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Lot Essay
Bottles from this school have recently been re-assessed and can now be designated as Yangzhou School (see Moss and Sargent, "The World in a Bottle in the World at the End of the Qing Empire. Part 2: Yangzhou Overlay Glass," Journal of the International Chinese Snuff Bottle Society, Baltimore, pp. 22-9.). The distinctive group of glass overlay bottles exhibit finely carved scenes and seal marks through a thin layer of glass to a solid ground tone. The seal on this bottle, jixiang , is a standard Yangzhou School seal and can also be found on a red glass bottle with blue overlay in the Mary and George Bloch Collection, illustrated by Moss, Graham, Tsang, in A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles, The Mary and George Bloch Collection, Vol. 5, Part 3, Glass, Hong Kong, 2002, pp. 768-9, no. 1043.
The various scholar's objects from the studio and the household show reverence to the antique but also carry symbolic significance. For instance the pronunciation of 'teapot,' includes the sound hu, which is a pun on fu ('blessings'). A related bottle in the Mary and George Bloch Collection, similarly carved with scholar's objects through a deep cinnabar-red overlay to a white ground but without the mask and ring handles and with the seal Ziwan, is illustrated ibid., p. 729, no. 1025.
The various scholar's objects from the studio and the household show reverence to the antique but also carry symbolic significance. For instance the pronunciation of 'teapot,' includes the sound hu, which is a pun on fu ('blessings'). A related bottle in the Mary and George Bloch Collection, similarly carved with scholar's objects through a deep cinnabar-red overlay to a white ground but without the mask and ring handles and with the seal Ziwan, is illustrated ibid., p. 729, no. 1025.