Hong Kong
Once a week some twenty young Chinese men in jeans meet in Hong Kong’s Lok Yu teahouse to exchange the latest news on the market in Chinese art; they represent one side of Hong Kong’s art market. Twice a year some twenty middle-aged Westerners in tailor-made suits meet at two of Hong Kong’s top hotels to exchange news and goods; they represent the other side. The former is the market in funerary objects, newly uncovered; the latter the market in imperial works of art handed down over generations. In harbouring both markets, Hong Kong is the undisputed centre for the trade in Chinese works of art today. It has not always enjoyed this status and the question is how long can it can last?
Chinese collecting has not changed much since the days of that most acquisitive of collectors, the Qianlong emperor (1736-95). It concentrates on imperial porcelain from the Song (960-1279), Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, and on exquisitely crafted objects from the same periods—well-guarded treasures of old-established families. The trade in such works has traditionally been in the domain of Chinese dealers, not least since access to such material required connections in China’s high society. At the beginning of China’s Communist era in 1949, some such dealers—like the influential Edward T. Chow—fled to Hong Kong, and by 1960 some businessmen formed a closely-knit collectors’ club, the Min Chiu Society, which later mounted world-class exhibitions from members’ collections.
When Sotheby’s began to hold auctions in Hong Kong in 1973 they recognised the financial potential of these well-to-do Chinese expatriate businessmen in search of their roots. A series of spectacular auction sales offering such collections as those of Edward T. Chow and Frederick Knight and the British Rail Pension Fund quickly made Hong Kong the centre for buying and selling such goods. Western and Japanese dealers began to visit Hong Kong routinely. Some of the finest imperial wares have since been handled by Eskenazi in London and J.J. Lally in New York. Sotheby’s and Christie’s auctions in Hong Kong cover this market in imperial works of art only.
Funerary items on the other hand have never appealed much to Chinese collectors. The non-Chinese interest in Chinese antiquities, regardless of their original function, was sparked off by the first of such works reaching Europe, America and Japan from China in the 1920s and 30s. The important collections formed at that time are the backbone of the major museum collections in Japan and the West today. Traditionally the main dealers in this material were in London, Paris, New York and Tokyo.
In the early 1980s a new wave of unearthed antiquities appeared on the market. Hong Kong was ideally located as a port of trans-shipment and scores of new antique shops quickly turned a few roads in central Hong Kong into a dream-like bazaar.
The market is now flooded with relatively high quality objects that have become cheap and commonplace. In the last ten years there has been an increase both in the number of fakes and in their sophistication. Pieces such as a large twelfth-century ceramic basin with spectacular purple splashes on a bright blue ground, whose history in the West can be traced back to 1929, are still unique on the market and are considered the most desirable Chinese antiquities today (see illustration p.1).
At present, uncertainty about the commitment of the People’s Republic to the freedom of movement of art objects after 1997 has dampened collecting enthusiasm in Hong Kong.
The one group that seems little affected are the young dealers from the Lok Yu teahouse. Their names are not famous, their small galleries in Cat Street and Hollywood Road have medium-quality works on display, for sale to passers-by. Upstairs or downstairs, however, where access is strictly by appointment only, the most important works of art to appear newly on the market are sold, and end up in the world’s major art galleries, auction houses and private collections. They have the best first-hand knowledge about Chinese art, new lines of fakes and on newly discovered ceramic kiln sites. For them Hong Kong’s future is less a threat than an opportunity. They are already part of the fast growing mainland art market scene. They attend the auctions now regularly held in Beijing, Shanghai and elsewhere and are buying works of art that can only be traded within mainland China. With a billion people on the mainland with a growing interest in their past and increasing financial power to satisfy it, the future of Hong Kong’s art market looks anything but gloomy.
Originally appeared in The Art Newspaper as 'Secrets of the Lok Yu teahouse'