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photographer E-Yaji.

The Mary and George Bloch Collection: Part I  
Bonham's, Hong Kong, 28 May 2010: Lot 55 

Lot 55

Lot 55
Treasury 2, no. 376
HK$360,000

Zhiting’s White Liu Hai

Agate; adequately but not extensively hollowed with a flat lip and flat foot; carved with a continuous, partially cameo scene of Liu Hai, holding under his right arm a besom and a long cord, a coin tied to its tasselled end, to lure his three-legged toad, which sits on a rock emitting the moon in a cloud of vapour gathering in a vortex above its head, all in a rocky landscape with a pomegranate tree with two large fruit and some maple-like foliage growing from the edge of a convoluted rock
Zhiting school, Suzhou, 1730–1850
Height: 4.41 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.49/1.4 cm
Stopper: coral; turquoise collar

Lot 55 Provenance:
Hugh Moss (1985)
Published:
Moss 1971, p. 67, fig. 174
Kleiner 1987, no. 155
Kleiner 1995, no. 273
Treasury 2, no. 376
Exhibited:
Sydney L. Moss Ltd., London, October 1987
Creditanstalt, Vienna, May–June 1993
British Museum, London, June–October 1995
Israel Museum, Jerusalem, July–November 1997

Lot 55 Commentary
This exquisite little bottle is another of the deeper relief group also represented by Treasury 2, nos. 374 and 375, and is similarly small in size. It is also another with the impressive vapour, smoke or cloud deeply carved and heavily formalized which we mentioned under Treasury 2, no. 372, here brilliantly carved so that a small patch of white agate acts as the centre of the vortex around which the vapour swirls. There is no characteristic Zhiting-school serrated rockwork on this example, the small area of rocks to the back of Liu Hai has no serrations, being made up entirely of overlapping angled planes – another staple for the school. Apart from the splendid convoluted rock behind the toad, the majority of the rocks are made up of angular planes set against each other at varying depths. This is the style that appears on a large number of classic imperial-type wares probably made at Suzhou for the court, such as mountain carvings, table-screens, and brush pots with landscape subjects. In Zhongguo yuqi quanji, vol. 6, the following pieces all have a similar style of rockwork carving: p. 52, no. 84; pp. 173–180, nos. 253-263; pp. 196–198, nos. 278–282.

It is with this sub-group of deeply carved Zhiting school works with their extensive use of planar rockwork that we come closest to relating the snuff-bottle style to a broader range of objects carved at Suzhou.

A further, and very rare element of the Zhiting-style is introduced for the first time here, a pomegranate tree, albeit carved with a trunk and branches indistinguishable from those used for pine and maple alike, and no less well carved. The pomegranate was, with its large number of seeds, a symbol of ample progeny and was quite frequently depicted on snuff bottles. It is sometimes shown hanging from a mythical tree which also bears one or more of the other two most auspicious fruit, the peach and the Buddha’s-hand fruit (see, for instance, Treasury 1, no. 120). Sometimes the entire fruit forms the bottle, but it is rarely shown simply as fruit hanging from a pomegranate tree, and for the Zhiting school this seems to be a first.

The ink-play involved here (see discussion under Treasury 2, no. 274) is delightful. A small vein of pale agate runs through the middle of the material. At its narrow end it is the vortex for the vapour arising from the toad’s mouth, but on the other main side it becomes much larger and rather triangular, and is fringed with an irregular frame of darker colouring. The artist has used the paler agate for the head, one arm and bulging torso of the immortal, and the darker colouring for his hair, upper robes and the besom. To get the material to fit, he has given Liu an exaggerated pose, his right arm thrown well out and almost brandishing the broom he holds in his right hand. The body is also triangular to match the agate inclusion, with the trousered legs close together. This triangular form, standing on one of its points, is balanced splendidly by the weight of the broom and the visual weight of the exaggeratedly long cord to which Liu has attached his tempting coin. It is a bottle that needs close attention to reveal its delights, but in every sense it is in a class with the best of this small sub-group. In the brilliant use of an exciting specimen of agate, the deep relief carving, and the toad and vapour subject, it relates to the J & J example (Moss, Graham, and Tsang 1993, no. 140, also the front cover illustration for Moss 1971>). It must be by the same hand.




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