Bottle ID: 00513

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PINK RUBY, FADED TO WHITE W/SEAL SCRIPT

Date: 1700-1770

Height: 54 mm

Glass, of flattened rounded form with a slightly flared neck, with flattened narrow sides and a flat, double gourd-shaped foot, of translucent ruby-pink tone sandwiched between two layers of semi-transparent white, fading from pink at the neck to white at the base, the foot inscribed in wheel-cut seal script Wanya xuan ('The Studio of Refined Amusement').

Probably Imperial, attributed to the Palace Workshops, Beijing

 

Similar Examples:

Crane Collection no. 269.
Hall, Robert. Chinese Snuff Bottles II, p. 114, no. 94.
Moss, Hugh, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang. A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles - The Mary and George Bloch Collection, 2002, Vol. 5, Part 1, pp. 216-217, no. 753.

Provenance:

Hugh Moss [HK] Ltd.
Li Hui, Beijing, China, July 2004

Exhibited:

Annual Convention ICSBS Toronto, October 2007

This bottle is one of the rarest and most exciting examples of the Wanya xuan (the Studio of Refined Amusement) group of glass bottles. Approximately fifteen of these bottles have been published, all in the same material and all from private collections. While an attribution to the Palace Workshops is usually given on the basis of color, form, type of mark and so on (see discussion under Crane no. 269), there are no examples in either of the Palace Collections in Beijing or Taipei. It is also possible that this mark denotes a particular glass workshop; however, the connection between that idea and an Imperial attribution is even more tenuous. This example in pink and white glass is particularly rare since only three are known with the three character seal script mark being on the foot. The first of the other two bottles is opaque blue in color, rounded without flattened sides and is in the J & J Collection. The second is in the Bloch Collection and is ruby-red in color, of ovoid form and with the same double gourd-shaped foot as the Crane example. This is the only known example which has flattened sides with the maker choosing to place the mark on the foot, and it is not clear why this choice would have originally been made. While the majority of this group are in one color, a small number are of swirly multi-colors, with only the Crane example being a 'sandwich' glass with two colors, pink and white, both of which colors are listed in the Palace Archives as being used during the Qianlong period.

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