| Original Message: Two artists and/or two styles |
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Nick - I noticed the difference between the cloud motifs on the rounds vs. those on the ovals, too. The more skilled artist who did the designs for the ovals may not have been prior in time to the person who made the round beads - they could have been working simultaneously, one a survivor from the 1920s, the other a new recruit. Or, a single artist could have taken more time to do the ovals, and just cranked out the rounds as a sort of break from having to concentrate. Or, an older artist could have drawn the designs for the oval beads, and someone else did the wire work. Chinese accounts are adamant on the labor-intensive quality of cloisonne, and how it takes years of training. The level of detail in the dragons (and other motifs) seems to me to reflect manufacture by an older artist skilled in the classic motifs. As to these beads being products of the 1970s....there is the Cultural Revolution to consider, which started in 1966. Accounts agree that it affected the cloisonne cooperatives, the net effect seeming to be the disappearance of any Buddhist or Taoist motifs. Mao, if I understand a Zhang Lu interview correctly, told the Beijing cooperative to stop making dragons. Only revolutionary themes for the peasants and workers. So when it came to beads, all that was safe to produce were flowers, butterflies, and birds, even after the Cultural Revolution waned in the mid-1970s, and were all standardized to allow production by relative newcomers to the craft. By the time the 1990s rolled around, the older craftspeople from the 1920s were likely dead, hence the new versions of the traditional motifs that were once again allowed are noticeably different than the pre-WWII versions. For those who'd like to compare pre-WWII work versus 1990s, here are some dragons (two older, one newer) You can see why I think the yellow oval beads were designed by someone older. All rights reserved by Bead Collector Network and its users |
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