Bottle ID: 00910

< Previous page

SNOWFLAKE W/MULTI-COLOR OVERLAY; FIGURES IN FOUR PROFESSIONS

Date: 1800-1850

Height: 59 mm

 

Glass, of flattened rounded form, with sloping shoulders, overlaid with opaque red over cream over clear brown on a bubbly snowflake ground, and carved in relief with a continuous scene depicting the four honorable professions, with on one side a farmer and his yoked buffalo wending their way home beside rocks and grassy banks, overlooked by a sage in a pavilion looking out over a lake with a swooping bird above them; the reverse with a fisherman in a sampan casting his net over the water while watching a woodcutter making his way across a bridge nestled by rocks and trees, the neck enveloped in scrolling clouds above the sun.
Attributed to Yangzhou.

 

Similar Examples:

The Crane Collection no. 129 and 155.
Sotheby's, New York, April 1, 2005, lot 356.

 

Provenance:

Asian Art Studio
The Collection of Philip Harvey, CA.

 

Exhibited:
 

Annual Convention ICSBS Toronto, October 2007

 

Published:
 

JICSBS, Autumn 2004, Front and Back Cover

 

 

The combination of red over cream over clear brown on a bubbly snowflake ground is exceedingly rare.  The style of carving, however, fits into a small group of double and triple overlay glass carved with a mountainous landscape scene ennobling the four professions.
In the heady days of excessive wealth in cities such as Yangzhou and its neighbor Suzhou, the rich merchants of the day were both ardent snuff takers and patrons of the arts.  Through their new-found wealth they could acquire the trappings of the literati as easily as the officials at the Palace.  It was in such an atmosphere that the Yangzhou School of carving developed, with commercial carvers of glass, having a minimum level of scholarly insight supplying rich, but naïve patrons who aspired to literati practices. This seeming superficiality did not prevent the Yangzhou School from producing such excellent examples as the one shown here.
 

 

< Back to full list