AN INSIDE-PAINTED CRYSTAL 'RUSTIC LANDSCAPE' SNUFF BOTTLE KUI DETIAN, EARLY 20TH CENTURY

Collection of Mr and Mrs Kenneth Hark.
Robert Hall, 1991.

Robert Kleiner, Boda Yang, and Clarence F. Shangraw, Chinese Snuff Bottles: A Miniature Art from the Collection of George and Mary Bloch, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1994, cat. no. 363.
National Museum of Singapore, Singapore, 1994-1995.
Christie’s London, 1999.

Hugh Moss, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles: The Mary and George Bloch Collection, vol. 4, Hong Kong, 2000, no. 642.

Bottle: Natural flaws (one more significant at the base of one tree) and surface abrasions from wear. Painting: Some scratches from the spoon, not obtrusive.
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There are nearly thirty recorded bottles by Kui Detian, but only one of them is dated, to 1904. Otherwise, Kui offers practically no additional information, never adding a place of painting and rarely a dedication. He seems to have known his limitations as a calligrapher and kept his inscriptions to the minimum, only very occasionally adding anything other than his signature. But one may be able to propose a specific date from the evidence of a small group of bottles where he has inscribed either the characters chuyuan 初元, referring to the first year of a new era or the four characters chuyuan lihua 初元裏畫, which mean ‘inside-painted in the first year of the new era’. The Guangxu era began in 1875, the Xuantong era in 1909. Since Kui’s works are very consistent in style and quality, it is unlikely that he maintained this with so small an output if he were painting from 1875 to 1904; one may assume therefore that these bottles are implicitly dated 1909 and that his active period is thus minimally from that single dated bottle in 1904 to the chuyuan bottles in 1909.

Practically all of Kui’s bottles are painted on glass. This is not only an exception in crystal, but a rarity in being in red hair crystal, which is unusual in early bottles in any case.

Kui’s style consists of a simple linear drawing with filled-in colours and a naïve, folk-art style. Although no one would pretend that Kui Detian was anything but a folk artist, decorative, almost certainly commercial, and not a serious artist by any stretch of the imagination, he was an individual who stuck doggedly to his style throughout his career. There is a quaint charm to all of his works that suggests the honesty of the folk artist who sees and paints with uncomplicated, forthright spontaneity. His works are always very confidently painted and of charming subjects with a distinctive spirit of their own.

It is also worth noting that Kui never copied any of the more famous artists, never borrowed subject matter or style from better-known fellow artists, and this at a time when everyone else in the field was being influenced by someone else. That alone suggests that Kui was perfectly happy with his own style and an artist of some integrity if not high artistic skills.

Kui signed only with his full name, Kui Detian, and his seals are token seals.