PROBABLY IMPERIAL, ATTRIBUTED TO THE PALACE WORKSHOPS, BEIJING, 1730-1770

There is a whole series of baskets of flowers or fruit which can be associated with the eighteenth-century Qing Court. The design is found on Imperial porcelain dishes enamelled at Jingdezhen and at the Court from the Yongzheng period and on a range of snuff bottles attributable to the Palace workshops. Three of these are in the Bloch Collection. Two are of painted enamels on metal from the first half of the Qianlong period (R. Kleiner, The Bloch Collection, no. 4, and Chinese Snuff Bottles. A Miniature Art, no. 5), while the third is of the Guyue Xuan group, an Imperial group of the late Qianlong period certainly associated with, if not made at the Court (R. Kleiner, The Bloch Collection, no. 23, no longer attributed to the Ye family but to the earlier Guyue Xuan group instead). Others are found in glass overlay, often of several colours, ranging from an early example where the fruits are contained in a bowl rather than a basket to a spectacular mid-Qing double-overlay with begonias in a basket (Moss et. al., The Art of the Chinese Snuff Bottle, nos. 362 and 395 respectively). Many others are known both of the Guyue Xuan group and in glass overlay, frequently of several colours which suits the design ideally. So many examples of the subject can be attributed to the Court or to Court influence that it is clearly established as a popular Imperial subject of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.