| Transcript |
- of Chinese carved amber include the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, which has Qing dynasty pieces like vases, bottles, saucers, a necklace and fig�urative carvings; and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which has pen�dants, figurative pieces like birds, flowers, a dragon, a Ming dynasty Buddha and an archaic style cup.
Probably the largest collection of Chinese amber carvings ever assembled in the West was the collection of the late T.B. Kitson, who amassed some 1216 amber pieces and eventually disposed of them in early 1960s Sotheby�s sales in London.
The Francis and Kay Reif Collection, which is displayed in this exhibition, amounts to about one hundred and seventy Chinese carved ambers, five Japanese ambers and 13 European ambers and is one of the finest collections of Chinese carved amber ever assembled. The Reif family has recently donat�ed 131 pieces of Chinese and Japanese carved amber and 13 pieces of European carved amber. Therefore, to the best of our knowledge, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria now has the second largest Chinese carved amber collection outside of China.
Summary
We have seen from this short study that the amber material used for carvings in historical China has probably come from three sources: native amber sources found in coal seams, imported Burmese amber and European amber coming via the old Silk Road or later by maritime trade routes.
20
|
|---|
