The blue and turquoise shakers are documented to 1939. The dragon shaker with the same shape and feet presumably dates to the same era. The other dragon decorates a small smoking set (the size of the matchbox cover gives some indication of overall size).

You can see how details differ in the dragons - style of nose, horns, mane, belly scales, bulbous horn base on forehead, coloring, etc etc - although they present an overall similar appearance.

Hence my observation that the dragons on the yellow oval bead seem to be more old-school. An older craftsman who survived the 30s and 40s, still working in the 1970s? What's your guess?

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.

When Chinese cloisonné beads were first being popularized again in America and elsewhere during the early 1970's, the level of detail and quality of motif in Chinese craftsmanship was superior to work which was being done in China in the 30's and 40's. But after only one year, it deteriorated; the highest price the 1970's market would bear would not support the initial variety and detail in the new Chinese cloisonné beads. -Quality control is often a problem in China.

I handled these beads in the early seventies; I began as a bead dealer with cloisonné beads while I was going to California College of the Arts. And the yellow background color and size of the aperture in these beads makes it obvious to me that these beads are a product of the seventies and not from an earlier period.

~Usually, it is the color of the enamel and size of the hole which is the best indication of age -not level of detail in decoration.

Just Fred

Quality control isn't just a Chinese problem, of course.
And consumer taste has a great deal to do with what gets made.

Perhaps the nicer cloisonne beads with Buddhist symbols were not made in the early 1970s, nor after Mao died in 1976, but in the 1960s, and were gotten rid of via Hong Kong once the Cultural Revolution made ownership of such things evidence of bourgeois reactionary leanings?

Second-hand provenance from heirs selling off old pieces from estates is equally deceptive - they tend to make up stories to fit their remembrances, not what actually occurred. For example, describing a necklace that is clearly 1970s-80s beads as 1940s because Dad was in the navy then near China and can only have bought it for Mom when he was there. You will recollect my recent post about a carnelian and cloisonne necklace thought to be purchased in the 1930s. German advisors were indeed employed in China in the 1930s - but did Dad buy this necklace for Mom then, or in later years? The people who actually know what happened are dead.

"'The Eight Happy Opens of Buddhism'represent a mixture of Buddhist and traditional Chinese values. ... when oriental symbols are shown with ribbons attached to them, the ribbons endow the objects with supernatural powers (they also make for a more decorative symbol)."

The umbrella, ceremonial canopy, conch shell, everlasting knot, wheel of law, lotus flower, double fish, covered jar.

The rolled lip of the vase in the picture is more typical of post-1949 work, but the enamels are definitely the old standards, and the finish lacks the perfect pit-less polish of current work.

These symbols appear in the nicer older cloisonne beads.

The Beijing Enamel Company has been selling off its old warehouse stock from when it went bankrupt in 2002 (I think that was the date), including many bead necklaces. Even these mass-produced beads are very unlikely to ever be made again because they are so labor-intensive that their cost is prohibitive. Attractive cloisonne beads are now made for those Pandora-style bracelets, but they're nothing like the old necklace beads.

Whether you are right or wrong now is beside the point -with much work
you may become the highest authority on Chinese cloisonné beads!
Wishing you all the best on your journey.

Just Fred

Nobody, and only she is asking the questions that 'need' asked, nobody has offered/given any real proof in answering with certainty. If anything, Chris, alone, has taken the pains to wade the waters of speculation in search of provenance from unknowing sellers of these beads.

If Chinese artists have been making cloisonne objects for hundreds of years then where are some of the beads from that earlier time? Miriam Haskell jewerly contains some of the earliest known examples, but its natural to want someone/anyone to unveil even earlier examples, maybe to see THE earliest known eamples, to view, compare, admire, classify as such. The late 1800's being the earliest known reference to cloisonne production in China, an assumption/belief that there is even earlier works...since there may not have been any receipts given to customere in such early times, so its the art itself that must be compared/proven as early/modern/recent/today. Here are some beads that look old!

Maverick bead researchers sometimes prefer to teach themselves, therefore:

#1. I feel it would be helpful for you to explain, if only to yourselves, what you have to say about Nick's black cloisonné beads with scrollwork. You said:"They look old." How old do you mean? And how did you reach this conclusion?

#2. I think that it would be a useful exercise to contrast and compare the black beads with Nick's dragon bead. By careful comparison, you may be able to teach yourself something very revealing! I could do this for you, but you seem to prefer reaching conclusions on your own. -I have given you correct answers before which you have repeatedly challenged.

#3. Have you considered joining a cloisonné collector club? Since it is useful to garner information which applies equally to stuff such as vases and boxes. Other collectors would have addressed many of the same questions. Whereas, on BCN, there seem to be few examples and collectors of cloisonné to learn from.

Whatever you do: "ENJOY YOURSELF; IT IS LATER THAN YOU THINK."

Just Fred

What I'm finding most interesting about Chinese cloisonne is how the craft relates to the 150 years it took for the Qing dynasty to disintegrate and China to be unified once again under the Communist Party. What type of pieces got made and for what sorts of clientele, what colors of enamels were developed, how styles morphed...

The Chinese managed to pull this difficult art through 150 years of catastrophe, which is just plain awesome. The years 1950-1976 are turning out to be especially interesting.

It takes years of training - not to mention possessing basic artistic talent to begin with, such as skill in drawing and composition - to make a cloisonne piece. And the glass enamels and metals are also the product of centuries of experimentation to discover what works.

Not until the 1960s were any of the traditional motifs and enamels changed much. At least one artist in the Beijing enamel workshops, Jin Shiquan, was apprenticed to a famous cloisonne atelier in 1922, but had to spend the 18 years encompassing the Japanese occupation in 1937, World War II, and the civil war in his hometown village on the northwest outskirts of Beijing, pulling a rickshaw, doing piecework at home, selling soy milk and almond tea. Not until 1955 was he able to resume earning a wage by making cloisonne.

So when I see beads like yours, Nick, and little boxes such as this 3x5 example, I wonder, are the beads contemporaneous to the box and other such small items, or are they the work of an older artist once again making cloisonne after the Beijing workshops were revived, using the traditional motifs and enamels he learned in his youth? Or the work of new artisans working under the direction of an older artist?

Jin Shiquan retired in 1984 and died in 1992, so we can't ask him. A Chinese book on his life and works is available via Amazon, which is how I learned more about him.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/7534428491