Chapter 692: Chapter 689 Deliberately Targeting

Several screens on-site were displaying the many experts’ appraisals, so the assessments made by the experts were visible to all the audience and guests. Therefore, Huo Sining’s recent performance had everyone as a witness.

Seeing Huo Sining evaluating the porcelain with ease, everyone was left dumbfounded, realizing they had misjudged her.

Despite her young age, this girl named Huo Sining seemed just as proficient in appraisal as the other experts!

With that young man setting the precedent, those who had been waiting in line were suddenly eager to move, and it wasn’t long before other appraisers brought their treasures to Huo Sining’s table.

The next person to come up was a female student, roughly the same age as Huo Sining, wearing a backpack and carrying an object inside a paper box.

At Huo Sining’s indication, the girl opened the box and took out an extremely small and exquisite snuff bottle.

This snuff bottle was only seven or eight centimeters tall–almost imperceptible if hidden in the palm of the hand without careful observation.

“Little sister, can you tell me about the origins of your snuff bottle?”

asked Huo Sining while examining it.

The young girl blushed at Huo Sining’s question, speaking in a soft voice, “This was an heirloom from my grandfather, but he passed away early. The item was left in my ancestral home. Recently, when my mom and I were sorting through old things there, we found this object in an old box on top of a beam. My mom said it might be an antique and heard that there were free appraisals here, so she asked me to give it a try.”

Another antique passed down through the generations–out of the people who come here for appraisals, nine out of ten say their items are familial heirlooms, but among these folks, it’s rare to find one genuine article out of a hundred.

So Huo Sining didn’t take the girl’s words too seriously and instead scrutinized the snuff bottle before her.

Huo Sining had recently crammed a lot of knowledge about antiques, and just so happened to have come across information about snuff bottles in the miscellaneous section.

Snuff is made from high-quality tobacco that has been air-dried, fermented, filtered, and so on, with effects that include pain relief and fatigue elimination.

In the 14th century, it was already popular among the royal and noble classes of Europe, and by the end of the 16th century, Western missionaries had introduced it to China.

Starting with Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty, many from emperors to ministers developed a fondness for snuff.

However, the affection for snuff bottles of Emperors Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong was even greater than for snuff itself.

So, imperial snuff bottle production continued uninterrupted until the end of the Qing Dynasty. In these few hundred years, the craftsmanship of snuff bottles saw a great evolution, with many exquisite pieces emerging.

The biggest impact on today’s snuff bottle culture is perhaps that of the Inside-Painted Snuff Bottle.

Inside-Painted Snuff Bottles are typically made from semi-transparent materials, with two flat sides on the flask allowing space for painting.

Then, artists use a special small bamboo brush, extended through the mouth of the bottle, to paint upside-down inside the bottle.

Due to the high difficulty of craftsmanship, making a snuff bottle requires extremely superb skills, and before painting, iron sand must be shaken inside the bottle to make the inner surface resemble frosted glass.

The craft of inside-painted snuff bottles is complex and entirely hand-made, thus, initially, Westerners could not believe the paintings inside the snuff bottles were drawn directly on them, until the craft of inside painting was fully disclosed and the production sites became open to visit. Snuff bottles quickly became a world-renowned craft and were collected by many museums around the globe.

Snuff bottles reached their peak after the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty, with the emergence of inside-painting masters such as Zhou Le Yuan, Ma Shao Xuan, and Ye Zhong Zhi.

Initially introduced to China as an exotic import, snuff led to a great development in the craftsmanship of snuff bottles, and Chinese snuff bottles became widely popular in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries, turning into a noble art piece for gifting and collection among the royal family and nobility.

The snuff bottle in front of Huo Sining was an inside-painted snuff bottle, which looked like a miniature perfume bottle. The top and the bottom were only as big as a little finger, while the body was about half the width of a palm.

This snuff bottle was an enamel piece, painted with two Western figures wearing top hats and holding canes, the entire painting was vivid in color and lifelike in depiction, bearing no signs of age.

If Huo Sining didn’t possess the “Heavenly Eye,” she might have thought this artifact was produced on an assembly line. However, through her “Heavenly Eye,” seeing the faint purple aura surrounding the snuff bottle, Huo Sining immediately realized it was indeed an old object.

“Teacher Huo, what do you think, is my item genuine?” Seeing Huo Sining had been silent, the young girl suddenly became nervous, and with a grave expression, she stared at Huo Sining and asked.

Huo Sining smiled, “Have you been to the Forbidden City?”

The young girl nodded and then shook her head, “I went when I was little, but I don’t remember much about it.”

Huo Sining continued, “Then you should visit it again. In the exhibit hall of the Forbidden City Museum where they display Qianlong era artifacts, there is a snuff bottle that looks very similar to yours.”

The young girl was stunned, “What do you mean by that?”

Huo Sining said, “Your snuff bottle, although colorful and resembling a modern craft, is indeed an old object. It’s officially called the ‘Copper Filigree Enamel Figure and Flower Pattern Snuff Bottle.'”

“This snuff bottle was made by the Imperial Household Department during the Qianlong era of the Qing Dynasty, and there aren’t many of them around, probably no more than fifty. Based on my research, a Kangxi-era enamel snuff bottle, of a slightly finer craft than yours, was auctioned for 300,000 yuan at a Guardian auction the year before last.”

Upon hearing this, the girl’s eyes sparkled with excitement, “So, you’re saying that my snuff bottle is really an antique?”

Huo Sining nodded, “Correct, your snuff bottle was made by the Imperial Household Department during the Qianlong era, and it has a very high value for collectors; I estimate it’s worth around 200,000 yuan.”

The appraisal event had been going on for over half an hour, and finally, a genuine artifact had been identified, stirring excitement not only in the audience but also among those queued up waiting for their turn.

The genuine antiques selected in auditions would be kept by the show team for recording the program, so upon hearing about the genuine article, the show team reacted immediately, with Director Liu hurriedly signaling the staff to come on stage for negotiations.

After hearing Huo Sining’s appraisal result, the host Yao Yujia also responded immediately. However, whether deliberately or not, after learning that the snuff bottle was genuine, the female host actually requested a porcelain appraisal expert to confirm it again.

Huo Sining had sensed that this female host was somehow targeting her from the beginning of the show, and hearing this request, she was speechless. However, being on the live show, she couldn’t afford to show displeasure to the host and thus complied by handing the snuff bottle to Shi Qingyun.