Bottle ID: 00222

< Previous page

RED RUBY, CARVED W/DRAGONS

Date: 1736-1795

Height: 62 mm

Glass, of flattened rounded form with a neatly carved footrim, of deep ruby-red color, continuously carved in low relief with two coiling dragons, the heads reaching over the shoulders down to the sides to form mock mask and ring handles, their tails curling around to form the footrim.

Imperial, attributed to the Palace Workshops, Beijing

Similar Examples:

Crane Collection no. 208.
Stevens, Bob C. The Collector's Book of Snuff Bottles, 1976, p. 65, no. 163.

Provenance:

Robert Hall

Exhibited:

Annual Convention ICSBS Toronto, October 2007

The Palace Workshops had evolved to a level of supreme artistry by the middle of the Qianlong period, and the output of the glass workshops illustrates this well. This vibrant ruby-red glass bottle with its powerfully fluid low relief carving is a masterpiece of artistic expression and technical proficiency. While the limbs and torso of the dragons are executed in a compelling manner, it is the culmination of their heads evolving into the mock mask and ring handles on each side that raises this bottle above the level of its Imperial counterparts. A group of more simply carved glass bottles exist where the main feature is the carved dragons' tails curling down from the sides of the bottle to form the footrim, as does this bottle. However, on this example that feature becomes part of the whole design and not its predominant feature. One measure of such supreme artistry is that the bottle can be judged in its entirety and not through an evaluation of its separate characteristics.

< Back to full list