Lot 69

Lot 69
Treasury 5, no. 921

Tally of Longevity

Transparent, pale sapphire-blue, and slightly milky glass suffused with air bubbles of various sizes, including two large elongated ones at the neck; with a flat lip and recessed, slightly convex foot surrounded by a protruding rounded footrim; carved as a single overlay with a continuous design of formalized waves around the base from which rise rocky outcrops, one growing with a lingzhi at its peak, with a bat flying above a rising sun and a crane with a tally in its beak flying above a house nestling on formalized clouds, all set amidst further formalized clouds and raised bosses
1730–1780
Height: 7.76 cm
Mouth/lip: 1.36/1.81 cm
Stopper: tourmaline; gilt-silver collar

Lot 69 Provenance:
Hugh M. Moss Ltd, Hong Kong (1993)

Published:
Kleiner 1995,no. 151
Treasury 5, no. 921

Exhibited:
British Museum, London, June-October 1995
Israel Museum, Jerusalem, July-November 1997

Lot 69 Commentary
Although the likely provenance and date for this bottle remain the imperial glassworks from the Yongzheng through into the Qianlong periods (with the rather large size perhaps suggesting the latter rather than the former), we cannot entirely rule out production in a later eighteenth-century private workshop. A comparison may be made with the J & J blue overlay of peaches and an eternal knot (Moss, Graham, and Tsang 1993, no. 363; possibly early Qianlong), and also a red equivalent from the Gerd Lester Collection (Sotheby’s, New York, 23 March 1998, lot 76; now in the McDowell Collection). Both the scrolling clouds and the rock style of those examples are similar to this one.

This group of rare snuff bottles represents one of the finest achievements of Qing glass carving. Apart from those already cited, core members of the group are to be found in Lawrence 1996, no. 121, also in blue but on a snowstorm ground and with a similar theme, and we have elsewhere suggested that the snowstorm ground may have been a development of the early Qianlong period; Hamilton 1977, p. 94, no. G-53, a green overlay on a ground somewhat similar to this example; Geng and Zhao 1992, nos. 69, with blue prunus on a ground similar to this, and no. 70, also in blue on a slightly milky ground, which in turn allows us to link Treasury 5, nos. 922 and 923, to the group and also the red masterpieces of nos. 876 and 878, and thence to nos. 942 and 943, and onwards to the lavender frog and fenghuang design of no. 853. By now the group is sufficiently extended to include the J & J frog (Moss, Graham, and Tsang 1993, no. 371); Sotheby’s, New York, 17 March 1997, lot 79, a magnificent green overlay on a ground similar to this one, but decorated with elephants and Buddhist lions in a distinctly imperial style (now in the Crane Collection); Sotheby’s, New York, 3 October 1980, lot 68, with bats and a peach tree in a colour combination similar to this one; Sotheby’s, Hong Kong, 4 November 1996, lot 22, red on bubble-suffused slightly milky glass with a design related to this one, and Sotheby’s, Hong Kong, 28 April 1993, lot 399, red on snowstorm glass with a figure subject. The magnificent red overlay fish in a basket (Christie’s, Hong Kong, 30 April 1995, lot 1396), and one with highly imperial kui dragons in a palette similar to this example, also seems to come from the same general group, however much disguised by the formality of the subject matter (Christie’s, New York, 21 September 1995, lot 347). This, in turn, brings us to a series of other imperial types and we find ourselves, yet again, involved in the familiar, seemingly endless game of comparisons invariably evoked by Qing glass carvings. While the overriding impression is of an imperial group from the height of the art in the Qianlong period, we could not put our hands on our hearts and swear that some, at least, were not made by a private glass-carving workshop producing courtly bottles during the eighteenth century.

The bat and sea waves represent the wish ‘[May your] happiness be as [vast as] the Eastern Sea’, and the morning sun rising from waves in the Eastern Sea is a symbolic representation of the wish for a promising future. The sea (hai) with a house (wu) and a crane holding a tally (chou) in its beak form a rebus for the expression ‘Adding tallies to the immortal’s abode above the sea’ (haiwu tianchou), a subtle expression used to wish people many happy returns on their birthdays. Su Shi (1037–1101) recounts the story of three old men chancing to meet, and inquiring after each other’s age. The third one bested them all when he claimed said that whenever in the course of the eons the sea and the dry land had changed places, he had put aside one tally; now he had ten houses filled with tallies. Based on this anecdote, the Chinese frequently use the expression haiwu tianchou to convey the wish for longevity.