Bottle ID: 353

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INCISED, CHEN SIGUANG, PEACH BLOSSOM

Date: 1760-1910

Height: 65 mm

Flawless crystal, of flattened pear shape with shoulders sloping to a cylindrical neck and with a oval footrim, incised on one side with a landscape scene with two scholars seated in a river-side pavilion gazing out at a figure in a sampan nearby, with distant hills, the other side incised with the entire text of Tao Yuanming’s Peach Blossom Spring, followed by the signature of the artist Chen Siguang.

Similar Examples:

None found

Provenance:

Hugh Moss [HK] Ltd.
Dr. Giovanni Caretti
The Ko Collection, 1926

Chen Siguang is not recorded in the standard biographical dictionaries, but this style of miniature incising reached its height in the late Qing period and continued into the early twentieth century. It is unclear whether the bottle is much older than the incising, since the inside painters of the Beijing school in the late Qing period apparently had crystal bottles made to a very high standard to the end of the Qing dynasty. The form of this bottle is very similar to those used by the painters, although it has not been hollowed out, deliberately leaving thicker walls and, in effect, an 'inner' bottle, so that the flawless crystal may be seen to its best advantage.

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