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Lot Essay
This type of translucent, milky-white glass was frequently used as an alternative to opaque white glass within the Palace workshops and is ideally suited to the equally translucent enamels. A common characteristic of this particular glass is the appearance of a concentric circle of more transparent glass between layers of whiter, translucent material at the lip. One of the key features of Palace enamels on glass is the softness, translucency and delicacy of much of the palette, which allows for very subtle shading and gradations of colour. As a counterpoint, brilliant and opaque enamel colours are used on the formal borders and on the bird. Compare a bottle in the Palace Museum, Beijing, possibly painted by the same hand, included in Snuff Bottles, The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Hong Kong, 2003, no. 9.
Among the three media for enamelling produced at the Court - metal, ceramics and glass - glass is by far the rarest. In general production (although not echoed in snuff bottles) porcelains were the most plentiful, followed by enamels on metal, and then, glass, although the glass equivalents were never more than a tiny fraction of the other output. In snuff bottles, enamel on metal predominates, followed by porcelain and, again, glass is the rarest. The quality and style of this example suggest a date from early in the reign.
It seems certain that the same enamellers were employed to work on glass, metal and ceramics. The process of painting by mixing finely powdered glass with a liquid medium and firing at low temperatures was the same for all three media, and the materials, kilns and workshops were probably shared. Certainly subjects were repeated freely across the media. This bottle is closely related to another bottle from the J & J Collection, enamelled with pheasants and peonies on a copper body, and illustrated in Moss et. al. The Art of the Chinese Snuff Bottle, no. 177. The neck borders are not dissimilar as both are bird and flower designs against a white ground, and although the present lot is more linear - indeed the peonies are entirely outlined in the Chinese style, whereas the metal example is shaded more in the European manner - the brushwork is very similar, with the same well-trained and fluent lines dancing independently of what they are so successfully depicting. It is not inconceivable that they are by the same hand.
Apart from the delightful subject, drawn directly from the Chinese painting tradition of birds and flowers, this is one of the rare examples where there is practically no visible indication of Jesuit influence in the design, other than in the Europeanized, rococo borders.
Among the three media for enamelling produced at the Court - metal, ceramics and glass - glass is by far the rarest. In general production (although not echoed in snuff bottles) porcelains were the most plentiful, followed by enamels on metal, and then, glass, although the glass equivalents were never more than a tiny fraction of the other output. In snuff bottles, enamel on metal predominates, followed by porcelain and, again, glass is the rarest. The quality and style of this example suggest a date from early in the reign.
It seems certain that the same enamellers were employed to work on glass, metal and ceramics. The process of painting by mixing finely powdered glass with a liquid medium and firing at low temperatures was the same for all three media, and the materials, kilns and workshops were probably shared. Certainly subjects were repeated freely across the media. This bottle is closely related to another bottle from the J & J Collection, enamelled with pheasants and peonies on a copper body, and illustrated in Moss et. al. The Art of the Chinese Snuff Bottle, no. 177. The neck borders are not dissimilar as both are bird and flower designs against a white ground, and although the present lot is more linear - indeed the peonies are entirely outlined in the Chinese style, whereas the metal example is shaded more in the European manner - the brushwork is very similar, with the same well-trained and fluent lines dancing independently of what they are so successfully depicting. It is not inconceivable that they are by the same hand.
Apart from the delightful subject, drawn directly from the Chinese painting tradition of birds and flowers, this is one of the rare examples where there is practically no visible indication of Jesuit influence in the design, other than in the Europeanized, rococo borders.