AN ENAMELLED TURQUOISE-BLUE GLASS ‘GEESE’ SNUFF BOTTLE YANGZHOU SCHOOL, SEAL MARK AND PERIOD OF QIANLONG

with a flat lip and recessed flat circular foot surrounded by a protruding flattened footrim, painted in famille-rose enamels with a continuous scene of two geese on the bank of a pond fringed with water lilies and reeds beside flowering hibiscus, the foot inscribed with the four-character reign mark in iron-red enamel; with the original translucent turquoise glass stopper

Hugh Moss (HK) Ltd., 1993.

Hugh Moss, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles: The Mary and George Bloch Collection, vol. 6, Hong Kong, 2007, no. 1141.

The outer lip seems to be slightly polished, which may indicate the removal of a chip, but it may also be part also of the original production process. There is a restored chip to the footrim (approx. 1.5cm). The stopper is original. The actual colour is a fraction more turquoise compared to the catalogue illustration.
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It is hardly surprising to find coloured grounds on the early Yangzhou-enamelled glass wares, since they were inspired by court designs and executed to imperial orders; they reflect a trend at court in the second half of the Qianlong period for using pre-existing plain coloured glass bottles for enamelling. Among the more common colours for the grounds on enamelled glass bottles attributable to Yangzhou is turquoise-blue.

The shape of this bottle is a rare one for the school, and the matching original stopper is even rarer. Such matching stoppers, however, are not unknown on other enamelled glass wares from the second half of the Qianlong reign. Many original stoppers may have since gone missing or been broken and replaced, but there seems to have been a trend during the early phase of production at Yangzhou towards providing at least some enamelled glass bottles with matching stoppers.

Although we can be certain that the reign mark was originally enamelled in iron-red, it has since worn off, leaving only the effect of the enamel where it has etched the blue glass beneath. The mark is clearly visible, but no colour remains. We can assume that it was very pale to begin with, since the bottle itself is relatively unworn and the reign mark is protected by a protruding footrim.