Notes for season 4 episode 20, “Terra Incognita“
0:45 Flashback-Carter brings the Anthora cups.
11:10 In 2008 Carter picks up a jade puzzle ball at the crime scene, estimates its pawn value at “twenty grand”, and wonders why a violent home-invader didn’t take it. Puzzle balls are a series of balls, nested inside each other, all carved from the same block of material (eg ivory, or jade). They’re a type of object referred to as “guifu shengong” – hewn by ghosts and gods – pieces so complex and intricate they seemingly could not have been created by human hand. Of course, the production of jade puzzle balls is industrialised now. Machine assisted. We live in a world hewn by ghosts and gods… no artisan etched the surface of the CPU I’m using to type this. Doubtless there are puzzle balls worth a fortune, but they would date from a time when only a human hands have created them. It might take a refined eye to see it, but maybe New York’s home-invaders are that sophisticated?
(The values of the human art-market are not those of the Fabergé-smashing Machine.)