A Double-Overlay Glass ‘Phoenix and Orchid’ Snuff Bottle Qing Dynasty, 18th / 19th Century

Sotheby’s London, 7th June 1990, lot 99.

Moss et al., 1996-2009, vol. 5, no. 999.

A small chip to the outer lip. Barely visible nibble from the outer footrim. Two chips in the tips of the leaves, one just above the curled tail and the other, up fro this and little to the right. A tiny chip in the base of the fenghuang's tail and another on the tip of the wing.
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This highly effective combination of cinnabar red and emerald green was seen in the lovely bottle, with a fenghuang in a rather similar colour combination, in the J & J Collection (Moss, Graham, and Tsang 1993, no. 374). The combination of colours occurs into the nineteenth century, and a much closer parallel to this one, also found in the J & J Collection (ibid., no. 389), would appear to come from the same glassmaker – designer – carver team. Another clearly from the same hand is in Rachelle R. Holden 1994, no. 108 and is of similar colours, decorated with orchids in a painterly style. Apart from its similar form, it displays the same very dense snowflake ground, which we have associated with the mid-Qing period from the late Qianlong into the early nineteenth century (see under Sale 6, lot 243).

The carving is, again, more rudimentary than that found in the masterpieces of the early to mid-Qianlong period. This is demonstrated principally by the uneven ground plane, although in this case the relief carving is superbly controlled and extremely imaginative artistically. The upper layer of red, were it not obviously a superimposed layer sitting only on the surface of the emerald-green, might be considered streaking rather than a second layer of overlay. It provides an immensely dynamic thrust to the bird, which is as impressive and unusual a depiction of this mythical creature as any in the medium. Strangely, its head and neck are concentrated on one narrow side and at the base, the entire main side being taken up by an enormously long, exaggeratedly sweeping tail, which projects across the bottle to curl onto the other main side. The effect is disconcerting, but subtly involves the observer, since only by picking up the bottle and turning it in the hand is it possible to understand and fully appreciate the design. Even then, careful examination is necessary in order to savour the details, since the red and green blend into each other along the length of the bird and are then confused by other splashes of surface red in the ground and even on the foot rim. When the design suddenly leaps into focus, however, it has a truly dramatic strength.

It is matched on the other main side by one of the loveliest depictions of orchids in the medium, displaying the fluidity of genuinely fine brush work. Kleiner dated this bottle very precisely to the Daoguang period, and while it may come from the first half of that reign, it may also have been made a little earlier.