Autumn Moon

Information may not be reliable

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Recently a friend told me that about 20 years ago her parents visited china and bought vases and other memorabilia from markets for next to nothing. Back then, the interest in Asian Antiques was not the in thing. My friend told me that they are worth a whole lot more today.

A vase recently sold for $251 million Hong Kong dollars and an ancient 11th or 12th Century wine vessel sold for $3.3 million dollars. A recent vase for sale on eBay has a set price of $40 000.

For those who are really serious about studying tribal customs, including that of shamans and ancestors, there is collection of some quite grotesque, wild, or fantastic masks. Collectors don’t find these grotesque but can sense the strangely profound, incarnating memories of the spirits they represented and carried for the ancestors. It’s like they are frozen in time. These are often part of the tribal arts of the Himalayas, more specifically from Nepal. The art is labeled “primal”, “tribal” or “archaic”.

These are only recently being unearthed (around the 1950’s), probably because Nepal was never colonized. Many oral traditions are attached to these antiques as these come from rural communities, where many so-called ‘religions’ and spiritism were so rich. Some masks were ancestor masks and others ceremonial masks – and some were guardian masks.
Whatever Asian Antiques you are interested in, happy reading here.