For example, a large Lingbi stone in the spring cold spring pavilion of the palace of Suzhou Master of Nets Garden, because it is named "Eagle Stone" because of the shape of an eagle falcon, has always been considered to be the only one in the classical garden Lingbi stone, originally according to the research of the landscape architect Chen Congzhou, it is a relic from the former residence of Tang Yin in Taohuawu, and moved here after the founding of the People's Republic of China.

Not long ago, because Master Yu participated in the compilation of a new book, he went to the field to investigate carefully, and concluded that it was a stone rather than a spiritual stone.

In May 1980, Chen Congzhou moved to the "Ming Xuan" of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, so it became famous overseas.

In February 2000, the Metropolitan Museum of Art "Ming Xuan" held a special collection exhibition with the theme of "Literati Appreciation of Stones: Garden, Study and Painting", collecting nearly 90 pieces of Chinese paintings on the theme of strange stones from the Song Dynasty to modern times from American public and private collectors, and at the same time unveiled more than 30 classical Chinese stones, from the famous "literati stone" collector Richard Rosenblum (Richard Rosenblum).

Unfortunately, during the exhibition (April), the collector died suddenly and suddenly due to illness at the age of 61.

However, the 15 square stones that he promised to donate to the Metropolitan Museum of Art are still safe and sound, and one of the stones donated by Rosenblum is also placed in the Cold Spring Pavilion as it is.

In terms of the four famous stones in ancient times, the stone should be the stone that can best meet the aesthetic standards of thinness, wrinkles, leakage and penetration, especially the characteristics of thinness and wrinkles are the most fully expressed, thin and bone, wrinkled and fan, whether horizontal mountains or vertical peaks, whether figurative or abstract, no matter so.

And there is a very interesting phenomenon, compared with other ancient stones, since ancient times, the stone has rarely been processed and optimized, and fraud is rare.

In my new book "Guide to Playing with Stones", I once followed the late Tang Dynasty poet Sikong Tu's "Poems" and chose 24 kinds of stones to correspond to one by one, among which the stone is "Qingqi", which is almost there.

The thinness of the stone is like the cold man who appreciates himself alone, and it is like the poetry style of the thin suburban cold island, which is strange and sad, steep and lonely;

The Qing Dynasty poet Chen Hongfan once had an anthropomorphic high summary of the structure of the stone: "Ask the gentleman what is the frown, independent is not too thin." Non-jade, non-gold, clear rhyme, no carving, no carving. ”

Master Yu specially reminded that although Yingde is the source of resources, the real place to play Yingshi is Shunde.

As a window of regional opening, Shunde attracts the fine products of the stone origin, and communicates with the outside world through here, creating a more high-end environment and platform for the stone, and integrating the "power of the two virtues to promote the stone".

This made Jiulong not expect, he thought to himself, if he has the opportunity in the future, he still has to go to Yingde and take it away, after all, Guangdong Province is a neighbor, if you want to go, it will be much more convenient.

Kowloon is a person who likes to break the casserole and ask the end, since the classical stone appreciation means inheritance, I don't know how many ancient stones have been handed down to this day, how to distinguish the ancient stone from the present?

After all, the current old-fashioned method is too powerful, and it is not difficult to turn the present stone into an ancient stone.

When Master Yu heard this question, he was very curious: "Xiao Huang, have you found an ancient stone?"

"No, but if Teacher Yu is willing to teach me, I may be able to find a treasure. ”

Kowloon jokingly responded.

"Indeed, now the only people who can go to the auction company's eyes are these ancient stones, even if you have a vision, I will talk about it with my personal experience. ”

Master Yu really can't ask, and he can answer the questions raised casually by Jiulong.

The so-called ancient stones, it is customary to call the strange stones of those who entered the collection before the end of the Qing Dynasty (broadly, you can also include the previous ones before the Republic of China) as ancient stones.

In recent years, some stones carved by ancient celebrities may be seen in the auction market, but most of them are old and counterfeit new stones, which is also a "hard-hit area" in the antique market.

At present, although ancient stone appreciation has become a mainstream auction market, its characteristics such as easy counterfeiting, scarcity and ugliness also make it a handful of collectors.

The so-called easy counterfeiting refers to the fact that whether it is the stone itself or the wooden base, it is easy to be old and forged, and it is difficult to identify it with illegal eyes.

Although some of them are old works, they do not match the actual age indicated, while many more are new works. The identification of ancient stone appreciation, especially the dating of the dynasty, is quite difficult.

Like the late American collector of "literati stones" Richard Rosenbrom, many Chinese and foreign collectors, as well as collection institutions and auction houses, often confuse new stones (old ones) with ancient stones. Because most of the ancient stone appreciation has no orderly (image) records, and there is no relevant standard artifact evidence from archaeological excavations.

In addition, the phenomenon that the base of the ancient stone appreciation and the stone appreciation age does not match abound, and many of the ancient stones that have been handed down now do not have the old seat, not to mention the original base, even if it is the so-called Ming style or Qing style base, it can not be completely determined its exact production age, such as the Qing Dynasty may also make the Ming base, and the Republic of China may also make the Qing base.

Therefore, it is often problematic to speculate on the age of the base (including the inscription) to speculate the initial age of the strange stone, and it is more of a logical judgment rather than an empirical analysis to determine the age of the ancient stone (except for the ancient stone in the garden).

The so-called scarcity means that the stone with the original old seat is hard to find.

I remember the 2008 autumn art auction, Hangzhou Xiling Seal Society Auction Company first launched the "China's first past dynasties for the stone special", caused a lot of shock (ancient stone appreciation has been only as a special topic in the auction), due to the collection of intentions (many of the stones are "Chinese ancient stones" recorded), the auction was a complete success, 57 lots of 84.20% of the turnover rate, turnover of 5.06 million yuan.

Among them, "Biaowang" is the Lingbi stone "Moyu Tongling" of Fang Yuan Zhiming on the cover of the catalogue, which comes from the Shanghai Tibetan stone family, and has the old (non-original) bluestone pedestal, which has been recorded in books such as "Chinese Ancient Strange Stones", and the transaction price is 515,200 yuan. Even so, there are several stones of questionable age that have been auctioned in this sale.

Later, although the auction company also continued to have ancient stone auctions, but due to the scarcity of ancient stone resources, the scale of collection was reduced, and the so-called first stone offering of the past dynasties became a masterpiece.

The so-called ugliness, that is to say, the ancient (classical) stone appreciation is often ugly for the beauty, the so-called thin wrinkles and leaks, clouds and rain feet, are not in line with the concept of formal aesthetics, which is a big gap with the cognitive level of contemporary people - this is also the fundamental reason for the decline of classical stone appreciation in modern times.

In particular, due to the limited level of development at that time, there were very few ancient stone appreciation stones that conformed to the classic structural modeling of thin wrinkles and leakage, clouds and rain feet, and more belonged to the kind of things that were incomplete and chaotic imagery.

In other words, there are very few ancient stones with perfect shapes, and if there are, you should pay extra attention to them.

It is very important to judge whether it is an ancient stone and look at the stone slurry.

However, it is difficult to have a quantitative scale to judge the age according to the color of the pulp, because to a certain extent, the pulp is related to the length of the playing time.

In fact, many ancient stones are not very rich in pulp.

The slurry can be artificially "quick", but the old slurry will feel a little "dirty", not bright and moisturizing enough, dark and shiny, and the stone surface slurry is often uniform, including some grooves and depressions, which is different from the old slurry.

Ancient stones are forged, and special beware of old and new stones.

That is to say, the seat is old, and the stone is new and old, and this kind of lethality is the most destructive.

Antique circles call it "coffin loading". The average person tends to lose their vigilance when they see the old seat, and they don't pay special attention to whether the stone is old or not.

Not long ago, a friend asked me to see a side that is said to be a Japanese return to the stone, a rough look at the stone has slurry, but it seems that the age is shallow, the base is taken out to see, the door is old, and the stone and the base tenon are relatively close, there are no traces of processing, so the preliminary judgment is the old stone.