Bottle ID: 404

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BLUE AND RED UNDERGLAZE, CYLINDRICAL, WITH DRAGONS

Date: 1820-1860

Height: 77 mm

Porcelain, with a transparent clear glaze on cobalt blue and copper red; of cylindrical form with a wide mouth and recessed circular foot; painted with a continuous scene of a five-clawed Imperial dragon flying amidst formalized clouds and turning its head back to confront a dragon-carp rising from formalized waves beneath it, the details of the two creatures and the waves in underglaze red, the neck with a band of formalized lingzhi heads and pendant jewels, the base with a line border, both in underglaze blue, the foot and interior of the bottle glazed.

Imperial, Jingde Zhen Imperial kilns.

Similar Examples:

Kleiner, Robert. Chinese Snuff Bottles - The white Wings Collection, 1997, p. 139, no. 93.
Kleiner, Robert. In Search of a Dragon: Underglaze-Blue and White Porcelain Snuff Bottles from the Collection of Joseph Baruch Silver, 2007, p. 39, no. 19.

Provenance:

Hugh Moss (HK) Ltd.
A private Hong Kong Collection.

Although this porcelain bottle is of a standard form, of which many were produced during the nineteenth century, the overall quality of this example is very high. The design of the two dragons is executed with great vigor, using more fine detail than is often seen and with strong underglaze colors. Underglaze copper red was notoriously difficult to control having a tendency to turn a brown color and spread outside the lines of the design during firing. In this case, whilst there is a slight browning of the red tone, it is well controlled within the design.

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