Bottle ID: 00103

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BLUE W/WHITE OVERLAY, LILIES

Date: 1730-1795

Height: 61 mm

Glass, of flattened ovoid form tapering to a slender neck, overlaid with opaque white on a cobalt-blue ground, carved on front and reverse with a flowering gentian and a single closed bud.

Imperial, attributed to the Palace Workshops, Beijing.

Similar Examples:

Lawrence, Clare. Miniature Masterpieces from the Middle Kingdom - The Monimar Collection of Chinese Snuff Bottles, 1996, pp. 246-247, no. 117.153.
Masterpieces of Chinese Snuff Bottles in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, 1976, no. 3.
Sotheby's New York, October 25, 1997, lot 23, The Gerry P. Mack Collection.
Sotheby's, New York, September 14, 2010, lot 115, The Joe Grimberg Collection.

Provenance:

Clare Lawrence Ltd.
The Thewlis Collection
Al and Julie Stempel (7.12.1978)

Exhibited:

Annual Convention ICSBS Toronto, October 2007

Published:

Lawrence, Clare. The Thewlis Collection of Chinese Snuff Bottles, 1990, p. 37, no. 53.

This bottle is a delightful example of a small group of Palace Workshops bottles, all produced with a design of opaque white single stem gentians or lilies overlaid in relief against a clear blue ground. It is likely that a number of different batches of these were made, as examples exist in a paler blue transparent glass and a more opaque blue color. There is also a related group of bottles with a continuous design of more than one lily on each side, which are usually of a rounded shape. The appendices relating to the sixty years of the Qianlong period of the First National Historical Archive of China list both the objects made from glass and their colors, of which 'white overlay on blue' is one of the combinations used in Palace glass production. With a similar example in the collection of the National Palace Museum in Taiwan, an Imperial attribution is appealing.

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