GUEST: These are four Chinese ceramic panels representing the four seasons. My wife's parents bought these from an antique art dealer in Pasadena, California, probably in the early 1960s. They came with some documentation which indicated that they were from a period of the last Chinese dynasty, and ended up in England sometime in the early 1700s, they think.
APPRAISER: Okay. They have terrific decorative value, and they represent the four seasons. The winter season here. Autumn.
GUEST: Autumn.
APPRAISER: Spring. And over here is summer. And it's a very subtle, very understated scene in each of these panels. Very serene, very peaceful, very beautiful. These are actually panels that date from the 1930s.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: These are not Kangxi period panels, nor are they even from the Qing dynasty. This is from what we call the Republic Period in Chinese history.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: And I know that based on a couple of different features in the porcelain, one of which is the design. It's very distinctive Republic-style porcelain decoration.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: Following on that, then, what clues do we have to pin down a time and a place and a maker, and that's in these marks, as you suspected. This really reveals the true origin of these panels. These marks are all different, are they not?
GUEST: Yes, they are.
APPRAISER: They are, but they say the same thing. In a couple of different ways, these indicate the painter of each of these panels. And the gentleman's name was Wang Yeting, and Wang Yeting was a celebrated porcelain painter and designer in his own day, and today as well, he is regarded as one of the finer decorators of this style from the Republic period in Chinese history. Have you had any indication or any suggestion of their value?
GUEST: My wife's parents purchased the four panels for $400.
APPRAISER: $400, okay.
GUEST: In 1960-ish, early '60s-ish. My wife and I had these appraised around 1990 at $3,200.
APPRAISER: The market has changed since 1990. There's a good market for these currently. The Chinese decorative art market, as you may know already, is a very robust market right now, and it's being driven in large part by Chinese buyers, the Chinese economy, the prosperity in China. These four plaques together, if they were to come up for auction, I think a reasonable estimate range would be $15,000 to $25,000.
GUEST: Okay, that's very nice.
APPRAISER: If this entire collection, if these porcelain panels did indeed date from the Kangxi period...
GUEST: And what date range would that be?
APPRAISER: That would be the late 17th, coming into the very early 18th century. You mentioned this was the Qing dynasty. This was early Qing dynasty, Kangxi. If these were from that period, the value would certainly be in the hundreds of thousands. But as I said, they didn't quite exist, not in this form, not of this type. But if it were just that old, I think the value would be considerably more.
GUEST: Well, that's interesting.
