Lot 249
Treasury 5, no. 990 (‘Lyrical Lotus’)
HK$162,500

Transparent emerald-green, ruby-red, sapphire-blue, and golden-yellow glass, translucent pale yellow and pink glass, and colourless glass, all suffused with air bubbles of various sizes, the colourless glass with small white flakes; with a flat lip and flat, irregularly oval foot made up of elements of the design; carved as a single overlay with a continuous design of a lotus pond, with a cattail and a severed branch of blossoming prunus, with a magpie perched on it and a butterfly overhead, a large lotus leaf forming the base and doubling as a naturalistic foot
1750-1790
Height: 6.4 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.66/1.28 cm
Stopper: tourmaline; vinyl collar

Provenance:
Eric Young
Sotheby’s, London, 3 March 1987, lot 24

Published:
Kleiner 1987, no. 101
JICSBS, Summer 1987, p. 24, fig. 7
Treasury 5, no. 990

Exhibited:
Sydney L. Moss Ltd, London, October 1987
Creditanstalt, Vienna, May-June 1993

This bottle combines impeccable carving (including a ground plane exhibiting fine control) with a well-composed and powerful design. The subject, style, and some common colours link this to Sale 4, lot 104, which represents an unusually coloured and almost equally well-carved example of the same group, likely to date from the second half of the Qianlong period.

The use of colours sets this bottle apart from many of the more standard works of the school. The classic wares of the school consist of a range of small dabs of colour spread all over the bottle and supported by a common colour, usually green, to act as stems and foliage of the plants involved. Where the subject is a basket of flowers or involves a rocky ground, another colour is often used for these distinct elements. The overall feeling, however, is one of a large area of green relieved by dabs of colour. On this example, the balance of the colours is more even, with larger areas of single colour creating a greater degree of similarity between the group and the classic, courtly multi-colour single overlay technique. These are not small dabs of colour to emphasize single elements, but large areas of an individual colour assimilated into the design. The glassworker may have followed an original drawing, but here it seems more likely the design was adapted to whatever colours the glassmaker laid down, rather than the other way around (see under Treasury 5, no. 983).

In the absence of this colour combination—notably the rather demanding pink—and the floral style, this bottle would barely qualify as a member of the group, for its compositional conception is very different. An incontrovertible link to the group, however, is provided by the distinctive pale yellow colour much used by this school during its best years and created using a transparent golden-yellow upper ‘skin’ over a translucent, pale lemon-yellow base. The thickness of the skin is a millimetre or less, but it is distinctive and greatly assists in identifying the works of the school.

This is not the Sotheby’s sale catalogue. This is a product of Hugh Moss for the purposes of this website. For the catalogue details please refer to Sotheby’s website or request a copy of a printed sale catalogue from Sotheby’s.