ARTS 23
The Epoch Times
SEPTEMBER 19 – 25, 2012
Dreamstones:
What the
mountains
painted
An ancient Chinese art form rediscovered.
Christine Lin
For the people of Dali
Prefecture in south-west
China, the idea that mountains can paint is not new. For
millennia, they have quarried marble and the experts
among them have sliced
through the rock to reveal
images crafted by billions of
years of geological activity.
Polished and framed, the
dreamstone’s striations of
mineral deposits depict scenes
that look like landscapes, seascapes, forests, humans and
animals – and the artistic
styles they resemble range
from that of Song Dynasty
brushwork to the abstract.
The source for these
extraordinary marbles is
the towering Cangshan
Mountains, surrounding the
ancient city of Dali in Yunnan
Province.
It was during a trip to
Dali 15 years ago, looking
for bronzes, that antiquities
dealer and researcher Michael
Teller stumbled upon dreamstones. Despite dealing in
antiquities for decades, Mr
Teller had never heard of
dreamstones until he noticed
one in the home of an older
Chinese gentleman.
“It was leaning against a
wall in this ‘hoarder’s room
of art’,” Mr Teller recalled. “I
thought it was a painting and I
said to him: ‘That’s a beautiful
painting!’ Well, he got really
upset and started telling me
that it was a dreamstone.”
As Mr Teller would learn,
dreamstones were revered and
sought after among Chinese
royalty, aristocracy and literati since the Tang Dynasty.
According to records from
the Song Dynasty, emperors
valued them over gemstones
and gold, even demanding
them as tribute. In fact, the
Dali marble was so revered in
early China that the word for
marble in Chinese is ‘dali’.
After viewing a dreamstone, prominent Ming
geographer and scholar Xu
Xiake famously said that all art
galleries not showing dreamstones should be shut down
because no other art form
could compare in displaying
the essence of nature.
Despite their high status in
history, they have been littleknown since the 20th century
due to the systematic destruction of traditional arts under
Mao and the communist
regime.
“This art form has been lost
to the last couple of generations,” Mr Teller said. “But they
didn’t feel the loss of the art
since they didn’t even know it
existed.”
Persisting through the
Chinese Communist Party’s
attempt to erase China’s traditional arts, the practices of
quarrying, revealing, collecting
and appreciating dreamstones
has been kept alive by 150
families of the Bai ethnic
minority in and around the
old city of Dali.
Now, a small number of
Often, a rock
taken from a
forested area will
reveal a bamboo
grove; a rock
from a mountain
will reveal that
mountaintop
shrouded in mist.
No one knows
why this might
be.
collectors, both in China and
in the West, have begun to
rediscover and appreciate the
artistic significance of dreamstones, and the rare talent
required to reveal a scene
hidden in stone.
Mysterious connections
Marble is everywhere. In Dali,
small marble accessories are
some of the most common
tourist trinkets. But rocks that
can become dreamstone masterpieces are hard to come by
and even harder to reveal.
According to Mr Teller’s
estimate, there are only 12
established masters living
today who have the ability
to intuit where and what to
quarry, and how to cut a stone
to reveal the art inside.
“You can’t go to the other
side of the mountain or even
50 yards away and find the
same colour scheme and
pattern,” Mr Teller said.
The stones have an innate
connection to the places were
they are found. Often, a rock
taken from a forested area
will reveal a bamboo grove;
a rock from a mountain will
reveal that mountaintop
shrouded in mist. No one
knows why this might be and
that mystery is part of dreamstones’ appeal.
The intuition, or sixth
sense, or expertise – whatever
it may be – to know how to
cut a drab, featureless rock in
just the right angle and location, down to 1/16th of an inch
in order to unveil a scene of
artistic value, belongs only to
a master revealer.
In Mr Teller’s midtown
Manhattan gallery is a small
boulder that reveals mountaintops in shades of rust, but
remains uncut and unpolished. Viewing it from the
side, one can imagine that if
the master had cut a fraction
of an inch further back, the
image attained may have been
quite different, or not impressive at all.
“He could have gotten a
nice floor tile,” Mr Teller said.
Appraising and
collecting
The body of dreamstone collectors is growing, says Mr
Teller, who once held an exhibition of 175 dreamstones in
which 150 were sold. Almost
none of the buyers had heard
of dreamstones before, but
were captivated by their
beauty and visceral appeal.
“There doesn’t seem to be
any specific demographic
for dreamstone collectors,”
Mr Teller said. Buyers have
been people of all ages, cultural backgrounds, levels of
education and financial circumstances.
“There was one young
couple who had to pay installments for one small piece and
a millionaire who bought 40
pieces at a time,” Mr Teller
said.
The prices at that sale
ranged from $US950 ($A900)
to $US50,000 ($A47,300).
The growth in interest in
the art form has made pressing the need for an oversight
body that acts as an advocate for collectors. There are
stone craftsmen in China who
work with marble, but are not
dreamstone revealers.
To the uninitiated, it is easy
to fall into the trap of paying
exorbitant prices for a stone
Courtesy of TK Asian Antiquities
Marble dreamstone selected from the San Yang Peak of the Cangshan Mountain in Dali
Prefecture by master revealer and selector Yang Jun in 2012. Framed size: 60cm by 73cm.
Courtesy of TK Asian Antiquities
Marble dreamstone selected from the Cangshan Mountain in Dali Prefecture by
revealer Zhong Le in 1995. Framed size: 64cm by 90cm.
that has been manipulated.
Even if it had been given an
“award” from a local association, it could be at best
an unimportant piece, or at
worst, a fake.
To preserve and promote
the integrity and continuation of this rare art form, Mr
Teller and several dreamstone
experts have founded the
International Dali Dreamstone
Association (IDDA). The consulting members include
scholars, collectors and
masters both from the United
States and China.
While several stone collecting societies exist locally
in China, prior to the IDDA’s
establishment, there has not
been an international body
for the protection of dreamstone revealers and collectors.
With one dreamstone selling
for $US250,000 ($A236,000)
in China recently, according
to the IDDA, the association
seems quite necessary.
By votes, members categorise, grade, appraise and
certify dreamstones based on
the stone’s rarity in the natural
world, the revealed scene’s
adherence to artistic tenets
and integrity of workmanship.
Even with this attempt at
standardisation, the tastes in
dreamstones remain highly
personal.
“Several people could be
looking at a dreamstone and
all have the same visceral
reaction, but each one will see
something different in it,” Mr
Teller said.
Mr Teller’s gallery, TK Asian
Antiquities in New York, features the largest collection of
dreamstones in the West. The
stones will be on exhibit as
part of New York Asia Week
until Sept 30.
TK Asian Antiquities is an advertising partner with The Epoch
Times.
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