Lot 1172
Treasury 5, no.973 (‘Peach Soufflé’)
HK$37,500

Transparent sapphire-blue glass and streaky milky-white glass with a soufflé surface layer of pink speckling, the first with scattered air bubbles, the second suffused with small ones; with a flat lip; carved as a single overlay in the form of a peach, with a severed, leafy branch wrapped around it
1770-1880
Height: 4.88 cm. (measured at right angles to the plane of the lip)
Mouth/lip: 0.75/1.05 cm
Stopper: glass, carved with vertical fluting; pearl finial

Provenance:
Elisabeth and Ladislas Kardos
Sotheby’s, New York, 1 July 1985, lot 29

Published:
Treasury 5, no.973

Exhibited:
Vancouver Centennial Museum, October 1977

There is a series of fruit-form bottles that represent peaches primarily and feature a variety of ground colours overlaid with a contrasting layer carved as a severed leafy peach branch. The ground plane is often manipulated while still hot, as it is here at the bottom of the fruit. This detail relates the technique to the group discussed under Sale 7, lot 95. Pink soufflé was a standard colour and surface for that group. It was achieved by applying powdered glass of a different colour to the surface. Here, however, the powdered glass is less evenly distributed than on those from the group represented by Sale 7, lot 95, and in fact we do not think the two schools are one, since the peach leaves in the group represented here are usually a carved overlay, whereas carved details did not appear on that group.

These fruit-form bottles are from the mid-Qing period, the most likely date being the first half of the nineteenth century, but one or two may be from the late eighteenth century. The carving, while quite impressive, continued to exhibit the typical slight stiffness of nineteenth-century style, and the ground plane, where the branches meet it, clearly reveals the initial cutting marks beneath a rudimentary polish. This is, however, an unusually good example of the group, displaying a very pleasing colour combination.

It is possible to classify this bottle as a single overlay, but because of the ambiguity of the use of the very thin layer of powdered glass, it could be claimed as a double overlay.

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.