Bottle ID: 00906

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GUANGZHOU, WHITE & BLUE, FIGURES IN LANDSCAPE SCENES

Date: 1780-1850

Height: 66 mm

Enamel on copper, of flattened ovoid form, enameled on a white ground in cobalt-blue with a continuous mountainous landscape scene of two figures walking beneath an umbrella on a plank-bridge over water, towards a pavilion nestled amongst pine and massive rocks; the reverse with a scholar within a pavilion overlooking a fisherman on a lake; the neck with a border and a lappet collar.

 

Similar Examples:

Arts of Asia, November - December 1998, Vol. 28, no. 6, Front Cover.
Gillingham, M. Chinese Painted Enamel, 1978, Catalogue, p.62, no.72.
Kleiner, Robert W. L.  Chinese Snuff Bottles from the Collection of John Ault, 1990, p. 96, no. 165; and p. 107, no. 189.
Keverne, Roger.  Summer Exhibition 2002, p. 60, no. 81.
Keverne, Roger.  Summer Exhibition 2005, p. 62, no. 56.

Provenance:

Asian Art Studio
Sotheby's, London, November 14, 2000, lot 179
The Baroness Jacobea Sapuppo, Italy
The Baroness D'Essen, Italy

Exhibited:

Annual Convention ICSBS Toronto, October 2007

This is an extraordinary enamel on copper bottle.  Very few snuff bottles of this type exist; only by turning to works of art can comparisons in this material be found.

Arts of Asia in December 1998 published on its front cover, a dish with a "blue" landscape on the upper surface.  The mark on the base was a four character Qianlong nianzhi mark in seal script.  In Roger Keverne's catalogues of Summer 2002 and Summer 2005, he published a rare enamel on metal kettle and an equally rare enamel on metal box, both with comparable blue landscapes.  Both pieces are dated to the eighteenth century by Keverne but have no basemarks to substantiate the attribution.  Keverne does not attribute either of these two pieces to Beijing or Guangzhou, although in the Summer 2005 catalogue, he states that the box relates to a similar group of wares decorated in monochrome colors and found in the Imperial Collections.

The most obvious comparison for these pieces, including the Crane snuff bottle, is found in porcelain pieces produced throughout the Qing dynasty.  The Collection of John Ault has two similar bottles decorated in underglaze blue on  white porcelain, one bottle with a Daoguang nianzhi mark (1821-1850), the second with a Tongzhi nianzhi mark (1862-1874) - both examples with remarkably similar scenes on them.

It is clear that the date of the Crane bottle is concurrent with the dates of the two enamel on metal pieces published by Keverne, but that all these pieces may have been produced from the late eighteenth century until the nineteenth century.

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