Lot 104

Lot 104
Treasury 5, no.991 (‘Chronological Ping-Pong’)
HK$312,500

A five-colour glass overlay 'lotus' snuff bottle

Transparent ruby-red, dark emerald-green, and golden-yellow glass and semi- transparent milky translucent, pale yellow, pale lilac, and turquoise blue glass, all suffused with air bubbles of various sizes; with a flat lip and recessed, slightly convex foot surrounded by a protruding rounded footrim; carved as a single overlay with, on one main side, a tied spray of severed lotus stems with flowers and a seed-pod, the other with a similar spray, but including a cattail
1760-1800
Height: 6.2 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.95/1.75 cm
Stopper: tourmaline; vinyl collar

Provenance:
Julie and Al Stempel
Sotheby’s (PB84), New York, 11 October 1979, lot 13
Gerd Lester 1986

Published:
Hong Kong and Xianggang Zhongguo biyanhu shoucang xuehui 1977, no. 6
Kleiner 1987, no. 120
Arts of Asia, September-October 1990, p. 97, fig. 37
Treasury 5, no.991

Exhibited:
Hong Kong Museum of Art, October 1977
Sydney L. Moss Ltd., London, October 1987
Creditanstalt, Vienna, May-June 1993

A very strong case seems to exist for including this bottle in the group represented by Treasury 5, no. 990. A similar yellow cattail may be seen running across the shoulders in identical position - although in a different design - and the bottle exhibits the transparent golden-yellow on translucent lemon-yellow seen in no. 990 and other bottles discussed there. The design is oddly similar to a Guangxu-marked bottle, Treasury 5, no. 858, odd because this is almost certainly not from that late period. The only reasonable conclusion is that the two happen to have been based on a similar design idea - perhaps a painting or a painting manual. From the details of the design, we can see that the person responsible for the leaves on this example had a much more sophisticated approach to depicting the leaves of the lotus.