Page 25 - Dr Yip April 2017 Poprtable Treasures

In 2002, Yip became conscious of his own physical decline furniture, giving attendees the opportunity to witness the collection
brought on by aging, and he began thinking of the words oft-
quoted by former Min Chiu Society Chairman J. M. Hu: “Inordinate
desire comes at a cost; possessions drain the spirit”. Hu himself had
donated his collection to museums in the years before his death.
After a stint in the hospital due to heart trouble, Yip decided to sell to abstain from purchasing shirts with price tags exceeding 300
a portion of his collection, in part to fund his retirement, and thus
the sale with Christie’s came to be, a special auction of important
Chinese Ming huanghuali furniture. At the auction, 40 pieces of
the 68 were sold, the total sale came to 22.62 million HKD. The
highest-selling three pieces sold for over 2 million HKD each,
including a Ming tri-panel huanghuali luohan bed with dragon
engravings, a huanghuali clothes rack with trellis pattern panel, and
a huanghuali waistless corner leg lute table.
From Tian Jiaqing’s perspective, the pieces in Yip’s collection
are not only early and rare as well as exquisite, they are, on the
whole, of high taste and artistic value, imbued, overwhelmingly,
with an air of the literati. Those familiar with Chinese art history
know that literati taste is the soul of Ming furniture. It is this
scholarly air that has propelled Ming furniture to the top among
Chinese art mediums. Such is expressed through form, and this
perfection in form is derived from the whole of each piece as well
as individual parts, achieving harmonious proportional perfection,
as well as resonance among elegant and flowing lines, curves,
and curvatures. Each outstanding piece of Ming furniture is like
a perfect work of calligraphy, the spaces between each word and
each line rife with fascinating rhythm.
“I separate my collection into two categories. Many of
the pieces in the present auction are ones that I acquired with
meticulous care, with blood, sweat, and tears; these are the ones
that I cannot but part with today. Fortunately, the half that I’m
keeping contains some similar substitutes. Because my collection is
large and complete, I must be able to guarantee that whether it’s
the pieces for auction or the pieces I’m keeping, they are of and
in themselves a definitive set of sufficient numbers and types. Of
course, completeness is a relative term. Having a truly complete
collection is impossible. Additionally, all of the pieces in the
auction have appeared in three catalogues that have already been
published, each catalogue corresponding to an exhibit. This would
sufficiently guarantee that each piece of antique furniture in my
collection is authentic and of high quality,” says Yip in 2002.
A Twilight Return to the Summit
In 2003, with the gradual recovery of his health, Dr Yip once
again travelled around the world again in collection of his beloved
Ming furniture. After the sale of part of his collection, he felt an
urgency to reorganize his collection together with the new pieces he
had acquired. His third individual collection catalogue, published
in 2007, The Dr. S.Y. Yip Collection of Classic Chinese Furniture III:
Feast by a Wine Table Reclining on a Couch, documents 72 pieces
of antique Chinese furniture, including the formally simplistic and
stylistically elegant 16-17th century Ming furniture as well as the
splendid and opulent pieces of 18th century Qing court furniture.
Among them were all types of chairs, stools, tables, cabinets, beds,
sofas, and corner tables, as well as artistic or aesthetic implements,
such as brush pots, screens, and small boxes. Today, on the basis
of the 160 or so pieces of Ming furniture in his collection, Yip
has once again become one of the world’s most important Ming
furniture collectors, an incredible feat for someone who at one time
had sold off most of his collection. In 2012, he also returned to his
position as Chairman of the Min Chiu Society. In the same year Yip
collaborated with Grace Wu Bruce to hold the “Grace Wu Bruce
Presents A Choice Selection of Ming Furniture from Dr S.Y. Yip
Collection” exhibition at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition
Centre. For this exhibit, Yip meticulously selected 20 pieces of Ming
standards of an older generation of Ming furniture collectors.
Despite being financially comfortable, Yip’s lifestyle
requirements have been exceptionally simple. He’s been known
HKD, but it’s a different story for the furniture pieces he loves. One
time he immediately offered up the money for a huanghuali lute
table that he had missed out previously. “The owner remarked
that I was a fast buyer. Of course I knew the origins of the table.
What a shame that it was later sold off in New York.” With the
prices of Ming furniture reaching new heights in the last two years,
purchasing new pieces has truly extended beyond Yip’s reach. But
this, for him, has also reduced his load of worries. “I can’t buy
anymore anyway; it’s actually a relief.”
“The antiques world commonly uses the term ‘discriminating
eye’ in evaluating a collector’s appraisal abilities. I think this
discriminating eye includes components of both aesthetic
understanding as well as appreciation. Yip’s position at the top
of these rankings is due, overall, to his ability in appreciating
and examining various different types of antiques and art pieces.
He’s a rare one in the world of collection. For him, there was a
natural resonance with Ming furniture from the very beginning, as
if he were endowed with an innate kinship with these huanghuali
furniture. Also, he knows to strike with the iron’s hot. Being able
to amass such an impressive collection in so short a time is an
astonishing accomplishment. There must be, I believe, some
innate element of artistic sensibility, further nurtured by years of
exposure to Eastern and Western culture and art, as well as his
early experience collecting jade, calligraphy and paintings and
ancient implements. Chinese art, ultimately, is all interconnected,
deriving from a single origin, and the art of collection follows the
same structure”. Tian Jiaqing has only words of praise for Yip’s
discernment in collecting, an admiration that also extends to Yip’s
diligent commitment to research. “Yip has an attitude of openness
about his collection. His pieces have been displayed in various
universities and museums in the United States, Singapore, Hong
Kong, China, Macau, Taiwan, and so on. The earliest exhibition
was held in 1991 at the Art Museum of the Chinese University of
Hong Kong. This was the first individual Ming furniture exhibit,
which was accompanied by an international discussion panel, as
well as the publication of a catalogue and essay series. This caused
quite a stir of momentum in the world of furniture collection. From
then on, this model combining collection, exhibition, discussion and
publications became increasingly popular, fulfilling the dreams of
many collectors”.
* Translated from the original “Dr. S.Y. Yip’s Furniture Collection” by Yang Lie,
first published in Art Trade Journal, January 2015.
Dr. S. Y. Yip with Dr. Irvin H. Blank, Ph.D, President of the Society for Investigative
Dermatology, 1965-1966, Harvard Medical School
葉承耀醫生與皮膚病學研究協會會長歐文·布蘭醫生，1965-1966年，
哈佛大學醫學院
PORTABLE TREASURES : THE DR S.Y. YIP COLLECTION
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