Page 13 - Bonhams Roy David's Collection Nov 2014 London

Granted, therefore, in the grand scheme of things, the relatively
limited seepage of the finer/exceptional non-Imperial Chinese
domestic-market pieces, by the means allowed in the previous
paragraphs, primarily the large trading Companies and the
Private Traders, consideration can now be given to the very
substantial amounts of such finer/exceptional wares that
actually are or have been in the West.
This group suffers from not really having a name; from its
sources being less visible (if visible at all); its history scattered under the late Ming Emperors; indeed they are blame for the
and largely unrecorded; and its quantities somewhat, often
entirely, speculative. Sir Michael Butler says that he has come
to regret the use of the category ‘High Transitional’; we go
no further than, for our own purposes, describing the group,
for clarity and precision’s sake herein (though somewhat
cumbersomely) as ‘Finer/Exceptional Non-Imperially-Marked
Chinese Domestic-Market Wares’ (to differentiate them from
the more limited ‘Chinese taste’ pieces – a distinctive section
within our group, and between both of those types and Imperial
porcelains). It is instructive to note the absence of this type of
porcelain in the recent publication from the Victoria and Albert
Museum, ‘Chinese Export Ceramics’ by Rose Kerr, Luisa E.
Mengoni and Ming Wilson.
Many specific cases of how such Finer/Exceptional Non-
Imperially-Marked Domestic-Market Wares, as well as mark
and period pieces themselves, came to the West are touched
on in the introduction to ‘Provenance’ and may be found in
the general run of biographies in that book. Perhaps the most
fruitful contribution that can be made here is to bring together
these sources, opportunities and occasions in a general way,
and to observe that many other artefacts than porcelain would
have travelled along the same routes.
1. The most celebrated and notorious events are the
looting of the Summer Palace in 1860 and the looting of
the Forbidden City and the New Summer Palace in 1900.
Through these events very considerable numbers of Imperial
wares came to the West; this was not just the Imperially
marked ‘crockery’ of the palaces but the Imperial Collection
itself, much of it dating back 1,600 years, as well as the vast
number of both contemporary and earlier artefacts added
by the Qing Emperors. Apparently, also, when the Imperial
family left the Summer Palace in 1860, the Chinese living in the
neighbourhood rushed to get ladders and began looting for
themselves but were stopped initially by the French who were
the first of the Allies to arrive. However, when the Allies began
their own looting, the ‘Chinese from the surrounding villages
crowded in and added their numbers to the voracious looters
laden with bundles of spoil. Summer Palace loot was Exhibited
at the International Exhibition held in London on 1862 and at
the Crystal Palace at Sydenham Hill in 1865.
2. It is well known that palace officials in the
Nei Wu Fu (the Imperial Household Department, itself
1,600 strong under the Qing) and the eunuchs, the latter
sometimes called ‘palace rats’, consistently stole pieces
from the Palace and sold them in the markets in Peking
and elsewhere, especially in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. James Hevia dates these thefts by
eunuchs to ‘by the 1890s, and perhaps earlier’. There were
up to an estimated 100,000 eunuchs in the Imperial service
downfall of that dynasty. This number was reduced to 3,000
in the Forbidden City in the time of the Dowager Empress Cixi,
to 1,137 in 1911, and 1,000 in 1919. In 1923 when (under his
Scottish tutor Reginald Johnston’s influence) the Emperor Pu Yi
ordered an inventory of the Palace Collection, the eunuchs, it
was probably rightly claimed though not proven, set fire on 27
June to Chien Fu Kung (‘the Palace of Established Happiness’
[afterwards a tennis court]) to hide the extent of their peculation.
Johnston stated that 6,643 items were destroyed in the fire,
those saved 387. ‘The loss of irremediably damaged treasures
included [it was estimated], 2,685 gold Buddhas; 1,157
pictures, mainly Buddhistic; 1,675 Buddhist altar-ornaments
of gold; 435 articles of porcelain, jade and bronze, including
pieces of the Chou, T’ang, Sung and Yuan periods; thousands
of books; and 31 boxes containing sables and imperial robes.
The Emperor himself wrote: ‘heaven only knows what they
based these figures on’, but as he also recorded, a gold
merchant paid $500,000 for the right to dispose of the ashes
and recovered 17,000 taels of gold from them (a tael is the
equivalent of 50 grams in the modern Republic of China). On
another occasion Johnston found that when he discovered
eunuchs operating a scam selling Imperial artefacts for cash,
the eunuchs tried to implicate him by planting filched goods
in his mansion. Johnston also wrote generally ‘of thefts of
Palace treasures and the division of the spoils among high and
low’ and was appalled that there was no inventory. Johnston
specifically states that the ‘practice was to sell the articles
[from the palace treasure rooms] to a small and exclusive
ring of dealers whose close and permanent relations with the
Nei Wu Fu made it easier for both parties, who thoroughly
understood one another, to conduct negotiations on mutually
satisfactory terms. The prices actually paid were far in excess
of the amounts entered in the palace accounts, but far below
the market value of the articles sold’. Pu Yi himself accused
the eunuchs of an ‘orgy of looting’ and reduced their number
to 200, and then to 50. In his autobiography Pu Yi stated: ‘The
looters included everyone from the highest to the humblest;
anybody who had the chance to steal did so without the least
anxiety … Johnston told me that many new antique shops
had been opened in Ti An Men Street where he lived. Some
of these shops were said to be run by eunuchs and others by
officials of the Household Department or relations of theirs.’
Once on the market many of these goods, of course not just