Lot 205
Treasury 5, no. 879 (‘Gentleman’s Ruby’)
HK$81,250

Transparent, ruby-red, and milky glass, suffused with air bubbles of various sizes, some elongated; with a flat lip and recessed convex foot surrounded by a protruding flat footrim; carved as a single overlay with a continuous design of formalized waves around the base from which rise lotus plants, a rocky outcrop and, growing behind it, bamboo, inscribed in seal script with what appears to read, zhuye heying (‘Night of bamboo, shadows of lotuses’)
1740-1790
Height: 8.5 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.78/1.56 cm
Stopper: chrysoprase; vinyl collar

Illustration: watercolour by Peter Suart

Provenance:
Hugh M. Moss Ltd, Hong Kong (1985)

Published:
Kleiner, Yang, and Shangraw 1994, no. 107
Treasury 5, no. 879

Exhibited:
Hong Kong Museum of Art, March-June 1994
National Museum, Singapore, November 1994-February 1995

The ground of this bottle is the bright-looking, milky, bubble-suffused ground typical of the Qianlong reign. The red overlay is somewhat similar, but was a standard colour made for more than a century at the court (and possibly elsewhere), and while the shape is reminiscent of Sale 4, lot 121, this one is more bulbous. In the carving of the lotus, this bottle demonstrates focus more on surface detail than on form. The veins on the bottom of the lotus leaves are delineated by twinned lines, leaving a slightly raised vein; on the top of the leaf on the side with the inscription, the vein is delineated by a single line. The style of rock here and on Sale 3, lot 21 is contrasting, more attention being devoted to surface detail here, with texturing strokes cut into the rock to decorate form with texture.
Sale 3, lot 21 displays a powerful, three-dimensional form for each element of the design, whereas here the emphasis is more on the detailing of the forms. This bottle is related closely to Sale 5, lot 63, and may be the work of the same carver, who conceivably worked at the palace workshop. By the time we enter the mid-Qianlong period, the most likely date for these two bottles, we face not only the complications of possible Suzhou carving, but the likelihood of private workshops in Beijing working to high standards for, among others, courtiers who would often have ordered bottles with a courtly appearance. Although we can identify a general class of bottle, we cannot judge in how many different workshops it was produced or where they may have been.

All the characters in the inscription save the first one are nonstandard seal forms, and although we are fairly confident in our revised interpretation, we cannot be sure we are reading the characters correctly. ‘Bamboo night’ and ‘lotus shadows’ (or ‘silhouettes’) both exist as phrases, but we have not found them used together, as here.

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.