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Lot Essay
The decoration on this bottle may be a variation on the flowers of the four seasons, and in this case the four flowers, prunus, bamboo, peony and day lily, would respectively refer to winter, spring, summer and fall.
The sumptuous Beijing-palace glass of this bottle and its delightful design make it one of the most impressive of this style of the Guyue xuan group.
With its typically Imperial, and probably Beijing Palace workshops, glass ground, this bottle is a link between the Palace workshops and the Guyue xuan group of enamelled wares. There are two possibilities regarding the enamelling: either the yellow glass ground was made to be enamelled originally, or the bottle is an Imperial one, probably from the Palace workshops, which was originally intended to stand alone, but was later enamelled by the Guyue xuan group of painters, also reasonably attributed to the Palace from 1767 onwards.
The bottle in itself is unusual for Palace glass because it is variegated, with some translucent areas of golden yellow and some more opaque, paler yellow tones, closer to the classic yellow usually referred to as 'Imperial yellow'. The enamelling style here has evolved to the characteristic Guyue Xuan style, with simple decorative enamelling using black and pink lines over basic colours in a crisp and powerful design.
For a similar example of an enamelled yellow glass snuff bottle, see the one illustrated by John Ford, Chinese Snuff Bottles: The Edward Choate O'Dell Collection, no. 102.
The sumptuous Beijing-palace glass of this bottle and its delightful design make it one of the most impressive of this style of the Guyue xuan group.
With its typically Imperial, and probably Beijing Palace workshops, glass ground, this bottle is a link between the Palace workshops and the Guyue xuan group of enamelled wares. There are two possibilities regarding the enamelling: either the yellow glass ground was made to be enamelled originally, or the bottle is an Imperial one, probably from the Palace workshops, which was originally intended to stand alone, but was later enamelled by the Guyue xuan group of painters, also reasonably attributed to the Palace from 1767 onwards.
The bottle in itself is unusual for Palace glass because it is variegated, with some translucent areas of golden yellow and some more opaque, paler yellow tones, closer to the classic yellow usually referred to as 'Imperial yellow'. The enamelling style here has evolved to the characteristic Guyue Xuan style, with simple decorative enamelling using black and pink lines over basic colours in a crisp and powerful design.
For a similar example of an enamelled yellow glass snuff bottle, see the one illustrated by John Ford, Chinese Snuff Bottles: The Edward Choate O'Dell Collection, no. 102.