Lot 1118
Treasury 5, no.918 (‘Pine Pavilion Blues’)
HK$75,000

Transparent sapphire-blue and translucent white glass; with a flat lip and recessed convex foot surrounded by a protruding flattened foot rim; carved as a single overlay with a continuous scene of a lotus pond, its waters surrounding the base of the bottle, with lotus growing on one main side and a single line of poetry in relief seal script on the other, followed by a rectangular seal inscribed in seal script, Song xuan 松軒 (‘Pine Pavilion’)
Attributable to the imperial glassworks, Beijing, 1750-1790
Height: 5.16 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.65/1.60 cm
Stopper: tourmaline; plastic collar

Provenance:
Jade House, Hong Kong (1984)
Hugh M. Moss Ltd., Hong Kong (1986)

Published:
JICSBS, Autumn 1984, p. i
Kleiner 1987, no. 110
Kleiner, Yang, and Shangraw 1994, no. 117
JICSBS, Winter 2000, p. 17, fig. 52
Treasury 5, no.918

Exhibited:
Sydney L. Moss Ltd., London, October 1987
Creditanstalt, Vienna, May-June 1993
Hong Kong Museum of Art, March-June 1994
National Museum, Singapore, November 1994-February 1995

Songxuan is unidentified. The fact that Sale 7, lot 41> bears both a Manchu-language inscription and the name Songxuan prompts us to look for a Manchu who used the name, but we have found only the chess master Huang Songxuan 黃松軒 (1888 – 1938), a bannerman from Guangdong. He lived too late to be a good candidate.

The inscription is the last line in a poem by Yang Wanli 楊萬里 (1127-1206), a prolific and important Southern song poet. It reads, 映日荷花別樣紅 (‘Against the sun, the lotus flowers are an extraordinary pink’).

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.