The Meriem Collection Part II. Lot 285

285
**A RARE AND UNUSUAL YELLOW AND GREEN STREAKED
GLASS
1730-1850
Of compressed form with slightly concave lip and concave oval foot, the bubble-suffused pale green glass with orangey-yellow and green calligraphic swirls, stained agate stopper with silver collar
7.2 cm. high
$1,200-1,800

P R O V E N A N C E :
Potter’s Gallery, Vancouver.

L I T E R A T U R E :
Robert Hall, Chinese Snuff Bottles II, London, 1989, no. 28.
V. Meade, “A Guide to Chinese Snuff Bottles from the Liao Chai Chih,” JICSBS, September 1980.

The present bottle was made by rolling fragments of colored glass into clear glass in the blowing process. The fragments are melted by the heat of the colorless glass and as the form is blown the molten fragments are intentionally twisted and stretched to produce the random pattern.

When glass raw material is produced it tends to contain air bubbles. These could be eliminated and for glass imitating various precious hardstones, the glassworks went to considerable trouble to do so. They could also be exaggerated by stirring air into the molten glass mix, or by manipulating the gather of glass on the blow-iron to introduce air bubbles. Qing Chinese glassmakers frequently used air bubbles as a feature of their products, as is obviously the case here, where the maker has made positive use of some unusually large bubbles and of extended patterns of smaller ones.

The Meriem Collection Part II. Lot 285