Puzzling Evidence - The Dragon of Lao Tian Li 老天利, continued

eBay vendor antiques143 has on offer a round box decorated with dragons and signed by
Lao Tian Li 老天利 .  

Once upon a time this box had a companion - as antiques143 sadly relates, 

"I wish I could show you the other box I had from this maker. It was imperial yellow and of much better quality, but it was stolen by an antique dealer who had come to appraise several items of mine. It was similar to the one I have listed now, only a little larger and with a greater quality of workmanship. I have not seen another that matched its beauty. It had been in my collection for more than 20 years."

Going through my files, I notice I've harvested from the internet quite a few pictures of pieces with Lao Tian Li signatures.  Is anyone interested in seeing these?  Should I do a blog post about them?

Puzzling Evidence - 1980s Brochure About JINGFA 京 珐 Brand Cloisonne Beijing Enamel Factory 北京珐琅厂

Presumably this was printed sometime after 1981, as it features an award won in that year.
Thought it might be useful for those trying to discover what varieties of cloisonne were made in the 1980s. 
Plus, a fascinating video of the Beijing Enamel Factory showing just how difficult it is to create cloisonne enamel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6dDTR8SPu8 (Skip to 3:00 to avoid the puppet stuff intro)

Check out the differences in the staff clothing, work areas, and technology between the 1980s brochure and the 2013 video.

Puzzling Evidence - The Mysterious TianHe 天合 Mark on Chinese Cloisonne [INDUSCO GUNG HO]

Trying to match cloisonne motifs to what appears on cloisonne beads leads to some interesting detours.  This mark shows up on a cloisonne pieces that have some distinctive characteristics, all of which seem to pre-date the style of JingFa factory products.  
When were they made? 1920-30s? 1950-60s?
And where?  Beijing?  Tianjin?  Somewhere else?

[see UPDATE at end of article]

UPDATE: Another three-dragon vase was discovered by an eBay vendor.  See August 17, 2015 post for more pictures.  This vase has what is likely a pre-1950 country of origin stamp.

UPDATE: More examples have turned up:

Ginger jar

Another figural jar from private collection of E.N.

Base of figural jar

Facebook Group Chinese & Japanese Cloisonne, March 2025

A millefleur vase, Facebook group Chinese & Japanese Cloisonne, November 2023

A vase I own

Screenshot posted to Facebook group Chinese & Japanese Cloisonne, March 2025

UPDATE: An alert member of the Facebook group Chinese & Japanese Cloisonne discovered this website that seems to solve the mystery of this mark!  Excerpts from the articles below, but of course click the links to read the entire documents.
https://nzchinasociety.org.nz/edgar-snow-on-indusco-gung-ho/

https://nzchinasociety.org.nz/gung-ho-cooperatives/

Edgar Snow on Indusco (Gung Ho)

In 1938, the Chinese Industrial Co-operatives (Indusco) movement was set up by Rewi Alley, Nym Wales and Edgar Snow.  It was introduced to help the people of Free China work for the war effort and be educated to survive during the catastrophic war with the Japanese and is still in operation today under the name of ICCIC (see below).

...

Below are Edgar Snow’s comments from the book, on the ‘Gung Ho or Indusco’ movement, as well as his recollection of Rewi Alley.

“Among non-party patriots of all descriptions, real faith persisted that a progressive government representative of varied opinion and worthy of the people’s spirit of devotion and self-sacrifice would emerge during the war. Out of such faith grew the most original and hopeful experiment of the ’united front’ period – the Chinese Industrial Co-operative organisation (Gung Ho, or the Work-Together Movement, Indusco).  It provided work and an education for tens of thousands of Chinese and proved indeed to be the forerunner of what ultimately became the largest producers’ co-operative movement in the world.

“I vividly remember the setting in which the idea was born. The war had passed from Shanghai on the Yangtze River Valley. Behind it lay the ruins of a nation’s industry. Except for the tiny oasis of the International Settlement, everything for miles seemed a desert of rubble, charred timbers and twisted iron, beneath which many bodies still lay. Over 70 per cent of China’s pre-war industry was concentrated in a little triangle bounded by Shanghai, Wushi [Wuxi] and Hangchow [Hangzhou]. By early January 1938, all that plant had fallen to the Japanese, for whom the immobilization of China’s industry and labour was a main objective of “total aggression”.

“Indusco set up several hundred small factories, workshops, power plants, transports and mines.  We had our own training schools, war veterans and war orphans vocational centres, printing and publishing houses, lunch rooms, clinics, nursery schools and character-study schools for illiterate worker-members and their children.  Indusco became a reasonably sound prototype of a democratic, co-operative society, producing a wide variety of goods of war value. Some mobile co-operative units functioned far behind the Japanese lines in North China.

The triangular Indusco sign appeared far and wide; some mobile co-operative units functioned far behind the Japanese lines in North China. Here two customers bow to each other in front of a co-operative savings bank displaying the Indusco symbol.

History of Gung Ho

The Early Years

The Gung Ho movement has a long history. In 1938, Rewi Alley, Peg and Edgar Snow, and some other friends in Shanghai together set up an International Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives. At that time, the Japanese invaders had already captured most of China’s industrial cities and looked to occupy all of China in the near future. Rewi’s plan was to establish small producer cooperatives throughout China that could contribute substantially to the war effort at the same time as they advanced the ideals of cooperation that Rewi and many others espoused as the hope for China’s economic future.This became a nation-wide civil movement with the biggest influence in China Gung Ho movement history.

As field secretary Rewi Alley regularly travelled thousands of kilometres, often by hitch-hiking or bicycle.

The Chinese name for “China Industrial Cooperatives” was Zhongguo Gongye Hezhoushe. This was abbreviated as Gong He (the first characters for the two words for “Industrial Cooperatives”), or “Gung Ho”, as it was then written. Rewi adopted this as the logo for the movement, and it can be translated as “working together”, which was a perfect slogan for the movement as a whole.

Puzzling Evidence - An Unusual Miriam Haskell Style Necklace With Chinese Beads

Suzanne at her Etsy shop MaisonettedeMadness is offering a necklace with some fascinating Chinese beads:

The clasp and style of findings are very Miriam Haskell.

The openwork disk bead in the center can be seen in this similar collection of pendants from an online auction:

Note the openwork bead second from the left in the bottom row.
Three similar pendants were combined in another 1930s necklace with a chain similar to Suzanne's necklace.  

Openwork cloisonne beads with a similar flower pattern seem to cluster in the Art Deco Era:

UPDATE: a recent eBay sale featured one of these Haskell-attributed necklaces with a charm cap similar to the one in Maisonnette's, plus other interesting cloisonne beads, including 4-toed dragons:

Puzzling Evidence: 凤凰 The Fenghuang, or Chinese Phoenix in Cloisonne - An Early-1900s Urn

Last December I did an analysis of the Fenguang, or Chinese Phoenix, as it appears in cloisonne beads.

eBay vendor jpeister2012 has on offer a beautiful urn from early in the 1900s that presents an excellent example of a traditional rendition of the phoenix motif.  The rocks are in the style of those done by famous Chinese cloisonne artist Lao Tian Li 老天利, although this urn is unsigned. The country of origin stamp "CHINA" was required on items imported into the United States after the 1890 McKinley Tariff Act.

The listing description reads:
This Brass and Cloisonne Urn has been in my family for almost 100 years. It stands almost 17.5 inches tall with out the decorative wood base (separate) and is heavy in weight. It has been looked at by Walter Kolenda from the "Antiques Road Show". His comment is below.

Sept. 24, 2014

"That is an exceptional cloisonne urn. I say urn rather than vase, because it has a cover. An urn is generally a bit more valuable and rare because of this. There are several things going for this beautiful piece: First, the work is amazing, next, it's a large size and that does matter with something like this. Next, is that it appears to be in excellent condition, which is wonderful for a piece of this era, (circa turn of the 20th century)

Also, it is pure Chinese design, what I mean here is that the most revered form of Chinese art is nature and this is a wonderful example of that." "Retail value I set at $2250.00. If you have documentation to the providence, it's worth even more"

Walt Kolenda

Puzzling Evidence - Chinese Cloisonne Dragon Beads from the 1930s -1990s

Living as we do in an era of machine-produced goods, where every piece is identical to any other, we tend to forget how artists and artisans develop personal styles.  Faced with turning out similar pieces because a design is selling well, artists typically develop favorite solutions to a design problem rather than reinventing the wheel with each new piece.  For example, in a prior post I discussed The Dot Artist – the cloisonné bead maker who liked to use small round circles evenly spaced around the circumference, possibly not only as an embellishment and a background feature needed to stabilize the enamel as it was melted in the kiln, but to assist in neatly applying the other parts of the composition.  Remember, these little pictures are drawn with tiny strips of metal.  Not surprisingly, skill develops from repetition.  If you figure out a way to apply a nice floral branch design, and have to make a thousand such pieces, it only makes sense to re-use the design.  One of my first posts was about a style of dragon that persists throughout Chinese cloisonne from the turn of the 20th century until at least the 1980s.

While investigating Chinese cloisonné beads that appear in costume jewelry from the 1930s, I noticed that a peculiar dragon appears over and over again, making me wonder if these beads were all made by the same person.  It is characterized by having only 4 claws instead of the usual 5. Often the eyes are completely black, like a shrimp’s, rather than the more expressive black and white.  The eyes and nose are formed from a single wire bent into two circles connected by a loop. The wire work is comparatively casual and the enamel colors very basic.

Brooch from Etsy shop Magic Dragons Store

Blumenthal Brooch from the 1930s

A selection of pendants from an auction, and a Deco-era necklace with 3 similar pendants.  Note the two openwork designs, one of which is a four-toed dragon.

Four-toe dragons also occasionally appear on other small objects:

Set of small cups found in Japan

Why only 4 toes?  A subtle protest against the Japanese invasions and occupation of the 1930s? No imperial dragons for you! Or, more likely, because 4 toes are just plain easier to fit into a small space?  Or because, in a manner similar to the 4-fingered characters drawn by cartoon artists, 4 claws somehow looked better?  Five claws do have a tendency to make the dragon’s paws resemble fans.

One suspects that because these beads and other items were made for export and not for local use, the maker correctly surmised that foreign buyers would not be all that discerning.  Then there’s the consideration that piecework done for low pay, under wartime workshop conditions, and for undiscriminating buyers is likely not conducive to precision workmanship.

Other artisans have made dragon beads and small objects, some of quite tidy workmanship, others more casual.  You can see the difference between these and the four-toed version (note such details as eyes, noses, background clouds).  The earring bead and the larger finial bead next to it seem very similar in composition and enamel colors - did the artist feel that just a bit more room allowed for black-and-white eyes and 5 claws?

Small bowl seems likely to be from c1920s, earring 1930s, lamp finial c1930, small bottles c1980-90s, gilded openwork bead 1990.

Small condiment set with 5-toed dragons with very fine detail.

Lamp finials with 5-toed dragons.

Japanese kanzashi (hairpin for a geisha coiffure) found by Magic Dragons Store.  5-toed dragon, old-fashioned "peaked" cloud spirals.

5-toed dragons.

5-toed dragons.  These dragons also have two horns (also seen in the little openwork pieces in the previous picture) instead of just one horn emerging from a bulbous base.

Note the JingFa clouds as a background motif. 5-toed dragons.

Four-toed dragons also appear on beads from c1990, albeit with a different style of “tailed” cloud, black-and-white eyes, 3 separate wires to form the eyes and nose (versus just a single wire bent into 3 loops in the four-toed dragons), thicker cloison wires, and gold electroplating.  Four-toed dragons also appear on other c1990s items, so this seems likely to be yet another occurrence of the cartoonist’s 4-fingered hand.

Purchased from Abeada around 1990.

Small dish likely c1990s.

This necklace of huge beads (so 1980s!) contains a large 5-toed dragon bead.  Its size is likely the same as similar cloisonné beads in my collection that came from a broken necklace with black onyx beads (again, a very 1980s-90s type of stone bead). 

The clasp in my broken necklace is a product of the Kuo cloisonne factory in Taiwan, hence this necklace likely dates from the  late-1970s - late-1980s.

This illustration in the 1975 book by Arthur and Grace Chu (Oriental Cloisonné and Other Enamels) of course means that these beads were produced prior to 1975.  But how many years prior? 

Note the 4-toed dragon on the napkin ring.  The green necklace likely dates from the 1930s, based upon the type of glass beads and findings.

The dragon in the Chu photo is the black-eyed four-toed variety that clusters in pieces from the 1930s.  Were the peach, phoenix, and bat beads also made then?  The goldfish bead has a turquoise background and “peaked” clouds that look the same as those in the photograph beads. Were better beads such as these made for Chinese buyers during the 1930s, and the more rugged beads sold to foreigners?  Or do these more skillfully made beads with their old-fashioned clouds date from the early 1970s? 1960s? 1950s?

Puzzling evidence.

UPDATE: This dragon condiment shaker on offer from eBay vendor stephena17 seems a close match to a pair of shakers documented to be from 1939.

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 (photo below).

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

Hence the dragons on the yellow oval beads seem to be more old-school. An older craftsman who survived the 1930s and 40s, still working in the 1960s-70s? What's your guess?

The size of the matchbox cover gives some indication of overall size.

UPDATE: An interesting bracelet featuring Czech brass work and imitation coral and lapis pressed glass combined with Chinese cloisonne 4-toed dragon beads: