A very rare yellow ground and famille rose enameled miniature gourd-form glass snuff bottle


Imperial, Beijing Palace Workshops, Qianlong mark incised and painted in black to the base and of the period, 1736-1795The exquisite, jade-like translucent white glass bottle with a wide mouth, flat lip, delicately painted around the walls with graceful leafy tendrils bearing blooming flowers and ripened double-gourds, the lower bulb of the double-gourd decorated with colorful butterflies, all against a lemon-yellow ground firing to a burnt pale russet on one side, and framed between a pink enameled scroll border surrounding the neck and a simple linear band around the side of the low foot ring; the gently recessed foot lightly incised the four-character mark and painted in grayish-black. 1 7/16in (3.7cm) high
|It is widely known that enameled glass was very favored by the Imperial court and had always been enthusiastically pursued by the elite connoisseurs because of its rarity and exotic nature. Enameled glass was very difficult to produce due to the challenge in controlling and firing the enamels perfectly on glass. The different colors of enamel would not all have reached maturity at the same temperature. Given the technical limitation, achieving a perfect result of the firing of enamels of various colors while keeping the glass body from collapsing from high temperature was extremely difficult in China in the 18th century. The present example is one of a few known enameled glass bottles on a yellow ground and in the double-gourd form from the Beijing Palace Workshops during the Qianlong period. Moreover, most accepted Qianlong marks on the recorded Imperial enameled double-gourd glass bottles are in blue enamel. Only a few bottles with the reign marks 'incised', and painted in the same slightly gray- hued black color. Refer to no. 14, p. 13 & no. 17, p. 15 from Snuff Bottles, The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, 2003.The present bottle is even smaller in size comparing to the usually small Imperial enameled glass bottles, which further challenged the bottle maker and its painter's skill. One enameled glass bottle with the same height, with its Qianlong mark described as 'incised', and painted in the same color shade is illustrated in The Art of the Chinese Snuff Bottles, Moss, Graham, Tsang, Vol. I, fig. 185, p. 312. Compare another enameled double-gourd snuff bottle, 7 centimeters high, also painted with gourds on a yellow ground, from the Beijing Palace Workshops, sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 21 May 2009, sale 17569, lot 1089. 清乾隆 御製 北京宮廷作坊 料胎黃地粉彩葫蘆鼻煙壺 《乾隆年製》陰刻淺黑四字楷書款