Bottle ID: 290

< Previous page

BLACK, WITH DRAGON

Date: 1750-1795

Height: 54 mm

Lacquer on textile, black, of small flattened pear shape with a tall slightly flared neck and recessed oval footrim, the tapering shoulders draped with a coiling dragon in relief biting at a spray of lingzhi fungus.
Attributed to Fuzhou.

Similar Examples:

Moss, Hugh, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang. A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles - The Mary and George Bloch Collection, Vol. 7, Part 1, pp. 143-145, no. 1526.

Provenance:

Clare Lawrence Ltd.
Robert Kleiner

A similar bottle in the collection of Mary and George Bloch, which was exhibited at the British Museum, London, June – November 1995 was illustrated in the accompanying catalogue. Interestingly the Bloch bottle has been made in red, rather than black, lacquer and was later embellished. Despite this the bottle would have been made in Fuzhou where the manufacture of lacquer-ware was celebrated and embellished elsewhere.
In Wang Wen and Yang Boda’s book, “The Palace Museum, Beijing, Treasures of the Forbidden City”, it is explained that using the method known as tuotai layers of lacquer-soaked textiles are used to build up the body of the piece. The final layer is a layer of “lacquer ash” putty, known as qihui, which was then polished and given a last layer of colored lacquer in this case, black (p. 273). Most “lacquer” bottles are, in fact, lacquered on a base of wood or metal. Lacquer on textile bottles are much rarer, and only a small number are known which have been dated to both the 18^th and 19^th centuries. The most commonly known group of lacquer on textile bottles which are of very high quality are the series in the form of a conch shell of which there is a fine example in the Crane Collection.

 

< Back to full list