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Bottle ID: 435
BLUE AND COPPER, UNDERGLAZE, CYLINDRICAL
Date: 1820-1850
Height: 84 mm
Porcelain with a transparent glaze on cobalt and copper; of cylindrical form, with a slightly flared neck, wide mouth and recessed circular foot; painted in underglaze copper-red and cobalt-blue with a scene from Xiyou ji (‘Journey to the West’), showing the monk Xuanzhuang and his companions with a mule, crossing a body of water on a mythological tortoise with the Monkey King (Sun Wukong) on a cloud near a rocky outcrop, growing with pines, rising from the waves; the upper neck with a double line border and at the base with another blue line, with a fourth on the outer footrim, the foot and the interior glazed white.
Attributed to Jingde Zhen.
Similar Examples:
Moss, Hugh, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang. The Art of the Chinese Snuff Bottle - The J & J Collection, 1993, Vol. I, pp. 143-144, no. 78.
JICSBS. Autumn 2002, p. 11, figs. 24a-d.
Provenance:
Hugh Moss (HK) Ltd.
The story of 'Journey to the West’ a fictional work published in 1592, centres around the historical figure Xuanzhuang (also known as Tripitaka), a monk from the Eighth century, who journeyed to the West in search of Buddhist texts. One of his companions was Sun Wukong, also famously known as the Monkey King. Apart from its rare subject, this is one of the finest of the very wide range of underglaze blue and red snuff bottles from the nineteenth century. It is unusual for copper colour to be so well controlled in the painting, and the fineness of the lines with the underglaze cobalt-blue is extremely impressive in a material that has a tendency to diffuse into the glaze.