Bottle ID: 00444

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BLUE COBALT, TRANSPARENT, OCTAGONAL, CONVEX & CONCAVE FACETS

Date: 1730-1770

Height: 60 mm

Glass, of elongated cylindrical meiping form, with eight vertical convex facets, changing at the shoulders to eight concave facets and tapering towards a slightly everted mouth, and the body tapering to an octagonal footrim, of transparent cobalt-blue tone; together with an original matching glass stopper.
Imperial, attributed to the Palace Workshops, Beijing

Similar Examples:

Crane Collection nos. 109, 343 and 724
Crane Collection no. 465
Moss, Hugh, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang. The Art of the Chinese Snuff Bottle - The J & J Collection, 1993, Vol II, p. 560, no. 333.
JICSBS, Spring 2006, p. 36, fig. 6, The Helen Pritchard Collection (lavender jadeite).

Provenance:

Hugh Moss [HK] Ltd.
Jana Volf, New York, September 2000
A Private Chicago Collection, no. 121

Exhibited:

Annual Convention ICSBS Toronto, October 2007

Published:

JICSBS, Spring 2004, p. 22, fig. 23

Despite the popularity in the eighteenth century Imperial Court for Western-influenced forms such as faceting, the more elongated, and hence, the elegant shape of this bottle is rarely seen. Despite its simple lines, which allow the brilliance of the color to shine through, the technique of manufacture is complex. After initially being mold-blown, the faceted panels would have been carved by the lapidaries in a similar fashion to the techniques used by the jade carvers of the time. Every detail of this design is delibrate, including the change from convex to concave panels at the shoulders, and the very rare original glass stopper. The final result is a masterpiece of design that only the Imperial workshops could have produced. The Qianlong Archives of the Imperial Household Department list seven colors of blue, including cobalt-blue which would describe this bottle. The earliest date for blue glass is 1738 when a request was made for a clear blue glass vase to be handed in to the Glasshouse (presumably to be worked upon). The first snuff bottle to be listed was in 1753 when the box workshop was asked to match and fit a box for an embellished translucent blue snuff bottle. Cobalt-blue glass was one of the initial early colors and it is possible that this bottle could have been made as early as the Yongzheng period, although with its form, it is more likley to be a product of the mid-Qianlong period. Dating a glass piece by comparing it to similar marked pieces is a perilous task. In the case of this snuff bottle, the Robert H. Clague Collection in "Chinese Glass of the Qing Dynasty" houses three examples of glass vases of similar forms with vertical panels, each one with a different incised reign mark - Yongzheng (page 79), Qianlong (page 20) and Daoguang (page 48). The first two examples are in blue glass while the third is of clear green. The J & J example listed above has the same formal integrity, intriguingly with its original glass stopper imitating coral, and also being of an "early" glass color. Interestingly, this form occurs in a lavender jadeite bottle in the Helen Pritchard Collection in the Oakland Museum, California. Although its form is remarkably similar, it is more likely to be a slightly later copy of these glass examples; this being evident in the differences such as the splayed foot and the more rounded body.

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