Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

Seeing that the total cost was 11,800 euros, John helped Liang En find two carts to put the boxes on, and also gave him the purchase order related to the carpet.

Looking at the yellowed list, Liang En finally understood why these ragged carpets were sold for 7,600 euros, because the list said that the selling price of these rugs at that time was 1,500 pounds.

Considering this was 1974, £1,500 was a lot of money. If these carpets didn't look too worn out, Liang En estimated that it might cost him 20,000 to 30,000 euros to get these carpets.

When Liang En and Fan Meng pushed a cart into Fan Meng's restaurant, they happened to meet Fan Meng's father who was going to Liang En's farm to transport it, so they simply took his cart back to the farm.

"I bought this thing for more than 10,000 euros. Sure enough, playing with antiques is not a hobby that ordinary people can afford." After listening to Liang En on the road about how he bought these things today, Uncle Fan shook his head and said.

"As far as I know, that old Li spent a lot of money on these things. But no one thought that as soon as he passed away, his children would be eager to sell these things for money, even if they were sold at low prices. "

Lamenting the impermanence of life all the way, the container truck drove into Liang En's farm. Originally, Liang En was anxious to take a look at the many treasures he had collected, but unfortunately, he was caught by his mother.

"Okay, I'll definitely come over when I'm eating." Liang En assured her mother with a wave of her hand after she and Fan Meng helped her mother transport the vegetables to the container truck and said goodbye to Fan Meng and his father.

Then he struggled to carry the wooden box on a cart to the garage of his ranch not far away, and then prepared for the cleaning work.

As a professional, Liang En, who knew how troublesome these old carpets were, put on a gas mask and gel coat. Then he took out the carpets and laid them on the cement floor with great difficulty.

After he painstakingly took out all the carpets from the box and spread them out on the cleaned garage floor, he discovered that there were three carpets folded together in the box.

The largest one is a 6m×6m square blue carpet, with a golden pattern of five blessings and longevity in the middle, surrounded by a circle of similarly golden flowers.

Although these golden patterns look a bit dim due to time issues. The thick dust accumulated on the carpet has also covered up the original color, but if you look closely, you can still see how exquisite and gorgeous this carpet was back then.

The other two carpets are 4m×6m rectangular carpets, one has a yellow ground with red flowers, the other has a yellow ground with blue flowers. From the almost identical pattern, it can be seen that this may be some kind of mass-produced product. The natural level of refinement is far less than the first one.

However, to Liang En's surprise, the corners of these three carpets were tied with bright yellow silk ribbons, which did not look like modern products.

When he stepped forward to check, he was surprised to find that the three bright yellow ribbons had the words Puxiu Palace Silk Weaving Five Blessings and Longevity Carpet, Lijingxuan Silk Weaving Yellow Ground Red Flower Carpet and Yanxi Palace Silk Weaving Carpet. A carpet with yellow ground and blue flowers.

Thanks to the popularity of some Qing palace dramas in his previous life, Liang En immediately understood that these place names were the names of palaces in the Forbidden City of China. Obviously, these carpets should be something that came out of the Forbidden City.

Just when Liang En identified the source of these carpets, two [Repair (N)] cards and one [Appraisal (N)] card appeared in his mind.

The number of cards obtained this time exceeded Liang En's most optimistic expectations. After thinking about it, he felt that the reason why he was able to obtain so many cards was related to the fact that these carpets came from the palace.

"In other words, the appearance of the card is closely related to the location of the treasure, the degree of protection, etc." Liang En quickly analyzed some interesting things from it. "It seems that if there is an opportunity in the future, we should try to find as many things as possible that are placed in strategic locations."

Considering that there is sufficient evidence to prove that Mr. Li purchased these three carpets directly from formal channels, they are likely to be part of the antiques exported by China in exchange for foreign exchange.

Although it may sound like a fantasy today, in those days it was very common to export these precious cultural relics in exchange for foreign currency.

To give the simplest example, one year before these carpets were sold to the UK, the Forbidden City sold 3,000 sets of armor belonging to Emperor Qianlong to its employees for 50 cents each as a benefit.

What's even more exaggerated is that the hospital stipulated that the armors purchased by employees must not be kept in their original condition and must be disassembled to use the silk floss inside. As a result, all 3,000 sets of armors were destroyed.

After careful inspection, Liang En found that these carpets were all the most traditional Chinese carpets, with unique manufacturing characteristics and appearance.

Different from the common wool carpets in the West, these carpets use cotton yarn as the warp and weft threads, and use colored silk threads to make pile knots. They appear to have prominent patterns, a smooth carpet surface, and emit a special luster under the light source.

After confirming the specific conditions of these carpets, Liang En focused on another box. And moved out the wooden furniture one after another.

These furniture are all old items. Although there is a huge gap between them in terms of production technology and materials compared with those top-grade furniture, at least they are relatively complete and can be sold for a lot of money with a little tidying up.

After taking out all the things from the two boxes, Liang En began to clean them. However, considering the difficulty of the cleaning work, Liang En cleaned the wooden furniture first.

Compared with the carpets that had not been maintained much, these furnitures had obviously been under maintenance before, so all he had to do was conduct a comprehensive inspection and simply clean them.

The first few pieces of furniture were very easy to clean, but when Liang En cleaned the last one, which was the largest kang table, he was surprised to find that the bottom of the kang table drawer felt uneven, but the surface was very smooth.

This is not a normal thing, as that feel can only come from wood that has been painted after being carved. But under normal circumstances, no one would do this kind of thing at the bottom of the drawer.

After realizing something was wrong, Liang En immediately pulled out the drawer, and was surprised to find that the back of the drawer had been hollowed out and a black inkstone was embedded in it.

"It seems that this kang table hides some treasures." Liang En thought and took the tools from the side, and then began to disassemble the kang table made of elm wood.

Sure enough, when he dismantled the entire kang table, he found a black mother-of-pearl box in the space behind another drawer of the kang table, and the groove in the middle of the box could just fit the inkstone found on the bottom of the drawer.

"Fortunately, the glue used here is ordinary glue. It can be dissolved slowly with water." Looking at the inkstone embedded in the bottom of the drawer, Liang En muttered and used warm water to dissolve the glue around the inkstone little by little.

"I think back then, the reason why this Kang table was made was probably to hide the inkstone."

After spending more than ten minutes, Liang En disassembled the inkstone at night, and the moment the inkstone fell into his hands, he immediately discovered what was unique about this inkstone.