“Good!” Teacher Cheng pointed to a farmhouse not far away and said with a smile, “There’s our studio, all the good stuff is there, I’ll take you there!”
Coming to the farmhouse, on the surface there was nothing extraordinary, Teacher Cheng directly brought the two of them to a cowshed that had been abandoned for many years, after ruffling the hay laid on the ground in the cowshed, revealing a plank laid flat on the ground, the plank was lifted and there was a downward passageway.
It turned out that they had hollowed out the entire yard underneath from the cowshed as an entrance.
Xiao Changkun followed him down and couldn’t help but exclaim, “Your workload is big enough, digging such a big place!”
Teacher Cheng said modestly, “Most of the people in our line of work have supported pots and poured buckets, to put it bluntly, they are all from Tu Fu Zi, in addition to being good at grave robbing, they are good at digging, so a little bit of workload, it’s nothing for us.”
Speaking three people have gone down the earth dug stairs to the hall below, said hall, mainly because the area is really not small, almost a hundred square feet, but the environment inside is really simple, may be in order to reduce the workload, the whole underground is almost one metre eight, nine height, surrounded by bare loess, coupled with wooden support equipment, it looks a little bit like into the black coal kiln.
The man saw Xiao Changkun was a bit worried, so he smiled and said: “Mr Murong don’t worry, it looks very simple from here, but in fact it’s very safe, because the digging depth is very shallow, the soil layer above our head is only one metre thick, think about it, one metre thick how much weight can it have? This kind of wooden support is enough, when we used to support the pot, digging ten metres deep robber holes, we used the same kind of support, and we never had any problems.”
Xiao Changkun slightly put down his heart, which then carefully observed the situation here.
Nearly a hundred square metres of space, set up several workbenches, inside a rotten and fishy smell, mixed with the smell of soil, people are a little nauseous.
And in front of those workbenches, several technicians are fiddling with the things in their hands, and they seem to be antiques at a glance.
Zhang Ermao was also somewhat amazed at the scale of this place, so he said to that teacher Cheng, “You introduce it to Mr Murong.”
“Okay!” Cheng teacher quickly said: “Mr Murong, I here with the general counterfeiting place is not the same, I do here are real goods, a fake are not.”
Said, he picked up a copper Buddha, said to Xiao Changkun: “Look at this copper Buddha, this is what we just finished this week, it’s the shape of the vessel, in line with the characteristics of the Ming Dynasty copper Buddha, the workmanship is also very fine, the charm is also in place, but in fact, it is a piece of the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China we received imitation of the Ming Dynasty of the copper Buddha, the craftsmanship and the details of the craft is really not to say that it is a top quality work, just the previous owners Don’t quite understand, the family passed down two generations earlier, he has been put at home as a decoration, nothing but always rub, this rub, the crust is gone, looking not too much like the old stuff, we take back, redo the old, turn around and then get to the market, you can be sold as a Ming Dynasty things.”
Xiao Changkun is not very knowledgeable about copper, so they asked, “That if it is something to sell as the Ming Dynasty, others believe it?”
Teacher Cheng laughed, “We have our ways.”
With that, he picked up another base from the side that was also made of copper and said, “Look at this.”
Xiao Changkun brought the copper base over, it looked very old, so he turned it over and looked at the bottom, which was engraved with the words “Daming Xuande Nianzhi”.
Cheng teacher explained: “You do not look at us this bronze statue, may also be a hundred years, but you hand this base, he is a serious copper base of the Ming Dynasty, but the base was originally with what we do not know, in our hands when there is only such a base, you should also know, although the Ming copper is quite valuable, but there is no honours, only a You should also know that although Daming bronzes are worth quite a lot, but without the original, only a base, it can be worth to where? So we spent 38,000 yuan to buy this base back, with this base and then with this old bronze statue, this is not a set? And you don’t forget, this base, it is really Ming Dynasty Xuande year things, this Buddha statue we also according to the Xuande year of bronze do old, it two so with, I dare say more than 95% of connoisseurs will hit the eye.”