Qing dynasty's Taoist alchemy manual fetched 75 times its low estimate at US$771k

[Shubin]

"On 6 July (2022), Christie’s presented an Art d’Asie Sale in Paris, featuring a wide array of Asian art – from imperial porcelains to Tibetan thangka. Surprisingly, it was a Taoist alchemy album from early Qing dynasty (1644-1911) which achieved the highest price and stole the show.
The 48-page Taoist alchemy album – illustrated with colourful pictures, diagrams and detailed essays – is an ancient Chinese guide to produce a Golden Elixir for immortality."   --- By: Kayan Wong@THE VALUE

The link to the article

 

The link to the article  (Chinese version)

Edited July 13, 2022 by Shubin

[Shubin]

Actually it is not a Qing dynasty's royal secret manual but Ming dynasty's. Ming is the dynasty just before Qing, so the manual is about  two hundreds years early than Christie’s description and is more valuable.

[Taoist Texts]

「煉丹秘笈」it has a unique format of deciphering each yao by two  small font strings. It is amateurish, but pretty and whimsical.

[Taoist Texts]

9 hours ago, Shubin said:

Actually it is not a Qing dynasty's royal secret manual but Ming dynasty's. Ming is the dynasty just before Qing, so the manual is about  two hundreds years early than Christie’s description and is more valuable.

why would you think so? the condition is too good to be Ming. also not clear why it is 'royal'

[Shubin]

I am not the only one or the first one who think so. I wrote a short article about it. 

https://blog.wenxuecity.com/myblog/79673/202207/11629.html

Edited July 16, 2022 by Shubin

[Shubin]

I translated my short article into English with DeepL and Papago, it turned out that DeepL did a better job on some paragraphs, and Papago did a better job on the other.

 

Talking about the palace color book "Jindan Album" (Christie's Paris 7/6/2022) 

 

An article in The Value Art Magazine said on July 6 that Christie's in Paris "just sold a copy of the Qing Dynasty's alchemy in France. "The 48-page booklet is rich in pictures and text, and features articles on alchemy and related hexagrams, as well as elaborate refining processes and colorful portraits of immortals.
So rare in the art market, such a successful successful auction, 终600,000, 60 times the value of 60600,000, including $756,000 ($HK$6 million; NT$22.6 million), won the Paris Christie's "Asia Art" auction.

(Link to The Value article in English)     (Link to The Value article in Chinese)

As soon as this book appeared, it attracted the attention of the Chinese cultivation community, because it was indeed unprecedented. Someone posted on WeChat, suggesting 2 points. First, there is a picture of Zhu Jian-shen, the Emperor Xianzong of the Ming Dynasty, and secondly, this picture book belongs to the Ming Dynasty.

Christie's in Paris described the album as:
Lot 71 Colored Silk Coloring Book Page 48
Size: 24.5 x 22.5 cm
Source: French collector R.J.S. Collection
Valuation: 1010, 000 - 15, 000
 

According to an article on The Value website, "Among the Qing emperors, Yongzheng was the most devoted to Taoism. According to Qing documents, he placed Taoist talismans in the main palaces, including the Taihe Hall and the Qianqing Palace; he set up a dou altar in the Yangxin Hall of his dormitory; he built a house in the imperial garden for Taoist priests to live in; and he ordered vestments in Suzhou. At the same time, Yongzheng even secretly ordered his ministers to look for hermits and good healers to build a furnace in Yuanmingyuan to make pills for him to take. "

 

It is estimated that Christie's Paris will not use above paragraph to identify the album as a Qing Dynasty relic, but will ask the experts to identify it.

I looked at the photographs in the article, but judging by the clothes of the characters in the paintings, I think they are not Ching Dynasty clothes. In addition, the text in 2 of the photos, there are two places where the word "Xuan" is not taboo. That is, in "Taihe Zhiyi Jindan Tu", the fifth column from the left, the second character from the bottom, and in "Jindan Lun", the second column from the left, the eighth character from the bottom. The Qing dynasty from the Kangxi dynasty that is taboo "Xuan" word, so this album is not the Qing dynasty, and can not be related to Yongzheng, because the Shunzhi, Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong four dynasties text avoidance is extremely strict, the number of text prison, the scale of the large, extensive involvement, the killing of the bloody, are said to be unprecedented.

Is the man in the picture wearing a gauze hat Zhu Jianshen? I think it's difficult to determine just by comparing it with the portrait of Emperor Xianzong of the Ming Dynasty.However, the man in the painting wearing a gauze hat wearing bright yellow clothes, estimated to be the emperor. If you look closely at the hair inside the hat, you can see that it is black from the forehead to the top of the head, so this man is not "the Manchu people".

In addition, there is a picture of three people, sitting in the middle, should be the Taishang Laojun (moral god) because he has three stripes on his forehead, and his hair is all white.
There should be no inscription or seal or title in this album. There are four small characters on the cover of the book " Jindan Atlas", under which it is written "45 open". Because it is not written with a brush, it is not believed to have been written by the original author.

Edited August 26, 2022 by Shubin