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Lot Essay
Without question one of the masterpieces of Chinese enameling, this bottle exemplifies the softness and subtlety achieved on the finest of enameled glass produced at the Palace workshops during the first half of the Qianlong reign. The delicacy in the use of the enamels on glass is a key feature of Palace enameling, allowing for considerable subtlety of expression. The brilliant, more opaque enamels used for the decorative borders in contrast to the softer main subject, demonstrate the range of possibilities available to Court artists. This type of translucent, milky-white glass was frequently used as an alternative to opaque white glass within the Palace workshops and is ideally suited to the equally translucent enamels. A common characteristic of this glass is the concentric circle of more transparent glass between layers of whiter, translucent material at the lip.
Compare a bottle (fig. 1) in the Palace Museum, Beijing, decorated with a very similar scene of lotus plants and possibly painted by the same hand, illustrated in Masterpieces of Snuff Bottles in the Palace Museum, p. 115, no. 104. See also another bottle of this type from the J & J Collection, reproduced in Moss, Graham, Tsang, The Art of the Chinese Snuff Bottle. The J & J Collection, no. 187, and later sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 25 April 2004, lot 817. All three of these bottles are of the same shape, are made from the same type of pearly, translucent glass, have identical marks and have similar formalized borders with exactly the same space filled above and below the main design.
Of the two main Palace painted enamel arts (on glass and on metal), those on glass are the rarer. During the Qianlong reign enameled metal wares, including snuff bottles, ran into the thousands, whereas enameled glass wares were produced only in the low hundreds. A rough estimate of the total number of enameled glass snuff bottles produced during the reign comes to about three hundred. This was mainly due to the greater difficulty of producing them successfully, the need for multiple firings to correctly mature different colors and layers of enamel, and the much higher failure rate during production. For this reason, some of the enamel colors showed pitting until the end of the Qianlong reign, and nearly all early examples exhibit some minor firing flaws. It was probably for this reason that the records also show that the Emperor very rarely distributed enameled glass wares as gifts, preferring to keep most of them for Imperial use, while gifts of enameled metal wares were apparently quite frequent.
The delightful subject of egrets and lotus, drawn directly from the Chinese painting tradition of birds and flowers, is rare for this group of wares from the early-Qianlong period. The subject is Chinese in both subject and execution, relying primarily on line drawing to delineate every aspect of the painting. The subject of two birds, of any sort, can be read as implying a harmonious marriage, while the lotus (lian) is a pun on "year" (nian) and suggests the phrase "year after year." Alternative symbolic meaning implies a wish for success in the consecutive levels of Imperial examinations (provincial, capital and Palace). An egret (lusi) and a lotus (lian), together with each unit (ge)of the lotus seeds in their pod, provide a rebus for "[May you win] the top places in the consecutive examinations (yilu lianke)."
Compare a bottle (fig. 1) in the Palace Museum, Beijing, decorated with a very similar scene of lotus plants and possibly painted by the same hand, illustrated in Masterpieces of Snuff Bottles in the Palace Museum, p. 115, no. 104. See also another bottle of this type from the J & J Collection, reproduced in Moss, Graham, Tsang, The Art of the Chinese Snuff Bottle. The J & J Collection, no. 187, and later sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 25 April 2004, lot 817. All three of these bottles are of the same shape, are made from the same type of pearly, translucent glass, have identical marks and have similar formalized borders with exactly the same space filled above and below the main design.
Of the two main Palace painted enamel arts (on glass and on metal), those on glass are the rarer. During the Qianlong reign enameled metal wares, including snuff bottles, ran into the thousands, whereas enameled glass wares were produced only in the low hundreds. A rough estimate of the total number of enameled glass snuff bottles produced during the reign comes to about three hundred. This was mainly due to the greater difficulty of producing them successfully, the need for multiple firings to correctly mature different colors and layers of enamel, and the much higher failure rate during production. For this reason, some of the enamel colors showed pitting until the end of the Qianlong reign, and nearly all early examples exhibit some minor firing flaws. It was probably for this reason that the records also show that the Emperor very rarely distributed enameled glass wares as gifts, preferring to keep most of them for Imperial use, while gifts of enameled metal wares were apparently quite frequent.
The delightful subject of egrets and lotus, drawn directly from the Chinese painting tradition of birds and flowers, is rare for this group of wares from the early-Qianlong period. The subject is Chinese in both subject and execution, relying primarily on line drawing to delineate every aspect of the painting. The subject of two birds, of any sort, can be read as implying a harmonious marriage, while the lotus (lian) is a pun on "year" (nian) and suggests the phrase "year after year." Alternative symbolic meaning implies a wish for success in the consecutive levels of Imperial examinations (provincial, capital and Palace). An egret (lusi) and a lotus (lian), together with each unit (ge)of the lotus seeds in their pod, provide a rebus for "[May you win] the top places in the consecutive examinations (yilu lianke)."