Lot 64

Lot 64
Treasury 5, no. 1055

Red Cliff

Translucent white glass; with a flat lip and slightly recessed convex foot surrounded by a protruding rounded footrim; engraved on one main side with three scholars strolling along a mountain path beside which grow trees, bamboo and other foliage, the other main side and the area above the figural-subject, inscribed in draft script with the text of Su Shi’s Second Ode to the Red Cliff, followed by the signature, ‘Yanbin’, and one seal of the artist in positive seal script, Zhou
Bottle: possibly Yuanhu, Zhejiang province, 1890-1910
Decoration: Zhou Honglai, 1890-1910
Height: 6.3 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.69/1.25 cm
Stopper: coral; rhinoceros-horn collar

Lot 64 Provenance:
Hugh M. Moss Ltd, Hong Kong (1992)

Published:
Kleiner, Yang, and Shangraw 1994, no. 137
Treasury 5, no. 1055

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

Lot 64 Commentary
This is the second most popular shape for Zhou Honglai bottles, but the art here dwells not in the bottle but in the engraving and the workmanship, which is, as always from the hand of Zhou Honglai, impeccable. It is of a scene typical of literati painting, featuring a group of three scholars strolling in the mountains, enjoying the scenery and each other’s company.

The engraving on these bottles is commonly filled with black, usually achieved using a felt-tip pen or graphite rubbed into the engraving, a simple enough process given a little practice in removing the excess surface colouring without affecting the colouring in the engraved lines. There is no indication, however, that this was the original method of presenting Zhou’s works, whose beauty seems intended to become apparent only to those who scrutinize them with great care and attention. In the first half of the twentieth century, the trend towards micro-engraving led to ever smaller characters, until entire texts could be inscribed on a grain of rice, or, in one bizarre case, on the nipples of a tiny ivory carving of the Buddha.

The text, which begins on one side and concludes on the side with the figures in landscape, is the ‘Second Ode to the Red Cliff’ (see Tsang, Moss, and Ribeiro 1986, no. 106). Good translations include that by A. C. Graham in Cyril Birch, Anthology of Chinese Literature, and that by Ronald Egan in his Word, Image, and Deed in the Life of Su Shi, an excellent study of this great Song dynasty man.