THE MING MASTER
WANG SHIXIANG, China's leading authority on Ming dynasty furniture, threads his way through the overflowing clutter in the living room of his Beijing home. Piles of books and papers teeter on writing desks, stools, tables and chairs. In a corner, a microwave perches on top of a traditional, multi-drawered medicine cabinet. A day bed is prominent on one side of the room. It's a scholarly, yet homely place.
Wang clears a space and apologises for the mess. In a kitchen off the main room, his son chops food. Wang is also a skilled amateur cook, and during our conversation takes a call from someone whom he compliments on the quality of his cabbage. 'Much better cabbage than most,' he says.
The combination of the esoteric and the mundane characterises Wang's interests and lifetime of study. Exemplifying this, the 89-year-old was recently awarded the Prince Claus Fund Principal Award by Prince Johan Friso of the Netherlands, in recognition of his decades of scholarship in the diverse arenas of classical furniture, lacquerware, pigeon-breeding, pigeon whistles, gourd-making, art and music.
Wang started collecting Ming dynasty furniture in 1945, and it is for his work in reviving the connoisseurship of traditional furniture after the Cultural Revolution that he is most famous. Two key books established his international reputation in the field: Classic Chinese Furniture and the second volume, Connoisseurship Of Chinese Furniture, Ming And Early Qing Dynasties.
Today, top quality Ming furniture commands high prices at auction and is collected by museums worldwide. But after the end of the second world war in 1945, when Wang began collecting, it was cheap, valued mostly for its wood and often taken apart and used for other things. Wang donated his 79-piece collection to the Shanghai Museum in 1993.
As his 10th decade approaches, Wang wants to get his personal affairs in order. His collection of 143 artifacts - ranging from a Buddhist copper statue from the Liao dynasty (960-1125) to Qing calligraphy - was auctioned last month at China Guardian Auctions in Beijing, and fetched an astonishing 63 million yuan (HK$60 million). About 800 people attended and prices raced past expectations.