Hearing Chu Chen mention the "ox-hair" crazing and patina, Wu Ke quickly said, "Achen, I remember you once saying that many of the porcelain pieces from the Qing imperial palace were kept in chests, right? Even if some of them circulated out of the palace during the late Qing period, some should have been hidden away by their owners. Wouldn't that mean those pieces might not have ox-hair crazing or patina?"
"If that's the case, could some Qing burial porcelain pieces bestowed upon high officials be passed off as porcelain that had been smuggled out of the palace during the late Qing period?"
"You're right. That's indeed possible."
Chu Chen nodded and continued, "But there were ultimately very few pieces like that. Besides, when I mentioned excavated porcelain, I was mainly referring to pieces from before the Qing Dynasty. As for excavated Qing porcelain, it can basically be sold without going to the trouble I described. Of course, I'm talking about excavated Qing imperial kiln porcelain. All right, let's set this topic aside for now and continue discussing how to 'condition porcelain.'"
Wu Ke laughed. "Condition porcelain? Can it really be turned from excavated porcelain into an heirloom piece, just like conditioning jade?"
Chu Chen burst out laughing. "Of course not. It takes years to condition a fine jade piece. If 'conditioning porcelain' took that long too, how much would the cost be? How would they make a fortune? Actually, overseas nowadays, all they need to do is rub the porcelain with a rag and soak it in patina solution. Within half a year, they can imitate the weathered appearance of more than a century of natural aging, with a realism rate of over ninety percent."
Wu Ke was dumbfounded by Chu Chen's words. "What kind of rag is that