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Bottle ID: 00485
BLUE W/GREEN OVERLAY, FAN-TAILED CARP
Date: 1750-1795
Height: 53 mm
Glass, of flattened rounded form with sloping shoulders, overlaid with opaque sage-green on a opaque cobalt-blue ground, and carved on each side with a fan-tailed carp leaping from formalized waves, the sides carved with mock mask and ring handles, the lip and footrim in the overlay color.
Imperial, attributed to the Palace Workshops, Beijing.
Similar Examples:
Crane Collection nos. 294 and 658.
Sotheby's, New York, November 22, 1988, lot 204.
Snuff Bottles - The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum,
Vol. 47, Beijing, 2003, p. 46, no. 67.
Provenance:
Hugh Moss [HK] Ltd.
Robert Hall
Sotheby's, Olympia, June 13, 2003, lot 829
A Private Asian Collection
Exhibited:
Annual Convention ICSBS Toronto, October 2007
This is an extremely rare version of a small group of glass bottles made in the Qianlong period and almost certainly from one of the workshops that supplied the Imperial Court, possibly the combination of the Imperial glassworks and the Palace workshops carving facilities. A second characteristic identifying these examples with the Court are the distinctive, small mask handles with smaller rings set high on the shoulders.
In the Archive numbered 3446 from the Collection of the First National Historical Archive of China from the Qianlong Period, in the year 1754, the following glass object is listed under the box-making workshop: 'flower holder in double gourd form, blue overlay on opaque green, quantity 1, keep'. If the glassmakers were capable of producing this overlay glass item in 1754, then they were equally capable of making the reverse color overlay of opaque green on blue shown on the above snuff bottle. The vivid blue ground through which the lively fish appears to be swimming is highly suggestive of water although the waves themselves are depicted in green.