...sealing wax is made with several natural elements: pine resin, ground limestone, lacquer, and a dye made from cochineal -- the legendary red dye that was once one of the world’s most precious commodities.

https://www.jherbin.com/sealing_wax_fabrication.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealing_wax

However, that wouldn't prevent the Chinese from having a formulation with a bit of lacquer (the stuff from trees), I guesss...

Might explain why the formulation used in beads from the 1930s appears to be susceptible to melting.

Plus, sealing wax is designed melt at a rather low temperature and would not be very durable for that reason.

So I'm thinking along the lines of cheap, easy to obtain polymer that will carve easily and be durable. And in the 1980s there would have been a number of polymers that would work - some type of polyethylene is just guess on my part.

I noticed when polishing the brass with Nevr-Dull that I had to be careful not to get the naptha product on the cinnabar, or a red wipe mark on the cloth resulted.

Guessing that means it's soluble in hydrocarbons?

The grapes design is an old-fashioned design not common in later Chinese cloisonne beads and pendants - usually one sees what appears to be a branch of blossoms, such as this doughnut pendant with sprays of flowers coming from the rock garden. This particular grapes motif appears often on cloisonne pieces from the 1920s-30s, so presumably was taught by one of the older artists to the the younger designers/workers at the Beijing Enamel Company. Grapes as a Chinese cloisonne motif go all the way back to the Ming dynasty.

I recollect a comment from a cloisonne collector that one of the tip-offs as to whether a piece was Chinese or a Japanese imitation of Chinese design was that no Chinese artist would ever feature plants without a rock or garden base. That does seem to be generally true.

It is interesting to note that Chinese craftsmen who produced carved lacquer may have taken conscious advantage of the softness and slower curing of lacquers mixed with oils. Lacquer that is to be carved must not be so hard and brittle that it is prone to chipping and breakage during carving. Because lacquer can continue to polymerize over a period of weeks and months after initial curing (Webb, 2000 Webb, M. 2000. Lacquer Technology and Conservation: A Comprehensive Guide to the Technology and Conservation of Asian and European Lacquer. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.
[Google Scholar]
, p. 8), it can become progressively harder and more brittle over this timescale. From the carver's point of view then, it is critical that the prepared lacquer substrate not harden too much before the carving is complete or else the work will be ruined. It would seem that a traditional manner of preventing premature hardening has been the addition of significantly more oil to the lacquer than is customary in flat lacquer production. To date, we have only been able to analyze samples from seven objects of Chinese carved lacquer, dating from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. These objects include a variety of types, from Ming imperial ware to an eighteenth-century bowl from Yunnan to export ware from the southeast. Nevertheless, each of these pieces has in common a very high proportion of oil in the formulation. In most cases, the combined fatty acid peak area comprises more than 90% of the sum of all analyzed compounds while the Anacard components typically total only 3–7% of peak area. These proportions are quite unusual in flat (uncarved) lacquer that the authors have analyzed.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00393630.2016.1230979

[LATER: A YouTube video mentions that the lacquer tree sap is mixed with 50% oil. Tung oil seems a likely candidate to me, as it's a traditional Chinese oil.]

A few other beads show a design and dry finish that seems more post-1960s, and a cloisonne bead with waxy "cinnabar."

recent eBay auction 182666554246

I would like to know. I have cinnabar. I've rejected some that was obviously plastic or cheap. But among my modest collection, I would like to know the differences. It includes a box I bought at a swap from a Chinese man for $15. A lady in another booth frowned and insulted it. That's 2 strikes against it I suppose.

I also have beads and pendants. They used to show up in thrift stores frequently, following color trends. I bought necklaces for $3 to $7.

I sold one necklace with two-tone cinnabar beads. They were golden yellow on the outside, with red showing deep in the carving. I should have priced it higher, it sold in less than 5 minutes. Oops, should have kept that one.