.
Then Chairman of the Min Chiu Society, J. M. Hu (Hu
Huichun) was often heard quoting these lines from the Tao Te
Ching: “Inordinate desire comes at a cost; possessions drain the
spirit”. It was perhaps due in part to his influence, that in 2002,
Dr S.Y. Yip commissioned Christie’s of New York to auction the
precious collection he had cultivated for years. Later, however, Yip
discovered he was unable to remain as debonair as Hu, and found
himself longing for the pieces, the way one misses old friends, he
described. And so for the next ten years, he quietly reassembled
other precious pieces to replace what he had released, and
expanded his collection considerably. Dr Yip’s Ming furniture
collection soon became recognized as supreme in the circle of
furniture collectors.
S.Y. Yip of “Gong Yu Shan Fang”
Sets His Sights on Furniture
“In the early years I collected calligraphy, ceramics, but not
much came of it; I didn’t have many particularly good pieces.
So then I turned to Ming furniture”. S.Y. Yip, exhibiting his usual
modesty when it comes to talking about his furniture collection,
says, “Perhaps it’s because as a child I was always climbing up
and down old tables and chairs, playing hide-and-seek and so on.
Then, in the 1950s, when I was studying medicine in London, the
old furniture in the city’s antique stores really coaxed my interest
in antique furniture. By the 1960s, I was working as a physician
at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital, which brought me
in even closer contact with the antique furniture on Charles Street
nearby”. As he recalls from memories his earlier days in England
and the U.S., Yip concedes that his interest in furniture was already
taking shape at that time.
A native of Guangdong province, Yip’s name came from a line
in a poem written by his ancestor Ye Guangda, under a tradition
in which each generation in the lineage takes the same single
character from the line of poetry “guang ming zheng da cheng jia
fa” ( 光明正大承家法 , meaning “to justly and honourably carry out
the family principles”) as their middle name. Yip’s grandfather
belonged to the first wave of Chinese to immigrate to Hong Kong
in the early 1900s, and at the height of his prosperity, he owned
many buildings on Nathan Road in Kowloon. Later, however, the
family entered a gradual decline. Yip’s first son was born just as the In 1988, Yip organized a group from the Min Chiu Society for
family was dividing up the estate, each person receiving a share
of only tens of thousands of Hong Kong dollars. Yip’s status today
can be attributed entirely to his rigorous educational training and
personal discipline. By his third year at Hong Kong University, he
was admitted to the University of London St Bartholomew’s Hospital
Medical College and after medical residencies in both London,
Cambridge and the United States, he completed his specialist
training in dermatology at Harvard Medical School. In 1965,
32-year-old Yip returned to Hong Kong and began his own private
practice. A few years later, as the clinic became more established,
he discovered that he had some extra cash on his hands. It
happened that at the time, two of his uncles were into collecting,
which aroused a causal interest in Yip. Yip’s fifth uncle collected
antique jade, while his seventh uncle collected ceramics. This meant
his standards were set at a considerable height from the beginning,
even before he had decided which direction to go toward. In 1971,
when his fifth uncle passed away, he left his antique jades and a
horizontal calligraphic felague “Gong Yu Shan Fang” ( 攻 玉 山 房 ,
meaning “Jade Study”) to Yip. This title appears as an inscription by
Qing dynasty calligraphist Yi Bingshou, and Yip considers it one of
his most beloved possessions. Soon after receiving the inheritance,
Yip’s archaic jade collection helped him gain membership into the
Min Chiu Society.
In the early 1970s, the members of the Min Chiu Society
were the most active and lively among Chinese antique
collectors. Established in 1960 as a private collectors’ group,
its members were among the elite in the business world, as well
as other professions and industries. A prized collection was but
one requirement for joining the group; personal character and
profession were also evaluated for consideration. With fewer than
50 members, the collection of antiques within the group was
varied and wide-ranging. Founder and first chairman J. M. Hu, Hu
Huichun was a heavyweight ceramics collector, with vast knowledge
in ceramics. Some of the pieces in Yip’s ceramics collection are
those once brought over from Shanghai by Hu.
The way Yip sees it, J. M. Hu, Edward T Chow (Qiu Yan
Zhi), and the other collectors who emigrated south from the old
Shanghai have been the main influence upon the trend of art
collection in Hong Kong for the past four decades. “Mr Hu was a
banker. He travelled frequently to all parts of the world, purchasing
antiques with bars of gold. He was incredibly meticulous in his
selection and preservation, renting private planes to have them
shipped back”. Yip continues, “His understanding of ceramics
was considerably thorough. Already, back then, I felt like the
Shanghainese were more cultured than we Cantonese”. There
were always, however, many collectors within the precincts of Hong
Kong, with participation even from non-locals, and the prices of
ceramics never came down. Although Yip was already a renowned
dermatologist, his purchasing power was far short of what the
bankers or collector families could offer, so he instead turned to
collecting calligraphy and paintings, a relatively less expensive
endeavour at the time. In 2005, auction house China Guardian
hosted a special auction of 92 pieces of classical and modern
calligraphy paintings from Yip’s private collection. Among them,
a three-metre long piece by Huang Binhong titled Shanchuan
Woyoutu ( 山川臥遊圖 ), purchased by Yip in 1980, was finally sold
for 6,380,000 RMB, setting a new record for an individual painting
for the artist.
In the initial days of collecting, Yip was resolved to acquire
only the most prized antiques, but the maturity of the Hong Kong
market for ceramics and calligraphic paintings made it extremely
difficult for Yip to try to carve out a personal aesthetic or path.
an expedition to the mainland. During the trip, he and the other
members chatted over dinner. “I said that getting one’s hands on
the most coveted items was the ultimate goal. Take ceramics, for
example, if you have a few hundred pieces, yet I have a Chenghua
PORTABLE TREASURES : THE DR S.Y. YIP COLLECTION 21