The carriage slowly stopped in front of the dolphin antique shop.
Gallon jumped out of the car, gave the money to the driver, and walked to the entrance of the antique shop. The door was closed tightly, and it was extremely quiet inside.
He looked up at the shop sign, raised his hand and started knocking on the door.
"Open the door old man!"
"I'm coming!"
The store door creaked and opened a crack from the inside. The old man Ge Guo grabbed Gallon, pulled him in, and quickly closed the door.
The store was very dark, except for a kerosene lamp on the table in front of the bookshelf. Under the faint yellow light, there is a small brown-red hourglass, in which black fine sand is slowly dripping down, making a rustling sound.
Garen slightly adjusted to the light in the store, and glanced at the hourglass on the table.
"What's this? Your new goodies?"
The old man didn't speak, but walked slowly to the table and sat down. His face was illuminated by the light, and he looked extremely old and tired.
"This is a black hourglass given to me by a friend. It is used for timekeeping. It is said that one inversion can time a long time."
He reached out and shook the hourglass: "It's been two weeks since I got it, and I only missed one-fifth of it. Do you think it's slow?"
"It's really slow." Garen frowned slightly, looking at the old man's aging face, "What's wrong with you, old man? You don't look very good recently."
He found a stool and sat down in front of the table, and turned the kerosene lamp larger, and the light suddenly became much brighter.
"Maybe he's sick." The old man Ge Guo smiled, but he wasn't as wretched as before. "Tell me, what's your purpose here? Normally, if you're fine, you won't run to me."
"Don't I respect the elderly? You are a lonely old man in his 70s and 80s staying here alone. Aren't I afraid that you will have no one to take care of you?" Garen smiled, "By the way, where are your children? Where are your relatives? ? Why haven’t you seen it before?”
"Who knows?" The old man muttered, his face a little dazed, "Okay, stop talking about it, let's talk about your business. You kid will definitely not run to me if you have nothing to do."
"You really understand me." Looking at the old man's expression, Garen knew that the children might be talking about the old man's sadness, so he changed the subject accordingly. "When I came here, I wanted to ask you how to identify antiques. To identify antique jewelry, you must have opened an antique shop, so you should know something about it?"
"That's easy!" The old man sat up straight, and cast a sidelong glance at Garen, "It's just that." He stretched out his hand and spread it in front of Garen.
Snapped.
A stack of banknotes was clapped in the old man's hand.
Hands are still outstretched.
Garen frowned, took out another thousand yuan and slapped it on the old man's hand.
"Old man, look carefully, this is a stack of one thousand yuan!"
"I know it's a stack of one thousand yuan, but the appraisal industry requires long-term accumulation and knowledge and experience. My old man has accumulated so much for so long, so it's nothing to ask you for hard work?" Old man Ge Guo took it slowly. It cost two thousand yuan, and he looked comfortable. "It's only two thousand, it's cheap for you kid."
"Then let me introduce you to the way to appraise the party first." The old man cleared his throat.
"The so-called appraisal actually refers to several aspects of effort. First, to identify the authenticity. Second, to judge the age. Third, to judge the place of origin. Fourth, to judge the value of the craftsmanship. Each of these four aspects requires a long time to understand, learn and accumulate. Experience. Which side do you want to learn first?"
"Is it okay to study together? I am very confident in myself."
"Study together?" The old man looked at Garen under the light, and was suddenly startled again, his eyes seemed to be in a trance, "Study together, have confidence in yourself? It's a pity that you don't have talent." His last sentence seemed to be whispering.
After Garen's physical fitness improved, his hearing was good, and he vaguely heard the old man's whispers, but he didn't pay much attention to it. Everyone has secrets, and others don't want to tell him that this is their right.
"Is it okay to learn to identify authenticity first?"
"No problem." The old man seemed to be in high spirits all of a sudden, he smacked his mouth, pulled out the drawer from under the table, took out a stack of white paper and two quills inside, and then unscrewed the ink bottle on one side to dip it in. dip.
"Appraisal of authenticity is actually the most difficult part of the appraisal industry. This actually depends on the accumulated experience and the time spent playing with antiques." He drew a circle on the paper with a cross inside.
"Do you know what this is?" he said, pointing to the graphic.
"Don't know a circular cross window?" Garen looked at the graph on the paper and guessed.
"This is a special mark of a master jewelry craftsman in the period of great voyages. If you know the view of this mark, you can see the age, level, and category of this mark from the subtle places. Of course, if you don't understand it, you will naturally Can't see anything."
Garen nodded thoughtfully: "Are you trying to tell me that authenticity depends not only on the manufacturing details of the object itself, but also on the history behind it, as well as some special background knowledge, in order to truly identify the authenticity?" Fake?"
"Yo huh? His brain is very flexible, and his reaction is good." The old man was just about to say the key point, but Garen guessed it directly, with a slightly surprised expression on his face. "I'm also going to show you a high-quality imitation. Except for the markings, you can't tell if it's real or fake. I'll give you a vivid example. I didn't expect you to understand it right away."
He paused, "Now that you know and understand, then you should understand that to identify genuine and fake antiques, what you need is to understand history, craftsmanship of different eras, famous masters, genres, categories. Famous allusions, manufacturing styles and The factory and so on. Many times, combining these things and looking at antique jewelry can draw a more realistic conclusion.”
"So what I need to learn first is this background knowledge?" Garen nodded. "Are there any integrated books?"
"Yes, there are, but just reading the book is not very useful. You read it first, and then I will tell you about my own appraisal experience and special appraisal methods. Let's go step by step. There are many things that are not in the book. Appraisal is a business. In addition to vision, you also need to use the senses of smell, hearing, touch, and taste. So it’s meaningless to just have theories. But you can read the book first and then talk about it.”
The old man rummaged through the bookshelf and found a white tome. "This is the history of jewelry development."
He flipped through it again, and took out a thicker black-skinned big brick, "This is the antique school and historical development."
Stacked the two books and pushed them in front of Garen.
"Take it back and read it, and come to me when you're done."
Garen looked at the two tomes speechlessly, "When do I have to read these two books? I'm afraid one has thousands of pages?"
"No rush, take your time and finish it within a month." The old man waved his hand, "Okay, get out, I'm going to close the stall to rest and sleep."
Garen picked up the two books, "Then I'll go first, and I'll come find you after I finish reading it."
"Oh, by the way." The old man slapped his head, "Aren't you asking about the book from last time? Since you like that book so much, I'll give you a little thing as a souvenir."
He reached out and fumbled around in his crotch, and finally found a small pendant, which looked like an open book.
"Here you are." He threw it over.
Garen caught it and looked at it. The pendant was only the size of a thumbnail. The workmanship was exquisite. The whole body was black. There was a dark red weird symbol in the center of the opened page.
"What's this?"
"It came as a gift when I bought that book, you just keep it." The old man stretched out his hand and scratched his crotch again, it seemed a little itchy.
Garen felt cold for a while, and quickly put the pendant into his trouser pocket, "I said, where did you get this thing, is it disgusting to you? Alright, I'll go first."
"Go, go." The old man waved his hands impatiently.
Coming out of the antique shop, Garen waited for a car at the door of the shop for a while, but no carriage passed by for more than ten minutes. The location of this place is not very good, and there are very few people coming by carriage. He had no choice but to walk along the street to the intersection of Pennington Street with the book in his arms.
When he got to the floor of his uncle's house, he looked up at the window of his uncle's house, just in time to see Lombas walking away from the window quickly, leaving only the swaying window sash, as if deliberately avoiding him.
Garen originally wanted to go up to see his uncle, but when he saw that Lombas was also at home, he suddenly lost interest. Since the last time he had a bad relationship with Lombas, he felt upset when he saw this guy.
"This guy has been pretty quiet lately." Garen didn't take a few steps forward with the book in his arms, when suddenly there was a sound of hurried footsteps behind him.
"Brother Garen!" A clear girl's voice came from behind.
Garen turned around and saw a young girl with a flushed face running towards him.
The girl was wearing a thin white padded jacket with a waist, and a pair of white water-polished jeans that perfectly highlighted the tight curve of her buttocks and long legs. It just seemed that she was only thirteen or fourteen years old, and the bear hadn't developed much.
When the girl ran over, she brought a faint girlish body fragrance to her face, and her short reddish hair gave her a refreshing and energetic feeling.
"Brother Jialong, you've been passing by here, why don't you come up and sit down?" The girl was another daughter of my uncle, Fei Liya. Unlike Lombas, Filia has always been very enthusiastic about Garen. Perhaps this is because Garen used to like to play with children.
"I didn't see that Filia was here." Garen smiled, reaching out to pinch the girl's little nose. "How did you get your hair cut?"
"I'm learning martial arts now." The girl gestured a basic movement.
"Where's uncle?"
"I'm entertaining guests at home. They only talk about complicated and troublesome things. It's boring anyway. Can you come up and play with me, Brother Garong?" Filia Candle Garen shook his arm.
"Forget it, I won't bother my uncle when he talks about things at home."
"Also, Dad heard that you were accepted as an apprentice by the master of Baiyun Hall, and he was very upset about it." Filia lowered her voice. "Father said, I don't want you to waste time learning martial arts. It's enough to learn a little self-defense. It's not enough to devote all your energy to it. It's a waste of time."
Garen frowned: "I thought uncle would be very happy."
(end of this chapter)