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Lot 20
Lot 20 A copper-red and cobalt-blue porcelain ‘dragon’ snuff bottle (‘Dancing Dragons’) Colourless glaze on copper and cobalt on porcelain; with a flat lip and recessed flat foot surrounded by a convex footrim; painted under the glaze in copper-red with a continuous design of a five-clawed imperial dragon amidst formalized clouds and flames above another dragon rising from formalized waves, the beasts’ eyes in cobalt blue, the shoulders painted with formalized flames beneath a neck band of pendant, formalized lingzhi; the foot, lip, inner neck, and interior glazed Lot 20 Provenance: Published: Lot 20 Commentary As pillar bottles began to look more like standard cylindrical ceramic snuff bottles, the combination of these influences produced a new design tradition appropriate to the shape. The painting of the dragons is still powerful, closer to the standard pillar bottles represented by Sale 1, lot 134 than to many of the rather decorative beasts of the mid- to late nineteenth century, so it probably dates from the Jiaqing reign or only a little later. Underglaze-red wares are generally rarer than their underglaze-blue counterparts, primarily because the colour was more difficult to control. This is one of the livelier examples of underglaze-red decoration, combining unusually fine, vibrant colour with well-controlled detail. It is also decorated with two of the more charismatic dragons in the field, beasts that appear to be dancing without inhibition. In fact, it is not until one begins to get involved with the personalities of the two beasts that one of the more unusual features of this bottle becomes apparent. The eyes of each dragon are painted in underglaze blue. Just four, tiny dabs of blue complete the scene in a delightful touch that somehow underlines the unusual commitment to perfection represented here.
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